Noncritical Thinking in Literature and Movies
Writers and producers can probably create books and movies with smart and interesting characters. But I don’t see many characters like this around. Many characters tend to make silly errors, even if they proclaim that they are smart. Of course silly characters fit well into comedies, but I still can see many of they in other genres. I can find a number of reasons for this and many of them wouldn’t be related to critical thinking. For example, dumb people fit a story well, an author doesn’t want readers feel too dumb in comparison, an author has some good explanation for characters’ errors in judgment.
Still, sometimes a story can only benefit if at least some characters become smarter. A writer can do that making characters think critically. Of course the writer needs to know critical thinking himself. But if the writer doesn’t think critically about his story, a reader may find a number of logical and cognitive errors. And the reader can’t be sure how to attribute these errors, is it a part of the writers’ plan or is it a result of errors in the plan?
Of course the writer can write good dialogues or good descriptions, so his book would be popular even if he made a number of logical errors in them. A writer probably doesn’t need to know critical thinking to be successful, he also doesn’t need to make his characters critical thinkers, he even doesn’t need to create a plot without holes . In the same time smarter characters can probably be beneficial for readers, because characters often became role-models for readers. So if a character uses critical thinking, a reader may want to learn critical thinking too. If a character know how to avoid cognitive biases, a reader may want to do the same. A writer can even have some characters who don’t use critical thinking and show them less successful. So a writer doesn’t even need to make all his characters masters of critical thinking.
Fiction with plot holes and logical errors often lead to creation of a particular kind of fanfiction, where other writers attempt to fix errors in the original story. It can be considered an evidence that people would be interested in stories with smart characters and without plot holes.
Published on 2019-06-04
Tag: critical thinking
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