I hate how in movies and TV, whenever there’s an ideological disagreement it mostly just boils down to both characters playing social power games at each other like allists, without either one making an actually interesting point. I miss the Star Trek approach of giving both sides good, convincing, interesting points and letting the debate play out for a while

I was watching a movie called Ghostwatch recently (which is interesting! it’s kinda like found footage horror but predates Blair Witch) and they had a scientist vs. a ghost believer

and the scientist didn’t bother to explain how all of the evidence could have been faked (which was really obvious). he was just like “well it’s not under laboratory conditions and also you are stupid and dumb and dumby stupid face”. and then the ghost believer was like “well actually you are dumbier stupidier face and also you can’t measure love in a laboratory and you are dumb dumb stupid dumb”

which like, this could have been a really interesting debate about epistemology and what can or can’t be used to justify belief? because obviously the ghost believer thinks that there are other methods for determining truth beyond scientific empiricism and I would love to hear more about that, and then hear the scientist try to argue against it. that would be so much fucking cooler than just two allists playing social status games at each other for three minutes

@kasdeya the hard part of writing clever characters is that you have to know the clever words you want them to say... Many such cases where the author doesn't bother to do the research so the interactions on which the plot/drama hinges sometimes fail to reach their potential.