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Writing and the narrative fallacy (2018)
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI guess I'd handle it by asking what proof there was that humans are biologically inclined to commit this fallacy. on edit: I mean biologically inclined implies some genomic proof. Not just psychological studies.
- Ozzie_osman 6y agoWhy does this need to be genomic? Why is psychological proof not enough? There is plenty of evidence that shows that humans are susceptible to these types of fallacies, whether it's at explaining the world around us or even explaining our own behavior. My favorite study on self-justification is the split-brain experiment. But essentially if we are susceptible to after-the-fact narrative fallacies of our own behavior, we are definitely susceptible to it for the rest of the world, about which we know much less and which is far more complicated.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agobecause of the words "biologically inclined", psychological proof has a pretty big inductive gap to leap to get to establishing a biological inclination.
- jessriedel 6y agoAspects of human beings that are widely present in people all over the world, and are therefore likely resistant to effective removal using known practical tools, is generally considered reasonable (but not incontrovertible) evidence for biological inclination. It is not necessary to have linked this to a particular gene, and doesn't cease to be "biological" if it involves gene-environment interactions. It was correct to say that most plants were biologically inclined to use the sun's energy before photosynthesis and DNA were understood.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agosure, a big enough psychological study without any obvious flaws might sufficiently bridge the inductive gap for me. But I'm unaware of any, and I doubt to see one because it would be real difficult to get right. That said I haven't really looked for one, for the reasons given.
- jessriedel 6y agoThere's lots of biological knowledge we have that existed before formal studies. What I said about photosynthesis applies to claims by non-scientists observing plants informally.
- Kbelicius 6y agoBecause that is what the person that coined the terms claims. That it is a biological inclination. On what basis is he claiming that?
- simonh 6y agoI don’t think that’s a useful standard. Reducing human psychology down to genetics is A bit like trying to reduce weather forecasting down to quantum mechanics. That’s not a perfect analogy because there are some genes that we know have strong psychological impact, but that doesn’t mean all human behaviour is neatly connected to specific isolatable gene sequences.
- Kbelicius 6y agoDid you read the article? There it is claimed that narrative fallacy is a biological inclination. Why would you not question that claim and ask for some proof?
- ccsnags 6y agoThe narrative fallacy is just a way for people to describe errors caused when conclusions are based inadequate information. It is an ancient and mundane idea with analogs across time and cultures. The article mentions the biological nature of it, but I interpret that as the biological reality that humans are not omniscient, thus are always susceptible to filling in the gaps between empirical evidence with unsubstantiated prose.
- simonh 6y agoYes I read it. When it says biology, I don’t think it’s reasonable to substitute in genetics and retain the same sense. Suppose that the tendency towards the narative fallacy is due to such fundamental architectural structures in our brain that they go back to our early mammal ancestors. If that is true, any genetic change sufficient to modify it materially would have to be so radical that we essentially wouldn’t have mammal brains anymore. We’re way beyond population genetics and incremental natural selection at that point. There’s no genetic study or engineering intervention we could possibly contemplate in our lifetimes that would be relevant. So when I say genetics isn’t really an issue here it’s not because the behaviour isn’t genetically determined, it’s that it may be so strongly tied to huge, mutually interconnected tracts our our genome that it’s just not a useful level of abstraction for us at the moment.
- Upvoter33 6y agoI think when one looks around, narrative fallacy is ever-present. The evidence is all around us, in virtually every newspaper and book. We seek to make the world cause and effect, to make people "good" or "bad", etc. One of my personal pet peeves around this fallacy is how often it arises in sports. Before Jordan won 6 championships, he was a "great player who didn't elevate his teammates". After all the winning, he became "the greatest player to ever play". People just want a simple story, because they're busy - it's hard to have a nuanced view of everything you see or hear about.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago>I think when one looks around, narrative fallacy is ever-present Yes I think the same, it's certainly a comforting story to tell oneself about why people reduce the complex world to simple narratives, thus narrative fallacy if it exists falls prey to narrative fallacy. However I have to assume that I could be wrong and what I perceive as examples of this narrative fallacy and demonstrating its existence do nothing of the sort. Finally, the evidence all around us that I perceive does not lead to a proof of a biological inclination. It just leads to my consideration that there might be one. So if Jeff Bezos or Nassim Taleb tells me it's a biological inclination, I would be inclined to find some polite way to tell him to prove it.
