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Why Fiction Beats Truth

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#21

Post by TeMPOraL »

Buttons840 wrote: post #19
TeMPOraL wrote: post #6

Fourth: for almost anything in life, knowing the truth doesn't matter in practice - instead, people believe things that make for good social objects, i.e. catalysts of discussions with other people. In cases were being wrong leads to direct and near-immediate consequences, people tend to learn the truth quickly. The problem with that is that today, a lot more things have delayed effects, or effects that only material…

Well said. So, someone spouts a well researched conspiracy and others engage in a conversation and the person gets to recite their well prepared talking points. That feels good to the person, that's positive reinforcement. That's a story they can take to their online echo chamber for even more positive feedback. They hold on to the conspiracy as something to talk about, and as something they can feel superior about.…

The scenario I had in mind was not debate, just information exchange. Imagine a person meeting friends in a bar, or at a dinner party. They're likely to exchange stories they read about in the news. "So this politician said $outrageous-thing!" (taken outside of context, but who cares), says the person. "Oh yeah, all X are bad, have you heard of $event-that-never-actually-happened?", replies the person B. The conversation goes on. Ultimately, little to no truth was exchanged, but people bonded together. Fiction served its social function.

IME, this is how most not-directly-impactful knowledge is used by people. I've been in countless such situations, and it's painful for people with stronger affinity to truth. Unfortunately, under the guise of "good manners", society teaches you to shut up.

We shouldn't avoid debate. We just need to ensure that people debating are there to discover the truth, and not just pick up morsels to share at dinner parties.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#22

Post by tunesmith »

It is possible to engineer communication to alter the power levels between fiction and truth. Just look at Twitter, which did this in the wrong direction - there is reduced accountability and greater power in quipping something misleading or false, compared to doing so offline.

But if instead there was an engineered solution to speed up the feedback loop between theory and reality, or fiction and truth, then there would be more of a cost towards saying outlandish things.

"Truth wins in the long run" and "in the long run, we're all dead"... so you have to figure out how to make it more of a medium- or short-run. There's also that other quote, I forget, about "my irrationality exceeds your bankroll", where people can lose their shirt betting on truth if the market stays irrational long enough. That's when you need clearer truth singles sooner, so truth can win more reliably.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#23

Post by schmidtleonard »

tlb wrote: post #10
nullc wrote: post #8

So what should one do when one finds themselves being turned into roadkill under the wheels of someone else's socially useful fiction? I feel like the author of the piece might even advocate going along with-- or at least not wasting your energies fighting-- many cases of socially useful fiction. But that hardly works when you happen to be the person or of the creed one targets.

First, realize that simply pointing out to people how they are mistaken won't change much. Myths, for some reason, often have loopholes. Achilles is invincible, except for his heel. Samaritans are bad, except for some good ones. So sometimes you can position yourself as matching the loophole and get a pass. Sometimes this is humiliating, though, or funnels groups of people into acting out narrow stereotypes.

> First, realize that simply pointing out to people how they are mistaken won't change much.

That lesson took me embarrassingly long to learn, but it's a good one.

I haven't given much thought to pattern-matching a loophole as a strategy, but your observation is key: people are willing to make exceptions, you just have to figure out how to get them to make an exception for you.

How to do that? Virtue signal. Watch other people for ideas. You won't have to watch long, people love to virtue signal and do it all the time. Validate their VS to score some quick points, swallow the small amount of bile that it brings to the back of your throat, and then pick something politically adjacent but not so directly similar as to compete/threaten. Those constraints are pretty loose, they should leave you with a wide field of possibilities to choose from. Pick the least unpalatable and you're set.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#25

Post by anigbrowl »

nullc wrote: post #8

So what should one do when one finds themselves being turned into roadkill under the wheels of someone else's socially useful fiction? I feel like the author of the piece might even advocate going along with-- or at least not wasting your energies fighting-- many cases of socially useful fiction. But that hardly works when you happen to be the person or of the creed one targets.

