alt Hacker NewsI was thinking about this while typing. I don’t really care about classically animated content; it’s generally not trying to be indistinguishable from real life and I don’t feel like my brain trains on it.
But I think I do have similar feelings about special effects. A difference is that special effects tend to depict scenarios very outside of the envelope of normal experience, so probably not very damaging if my model of “what does a plane crash look like” is screwed up.
Though some effects probably are damaging - how many people subconsciously assume cars explode when they are in an accident? A poor mental model of the odds of a car exploding could cause you to make poor real-life decisions (like moving someone out of a wrecked car in a panic instead of waiting for EMS, risking spine/neck injury)
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To your point about cars - such an expectation could well save your life now that there are so many EVs on the road. You do not want to hang out in one of those after a collision. Regardless, I agree that it's probably a bad idea to instill defective mental models in people.
Media has warped people's mental models of what car wrecks are like at different speeds, being stabbed, being shot, drowning, seizures, falls from different heights, falls into water, giving CPR, when it is/isn't appropriate to give CPR, appropriate responses to natural disasters, etc.
if it worked this way, we could get good at golf by watching TV, writing songs by listening to the radio, or doing math by watching 3b1b. but it doesn't - we don't learn that way, for better or worse.