- __s 6y agoYep. "biological inclination" doesn't have to mean there's some "fallacy gene". It just means that our brains have evolved to extrapolate as much as possible for the least effort (you try running a computer on this wattage..), we want fast decisions & most people don't want to have to maintain dozens of constraints in their head (only recently have we started learning to write down these constraints, which is much easier to keep track of) Meanwhile ideas have evolutionary pressure too. It's called memes. Memes work best when they require low effort from their carriers. If a meme requires some existing knowledge, & truth often relies on knowledge, that means it can only be transmitted to those with the knowledge, unless it brings that knowledge as baggage
- amurthy1 6y agoWhether or not humans are biologically inclined to it, it's still a valid question to ask "Are you considering this potential mistake when telling our story and taking precautions to avoid it?"
- post_below 6y agoYou make a great point, there's a big temptation to commit narrative fallacy when trying to explain narrative fallacy. So we should look for empirical evidence. At the same time brains are complicated, psychology is complicated, genetics is complicated. We know a lot about all of the above but we don't really understand any of them. The history of all three sciences is full of narrative fallacies. Given what we don't know, absolute proof, especially in genetics, isn't currently possible. So we have to settle for the best working explanation based on what we know. I think there is plenty of peer reviewed support for the idea that we are biologically inclined to look for neat explanations so that we can file challenging concepts away as resolved and focus our bandwidth on other things.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoI think this means we're in agreement that it is probably so, but not necessarily so? But still enough in the air to refrain from claiming biological inclination.
- post_below 6y agoSure, but biological inclination is the best available explanation to the degree that I'm not sure it has any competition at this point. Asking for proof is useful, but it's a token exercise if you don't have an alternative explanation.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agothe reason that I don't see it as a token exercise is that ascribing things to biological inclination seems to be its own easy to fall into fallacy. So I like to avoid it while still conceding it may very well be the case in particular cases.
- hairofadog 6y agoThe mirror of this premise is also interesting; think, for example, of all the extremely complicated narratives woven to explain COVID-19 (5G, Bill Gates, etc.) On the other hand, maybe those narratives could also be considered a kind of simplification, which is to say they all boil down to "it's the fault of {fill in the blank evil rich person or organization}" as opposed to what's more likely to be the truth, which is that nature and the physical world are full of complexity and randomness.
- mattigames 6y agoYeah, people look for someone to blame even for the good things (think Religion) because it gives them a framework they feel they understand.
- unclebucknasty 6y agoBut this is not simply the nature of people to search for understanding. It's also down to the willful exploitation of events in bad faith. Especially in these days--where there's a pitched ideological/political battle raging, coupled with an assault on "knowing"--that seems to be the larger driving force.
- new2628 6y agoHonest question: does anyone really think that 5G is related to Covid, or is this a story planted in the media to also make legitimate criticism of 5G look like fringe lunacy?
- felixgallo 6y agohttps://www.cnet.com/health/5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-sees-77-mobile-towers-burned-report-says/ https://www.cnet.com/health/5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory...
- new2628 6y agoExactly this type of articles raised my suspicion. It says that people have burned various towers in protest of 5G, and that there are crazy conspiracy theories linking 5G and covid, but it gives no evidence that the two are connected. What percentage of those pissed at 5G are believing this conspiracy theory? 10%? 1%? 0.01%?
