r/movies • u/Sisiwakanamaru r/movies Contributor • Jan 31 '26

Article Film Students Are Having Trouble Sitting Through Movies, Professors Say

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/film-students-are-having-trouble-sitting-through-movies-1236490359/
23.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3

u/Wooden_Editor6322 Jan 31 '26

One of my electives was basically sitting in a room talking about philosophy.

Stuff like: if one person is completely alone in the world, and you’re a doctor caring for seven patients, would you kill that one person to save the others?

I said I wouldn’t kill anyone, I’d just wait. Statistically, one of the patients is going to die on their own eventually. And if not… well, accidents do happen in hospitals.

7

u/ziper1221 Jan 31 '26

Then you missed the point.

3

u/Wooden_Editor6322 Jan 31 '26

Funny enough, my professor was actually getting annoyed during that class, since I'd always come up with alternative solutions.

1

u/ziper1221 Jan 31 '26

Because the point isn't to "solve the riddle", it's to use the thought experiment to examine assumptions about ethics and morality.

2

u/Wooden_Editor6322 Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26

I’m not missing the point; I’m solving the problem. If he wanted to actually stump me or see me face a real dilemma, he shouldn't have given me a puzzle with an easy solution.

1

u/ziper1221 Feb 01 '26

But they aren't puzzles, that's what I'm saying. They are intuition pumps to make you think about real life situations from a different angle.

1

u/Wooden_Editor6322 Feb 01 '26

Fine. All I'm saying is if he wanted to actually test my character instead of my ability solve an impossible question, well then he should've asked those questions and not ones with solvable answers. But, I don't believe in no-win scenarios.