Find people to team up with. Build a squad. Practice self-defense, in whatever medium you find practical. Recruit.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#26

Post by wellpast »

This truth v. fiction binary is common thinking but far too simplistic.

The idea that there is just a set of facts on one side of the fence and on the other is all the lies -- and the dumb hoi polloi just tends to always go for the "bad side"... This is just simplistic, unimaginative, unrealistic thinking.

Even a cluster of the most brutally "true" of facts can be so readily misconstrued and misapplied and result and motivate terrible consequences. Anyone who claims to have the truth might be holding on to a few axioms resembling facts -- but they will always be applying their own visceral interpretation of what should be done with those facts.

So when the hoi polloi favors fiction over facts, it's less for any of the reasons mentioned here which incidentally are all rooted in the (frankly, dumb) idea that the hoi polloi is dumb. They're not. They look past the trivial truth of small, static 'facts' and are looking at the bigger picture which requires metaphor and right-hemispheric perception, etc.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#27

Post by hhjjkkll »

kurthr wrote: post #7
yeahitslikethat wrote: post #3

Tldr: 1) you know where lies come from: people you know. Therefore you can trust people who tell the same lies. 2) you can trust people who believe your lies because believing lies is more expensive than going with the truth, because expensive signals are harder to fake. 3) the truth hurts. No one wants to follow someone who hurts them. We prefer to follow people who lie to us so we will feel better.

I'd say there's also an element of enjoying a narrative, whether we call them memes or myths, that is satisfying and fits a story we know. Some time around 2000 I started seeing most news (especially long form) through this lens and I discount/research it a bit more the more it follows a standard narrative. Usually, it's a sign that facts have been cherry picked or out of context to fit, thought that's not always the…

I find memes to be often low effort half/quarter-truths or no truth at all and their humor lies within the irony that they aren't true at all. What is the impact on society when people in masses are consuming and entertaining themselves with this "content"?

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#28

Post by Nasrudith »

There is one context when truth beats fiction - cold hard reality which cannot be fooled. Unfortunately often takes the form of ruin from war, fammine, pestilence, or economics. Imperial Japan is a good example of a "delusional empire" - they insisted upon Banzai Charges and Kamakazi squandering their experience. Or Lysenkoism and the Great Leap Forward.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#30

Post by inflatableDodo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #21
Buttons840 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. So, someone spouts a well researched conspiracy and others engage in a conversation and the person gets to recite their well prepared talking points. That feels good to the person, that's positive reinforcement. That's a story they can take to their online echo chamber for even more positive feedback. They hold on to the conspiracy as something to talk about, and as something they can feel superior about.…

The scenario I had in mind was not debate, just information exchange. Imagine a person meeting friends in a bar, or at a dinner party. They're likely to exchange stories they read about in the news. "So this politician said $outrageous-thing!" (taken outside of context, but who cares), says the person. "Oh yeah, all X are bad, have you heard of $event-that-never-actually-happened?", replies the person B. The conversa…

>Imagine a person meeting friends in a bar, or at a dinner party. They're likely to exchange stories they read about in the news. "So this politician said $outrageous-thing!" (taken outside of context, but who cares), says the person. "Oh yeah, all X are bad, have you heard of $event-that-never-actually-happened?", replies the person B. The conversation goes on. Ultimately, little to no truth was exchanged, but people bonded together. Fiction served its social function.

If I hear something that seems right and I start repeating it, I generally try to go check if I am talking rubbish or not. If I find out that I am, I stop repeating the thing, or I include the truth next to the story, if the story is entertaining enough in and of itself. I tried to explain why I do this, while having a recent discussion with a visitor about the Navy vs Lighthouse story - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_ur... and was told that what I was doing was anti-social and that I wasn't helping anyone by being interested in the truth of things that people have said. I tried to explain that I was doing it to satisfy my own curiosity for the main part, and this completely floored them. They could not understand the motivation of being personally interested in the reality of a story, for them the only value was if they liked the story.

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