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One of the more interesting aspects of this article was that it touched on this concept I have of 'narrative density'. It's closely related to Brandolini's law,
by vinceguidry 7y ago
One of the more interesting aspects of this article was that it touched on this concept I have of 'narrative density'. It's closely related to Brandolini's law, that the amount of energy it takes to create bullshit is an order of magnitude higher than the energy it takes to refute it.
A story takes more effort to explain than it does to simply read and experience it. The author's efforts to explain the story to the intelligence officials quickly turned into a re-narration of the story. At some point they weren't dealing with the original but rather a new story tailored to the need to give the intelligence officials something they could understand, because they certainly didn't have the training / education / smarts to connect the dots at the speed needed.
Any effort to explain a story that's not proper analysis invariably produces a new story. And to properly analyze a story you need a lot more in the way of training or prior experience than you do to just read or experience it.
The underlying mental model I'm using here is to see narrative as a kind of analytical tool in and of itself as a compressive technique for masses of information. The mind doesn't want to deal with complex things all at once. A story is a form of information that is uniquely capable of providing not just 'idea units', but also examples of that information being used, and also why anyone would care.
- laputan_machine 7y ago>It's closely related to Brandolini's law, that the amount of energy it takes to create bullshit is an order of magnitude higher than the energy it takes to refute it. Isn't it the opposite?
- vinceguidry 7y agoPerhaps, though I would call it a converse or inverse rather than an opposite. Either are close relations. You can't be a thing's opposite unless the two of you share a lot together. North has more in common with South than it does with East.
- jacobush 7y agoEntropy is a harsh mistress. Easier to burn down than to rebuild.
- vinceguidry 7y agoYeah. The intriguing thing about knowledge and the study of it, epistemology, is that once discovered, it doesn't just go away. It sets the world on fire and burns away cruft. Bullshit can be seen as both the cruft that gets burned away by true knowledge, or the fire that demolishes old ways of understanding, however true. To see it the other way, imagine attacking the hegemony of the Catholic Church with incisive bullshit. Small societies have their reactions to the larger one and the veins of bullshit they'll propound onto the larger. By the time you or I see a particular incarnation, it's already been through numerous iterations. We can't have witnessed the genesis of Pizzagate, but we know that idea has to have one and the subsequent generations until it reached final, grotesque, form. These ideas are self-defense weapons, shields against an onslaught of 'liberal' ideology.
- pathseeker 7y agoYes. https://ordrespontane.blogspot.com/2014/07/brandolinis-law.html https://ordrespontane.blogspot.com/2014/07/brandolinis-law.h... "The bullshit asimmetry: the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
- vinceguidry 7y agoOh, didn't catch that you were pointing out a typo, lol.