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- jgrant27 6y agoBezos has plenty of his own narrative fallacies going. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVfJVj5z8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVVfJVj5z8s
- CptFribble 6y agoThe funny thing about this anecdote is that Taleb's premise is itself a narrative fallacy - specifically, he uses story to imply that all (or most) first approximations are oversimplified and therefore wrong, or at least incomplete. Taleb's description of the human susceptibility to story is itself told through story. How much of what we know about this idea is itself an oversimplification? How deep does the rabbit hole go? This is the major challenge of the 21st century, in my opinion - the old information authorities (newspapers, big 3 TV news) haven't just been broken, but completely shattered. We've reverted to our tribal roots - trusting the word of respected members of our tribe - but now that our tribes can extend across the globe and encompass millions, it's like we're all standing in one giant town square shouting at each other about how to deal with things like COVID-19. I agree that susceptibility to story is a real thing; ad agencies and scriptwriters have been trading on this phenomenon for a century. The problem is that we aren't even trying to train ourselves out of it. Without a practiced ability to recognize when we're being led through a nice-sounding story, anyone who can weave a good tale will capture huge numbers of people through the internet for their own purposes. For examples, see flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and the various political disinformation campaigns. I don't know what the solution is. But I worry a lot about the ability of powerful interests to capture more power when the general populace is in chaos. Early 21st century USA is in a state of intense intellectual chaos, and the increasing pace of capital accumulation at the top of our society is an ill omen.
- febed 6y agoI'm reminded of what U.G. Krishnamurti said - "cause and effect is the shibboleth of confused minds"
- neonate 6y agoNarrative doesn't necessarily imply cause and effect though. I think there may be two different fallacies here.
- exolymph 6y agoIt kinda does though. Narrative is a sequence of linked events, and an implicit assertion that these are the events that are salient.
- neonate 6y agoI agree that it's about selecting which events are salient and which to leave out. And yes, putting them into sequence. But does that always imply causality? I'm not sure. Maybe it does. If you say "Anne divorced John and then he died", the mind fills in an implied cause. If you say "John got cancer and then he died", it fills in a different cause. The key point to me seems to be selection bias, though: what you chose to include vs. leave out in the two stories.
- yesenadam 6y agoHaha U.G.! Amazing. The things you come across on HN. I was introduced to his book and videos of him by a christian friend at whose house he often stayed. (She also got me into Nisargadatta!) She said he'd eat nothing but cream. He helped end my religious period, and meant a lot to me at the time. The guru to end all gurus! He made a lot of sense, especially for people caught up in the spiritual world, "seekers". I just looked and wikipedia says he died in 2007, also that he ate a lot of salt and cream. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._G._Krishnamurti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._G._Krishnamurti
- scandox 6y agoI repeatedly see this trope about Bezos' hyper intelligence. I mean he appears to be intelligent but how did his reputation for being the smartest of billionaires arise? What proof is there of it? He generally comes across as a well read, educated person who also happens to be very rich. Pointing to Amazon and his success is no answer. People don't go around calling Carlos Slim hyperintelligent. Or Michael Bloomberg. Even Buffett gets the "wise" tag. But Bezos is always referenced as if he could readily out smart his smartest employees in their field if only he could be bothered...
- amscanne 6y agoThat’s the narrative: Bezos is a genius, Slim is a cut-throat business person, Buffet is a stock sage, etc. It’s easier than the reality that they are all random, complex combinations of smart, lucky, persistent, charismatic, etc.
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- nabla9 6y agoBezos is probably highly intelligent but not 'hyperintelligent'. He wanted to become theoretical physicist but realized that he was not up to it. He graduated with degree in electrical engineering and computer science. It's very common to label clearly intelligent business-people who have 'mathiness background' and analytical thinking ability as geniuses.
- smitty1e 6y agoSo a successful company acts closer to a top-notch jazz band that - improvises its way through a continuous set - never stops - swaps out players intermittently - improvises off of each other based upon events rather than being an orchestra operating off of some refined composition handed down from Apollo on mount Olympus.
