Reviews introduce us to new perspectives and help us collectively think better

This was written partially in response to a prompt shared at meetup #19 of Indie Web Club Bangalore on Feb 8, 2026

Reviews matter because human reasoning is social.

We like to think that we arrive at our beliefs through careful thought. But in most cases, we make decisions intuitively and only later construct reasons to justify them.

This is how our minds have evolved to work. And it comes with one significant limitation: we are very bad at questioning what we already believe.

Exposure to external perspectives acts as a correctional measure.

And this is where reviews become valuable. They introduce us to ways of seeing that we would not arrive at by ourselves.

With this essay, I want to explore two ideas:

1. why sharing reviews publicly is valuable, and
2. my personal framework for evaluating media.¹

External perspectives make us better seekers of truth

In The Enigma of Reason, Mercier and Sperber argue that reasoning evolved primarily as a social tool — something we use to justify ourselves to others, not to discover truth in isolation.

As individuals, we tend to settle for the first explanation that feels plausible. There is little internal incentive to keep searching for better ones or to look for disconfirming evidence.

A deeper search for what is true happens only in groups — in dialogue with others. When we are exposed to new perspectives presented by others. Or when the validity of our own justifications are challenged.

Mercer and Sperber argue that this type of group deliberation is a highly efficient evolutionary strategy. We retain the benefits of quick intuitive decision-making as individuals, while still managing to avoid gaps in reasoning with the help of the social filter of the group.

Good media widens our perspectives and makes us reevaluate our mental models of the world

If exposure to other perspectives improves our thinking, then media can be evaluated based on how well it enables this.

At its best, a film, a book, or a song (or even a review), lets us inhabit the mind of another person. Whether that be of the author, or that a real or fictional character. We gain access to a perspective which is external to us.

The value of a piece of media lies in its ability to (i)illuminate us with these new external perspectives, and (ii)use them to expand or reevaluate our mental models of the world.

I use three questions to judge whether a piece of media has something valuable to offer:

1. Does it provoke self-reflection?
2. Does it make me think about my relationships with other people?
3. Does it make me think about how society is structured?

Good media does not need to do all three. But the more it engages with these questions, the more likely it is to help us question and expand our mental models.

In Arrival, Amy Adams’s character is faced with a difficult question: If you had to forgo the most meaningful relationship in your life to avoid the pain that lies ahead, what would you choose to do?

The film provokes self-reflection by putting us in her shoes and making us wonder what we would choose. The question becomes, what kind of a person are we actually?

In Normal People, Connell is so unsure of his value as a person — as someone who can be loved —that he is never able to truly come to terms with Marianne’s affection for him. His lack of self-esteem forces him into infuriatingly bad decisions which push the two away and lead only to regret. It makes us reevaluate our own attitudes within our relationships, for who has never had self-limiting beliefs about themselves?

The films of Eric Rohmer, through casual conversations between characters, show us people who are often clueless in their romantic pursuits. These are people like us, who claim to know what they want, yet whose actions tell us otherwise. They make us wonder, how sure can we be of our own romantic desires?

And in the works of Ken Loach, individual lives are never detached from the systems around them. Bureaucratic delays in providing welfare (I, Daniel Blake), gig jobs (Sorry We Missed You), responses to immigrants and refugees (It’s a Free World…, Ae Fond Kiss, and The Old Oak) are all portrayed by placing them within the systems and structures which shape them. They make us question why society is organized the way it is — pushing people into hopeless struggles that they can never get out of.

By presenting us with these questions, media can play an almost epistemological role. That is, it can make us question: “Do we actually know what we believe to be true? How did we arrive at what we believe to be true? And, what do we not know yet?”

Emotional engagement is fundamental because it determines whether we bother to consume something or not

For any reflection to happen though, a work must first hold our attention.

Because our responses are driven by intuition, we only engage deeply with something if it affects us emotionally. Without that initial engagement, we dismiss it before it has a chance to communicate anything.

Emotional engagement makes deeper thinking possible in the first place. Without it, none of the questions above ever come into play.

There is also value in mere entertainment

That said, not all media needs to challenge us for it to have value.

For entertainment is valuable in its own right.

There is value in things that get us through the dreariness of work, or which soothes or entertains us after a long day.

These kinds of works — which are merely entertaining and nothing else — can sometimes be the difference between finding the motivation to get through another day or not, and that is a utility worth respecting in itself.

Reviews introduce us to new perspectives and help us think better

There have been many times when I have disliked something and then read a passionate review which made me see it in a completely new light.

If media exposes us to new perspectives, reviews extend that process.

When we write about what we consume — and put it out in public — we contribute to the pool of perspectives available to others.

We also make our own interpretations open to scrutiny and disagreement.

This does three things:

• It forces us to clarify what we think, and why
• It helps others see something they might have missed, and
• It makes it possible for others to tell us what we might have missed.

Reviewing media is part of the process through which we collectively become better seekers of truth.