Scientists Help Movie Writers Make Films ‘Plausible-Ish’
This is actually a decent route for a kind of supplementary education: it would be pretty valuable to expose a broad audience to the way scientists&#x2F;engineers really think about problems—and the opportunity is generally wasted, preferring to convey that scientists&#x2F;engineers just have some magical ability that the audience does not.<p>It&#x27;s a little difficult to say exactly what it is that could be communicated, but I guess I&#x27;d call it &#x27;intuition&#x27;; and the value of trying to convey it in a movie is that if you tell the average person, &quot;I&#x27;m now going to give you some examples of how scientists think about things&quot;—they&#x27;re going to become nervous and less efficient at absorbing the info.<p>I was recently impressed by &quot;Ex Machina&quot; for being &#x27;plausable-ish&#x27; and showing realistic, intelligent thought processes, as an example. The t.v. show &quot;House&quot; is also sometimes good about it.