- daseiner1 6y agoidk if it was intended, but this is a gorgeous pun – AWS uses a self-rolled deployment engine called Apollo.
- kqr 6y agoThe fact that we are not as much in control as we think can be both liberating and frustrating. When I asked my boss (who is co-founder of the company, so has all the historic context) how the company culture got to be in the good place it is, his immediate, and most confident, answer was "luck."
- smitty1e 6y agoAs an editorial preference, I favor Destiny over "luck". “Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck".” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/697618-throughout-history-poverty-is-the-normal-condition-of-man-advances https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/697618-throughout-history-p...
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- zaaakk 6y agoWow, Bezos must be extremely hyper intelligent to bring up a concept from a pop science book. What an awe inspiring mind.
- hysan 6y agoI used to think the same thing, but as I grew older, I realized that that concept doesn’t apply to all people. Sometimes what comes off as hyper intelligent is really just smart people putting the time in to prepare for specific occasions. It is unlikely that Bezos met with the author without having done a lot of preparation and research into factors that he felt were important. Narrative being one of them; he is a very public figure after all. Of course I could be wrong, but I like to think of it this way - Do not reduce to genius what is often the result of hard work and preparation.
- chrisco255 6y agoThe belief that all hyper-successful people are hyper-intelligent is itself a narrative fallacy.
- bergstromm466 6y ago> hyper-successful people Childhood trauma has been a better measurement for understanding people who claim or chase ‘huge success‘ in my experience - and this includes myself. From what I see, the image of ‘success’ that is expected or hoped for by many today has little to do with joy and pleasure, and more to do dominating others. From what I’ve experienced I’ve seen that if one has unresolved childhood trauma‘s and PTSD, one is more likely to act out of revenge, or to enjoy violence (Marshall Rosenberg writes about this: he believes that when our needs are unmet - we can sometimes start to ‘enjoy‘ violence more). I’ve now been facing my childhood trauma and addressing it, as well as growing a more compassionate self, and reflecting on this is interesting, because a part of me of course still yearns for an extravagant hero journey, yet I’m not finding myself wishing or hoping for this big idea of success, I think because my relationships have become a lot better and a lot easier, and my experience of life lighter and more playful. Also I have individuen and I am more authentic now. Less perfectionistic and more forgiving. It’s a relief. I think I no longer aim for the same type of success as before.
- stared 6y agoI like "Be suspicious of simple stories" TED Talk by Tyler Cowen (https://www.ted.com/talks/tyler_cowen_be_suspicious_of_simple_stories https://www.ted.com/talks/tyler_cowen_be_suspicious_of_simpl...): > Then asked to describe their lives, what is interesting is how few people said "mess". It's probably the best answer, I don't mean that in a bad way. "Mess" can be liberating, "mess" can be empowering, "mess" can be a way of drawing upon multiple strengths. But what people wanted to say was, "My life is a journey." 51% wanted to turn his or her life into a story. 11% said, "My life is a battle." Again, that is a kind of story. 8% said, "My life is a novel." 5% said, "My life is a play." In a similar vein, I recommend "The danger of a single story" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_dange...). For example, if we hear that "Sam is poor" we create a whole image based on one trait (which does even need to be a defining trait!) and lose the complexity of a human being and their life. (Side note: if we only know that "Max supports Trump", and the whole person becomes only a Trump supporter; it is very different from knowing Max in detail, when it is only one of his/her traits.) Yes, for most people stories are the easiest way to learn something. However, but their own nature they are intentionally oversimplified. So they are also the easiest way to fool others, intentionally or not.
- logicprog 6y agoWhat you say here is certainly true. Many stories are oversimplified, and stories are a good way to fool ourselves. However, I'd like to push back gently on the idea that we should never use narratives. It is true that _traditional story structures_ don't necessarily reflect the real structure of historical experience/occurence, but they _can_ fit, too. It really depends on the occurence. And more importantly, stories can be infinitely granular and complex (just read _War and Peace_ or _In Search of Lost Time_, for example), complex and granular enough to capture actual historical experience without distortion. As for people not describing their lives as a mess, that's because a mess has no structure - whereas a journey or a battle has a structure; life does not necessarily have structure, sure, but those people who choose to describe their lives in structured ways do so because they are _giving_ it structure. If someone's life is structured (by them) as a pursuit of some goal or state, where everything that happens either helps that, hinders that, or acts as a side-quest, then they may well describe it as a journey. A fractally complex journey, but a journey nonetheless.
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- friendlybus 6y agoTaleb repeatedly strikes me as over rated. The difference between narrative and time is as old as the gods and can easily be argued both ways. People who adhere to time and conplexity don't get a free pass on the fundamentals. The project will spring leaks if you get the story wrong. Information will slip out, people will get the wrong idea and go in opposite directions. You can blame those errors on randomness, but really you just let the basic elements fail by skipping good reasoning. Taleb's point about unconnected thoughts making an oversimplified story really misses the complexity in story and the massive filtering efforts that go into making good stories. He's pandering at best with these ideas.
- taejavu 6y agoThe narrative fallacy is a great counterpoint to the popular invocation of Occam’s Razor. The next time I hear someone choose to believe something because it’s the simpler story, I’ll be bringing this up.
- teawrecks 6y agoIn other words, Occam's Razor dictates that correlation doesn't imply causation?
- logicprog 6y agoI always thought the proper application of Occam's Razor wasn't "the simpler the proposed explanation is, the truer it is likely to be," since this has shown to be false in literally every scientific and philosophical investigation that we've ever done that has arrived at anything close to verifiable truth, but was more "the fewer assumptions an explanation has, or the fewer things in our already functional understanding of the world an explanation requires us to throw out, the truer it is likely to be." This accounts for our science and philosophy being correct but also indicates that, for instance, if an explanation posits an entirely new non-physical dimension or an entirely new system of physics, without good evidence for it over the others (and this is important: the two explanations we are comparing with Occam's Razor need to be explaining the same data - have the same explanatory power - otherwise there should be an obvious way to falsify/confirm one or the other) then its less likely to be true. Or, in short: "this explanation requires me to throw out everything else I think I know, whereas this other explanation explains the same data but requires me to discard less, so it is probably a better explanation."
- trash_cat 6y agoIt's not a fallacy per sé, because people have limited capacity to process information. This is nessecary to make sense of the world, and narratives as a whole. The fallacy would be to over simplify where there is no need for it. It is more of a question to what extent one must be detailed enough to convey a narrative meaningfully with its nuances.
- seanwilson 6y agoIs there a fallacy name for the concept of "yes, that's a plausible story but it's just a story and you have no evidence" ? For example, it's insanely easy to come up with lots of nice sounding stories about how something might have evolved in humans but you still need evidence to know which stories are true.
- logicprog 6y agoMaybe https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/anecdotal?
- pmichaud 6y agoThat is called a "just so story": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story
- seanwilson 6y agoThanks! Also https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ad_hoc https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ad_hoc Aside: I wish fallacies had more intuitive names that tied in to common knowledge. It would help their use spread if they were easier to explain, to remember and didn't have names that could be seen as pretentious e.g. the Latin ones. "Straw man" is particularly bad for example - it sounds ridiculous and pretentious explaining where the name comes from to someone who doesn't know what logical fallacies are. "Misrepresentation" or something like that might be better. I'd love it if we got to the stage where journalists were pointing out logical fallacies by name in interviews for example.
- Fricken 6y ago"Narrative is the worst model for understanding the world, except for all the others." Is the response I would have had for Jeff in response to his question, but I wouldn't have thought of it until after the interview.
- john4532452 6y agoThe narrative fallacy is that human form simpler narratives because the reality is very complicated to comprehend. May be it is true, but how to prove. It is possible to prove narrative is simple, but to measure the incomprehensible reality.