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Why Fiction Beats Truth

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#51

Post by ggggtez »

mncharity wrote: post #33

Someone described[1] preferring the 'capitalist enemy' FT, to the NYT, because "the Financial Times is just a better paper. It covers the world as it is - a global battle not of ideas or values, but of economic and political interests." (And "the Times [is] bloated with opinion pieces and op-eds".) So here we have a op ed, exploring why people believe fictions, which somehow fails to emphasize that it's economically…

> fails to emphasize it's economically profitable

I don't know how you could read it and walk away with that impression. It's very clear that they are saying social cohesion allows the organization of millions of people into productive societies as we know them. There are things to disagree with, but that sticking point doesn't make sense.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#53

Post by pojzon »

wellpast wrote: post #26

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…

Like you mention, reality is rather painted in shades of gray.

Nothing beside "axioms" is really true.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#54

Post by TeMPOraL »

mistermann wrote: post #45
TeMPOraL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but it's important to understand this strictly, and not come to the conclusion that all views are equal and equally true. To more mathematically minded people I'd explain it like this: two political stances can be correct at the same time, because political stances are projections of high-dimensional conceptual structures to lower-dimensional space. Both a circle and a rectangle are correct 2D projections of…

> political stances are projections of high-dimensional conceptual structures to lower-dimensional space Did you come up with this way of looking at it, or is this from some sort of a dedicated "field of study"? This seems to me an extremely good description of what's going on in society lately, from fake news to disagreement on a wide variety of issues, and perfectly explains why opposing sides both think they are r…

I think the field is called "epistemology", but I only know of the name; I didn't study it formally. I came up with this projection example myself, while looking for something more vivid than "focusing on different aspects", and this kind of clicked almost perfectly. In retrospect, it's not really original - I recall seeing suggestions like this in few places, notably the cover of the "Gödel, Escher, Bach", and some random Facebook meme. Also playing with shadows.

(Note, do not confuse this example with the infamous "9 / 6" meme, with two people standing over a number painted on the ground and claiming they're right. One of them is wrong, because there's no information loss giving degrees of freedom here; the digit was drawn with a particular orientation in mind, and one party is ignoring it.)

The intended implication of my example is that if political (or other) opinions are necessarily projections of the full issue, you probably need to hold more than one at the same time. Consider technical drawings, e.g. CAD drawings of parts. In order to completely describe a physical part, you almost always have to have multiple projections on a single picture. I believe the same applies to understanding the real world - which is why I like to listen to "the other side", and generally hate the concept of taking a side.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#55

Post by 12thwonder »

Isn’t this article a fiction itself? in a sense that it is not proven to be true or impossible to prove?

It’s interesting because it looks like people are buying this story thus proving his point, fiction (this article) beats truth.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#56

Post by ernst_klim »

trabant00 wrote: post #13

Another: two polar opposite political stances can be true at the same time. Immigraton can be and is both good and bad. So are social help programs. Guns. Government intervention. Surveilance. Etc. Your truth is not the only truth. There are an infinite true perspectives on a issue. Another perspective is not false just because it opposes yours and yours is true.

>Immigraton can be and is both good and bad.

Of course, and some thing are good for ones (immigration does not hurt middle class but bestowing a cheap labor upon them) and bad for others (immigration is damping the prices of labor of the working class).

But there are some universal falsehoods tho, like when the good intentions are leading to results quite different from the expected.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#57

Post by disappearance »

It seems to me profession/ occupation might play a role here too.

Doctors & software developers I know favour truth based discussions.

Friends/ associates in sales are far more likely to enthusiastically regurgitate something emotive (untrue/ misrepresented) from a tabloid paper (as prime conversation).

So, shower thought: is the value we place on truth in social situations affected by the frequency truth's value is demonstrated to us in our daily professional lives?

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#58

Post by onlydeadheroes »

schmidtleonard wrote: post #23
tlb wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Your approach increases the problem's scale. I've found the exact opposite, that by carefully confiding in friends about my non-conformity often brings out their relieved agreement and binds us together much strongly. In these times it is important to start making a mental list of who behaves like a human and who behaves like cattle.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#59

Post by pjc50 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #18
trabant00 wrote: post #13

Another: two polar opposite political stances can be true at the same time. Immigraton can be and is both good and bad. So are social help programs. Guns. Government intervention. Surveilance. Etc. Your truth is not the only truth. There are an infinite true perspectives on a issue. Another perspective is not false just because it opposes yours and yours is true.

I agree, but it's important to understand this strictly, and not come to the conclusion that all views are equal and equally true. To more mathematically minded people I'd explain it like this: two political stances can be correct at the same time, because political stances are projections of high-dimensional conceptual structures to lower-dimensional space. Both a circle and a rectangle are correct 2D projections of…

> two political stances can be correct at the same time

I think that arguing that a political stance is "correct" or "wrong" isn't the best frame of reasoning here, because it implies that there might be some sort of formal reasoning process you could use to reach a common conclusion. Whereas humans do now work like that and politics does not work like that.

There's no absolute morality, and there's no universal set of moral axioms you can get everyone to agree on. What actually happens is arguing from specific->general in one direction and general->specific in the other, depending how close emotionally people are to the actual situation or how much they're using it to express their identity.

Examples of "specific->general" are any situation where a person gets a law named after them. Examples of "general->specific" is any time people start talking about the constitution.

Each of those is a lossy transformation. Specific->general loses information about the particular situation. General->specific is what we use most of the time - the basis of legal systems - and has the less obvious failure mode that it can produce bad results that have no obvious immediate blame. But neither is more "correct" in a formal sense than the other.

Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth

#60

Post by emmelaich »

inflatableDodo wrote: post #34
TeMPOraL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but it's important to understand this strictly, and not come to the conclusion that all views are equal and equally true. To more mathematically minded people I'd explain it like this: two political stances can be correct at the same time, because political stances are projections of high-dimensional conceptual structures to lower-dimensional space. Both a circle and a rectangle are correct 2D projections of…

>To more mathematically minded people I'd explain it like this: two political stances can be correct at the same time, because political stances are projections of high-dimensional conceptual structures to lower-dimensional space. Both a circle and a rectangle are correct 2D projections of a 3D cylinder. But if your 2D projection of a cylinder looks like a hexagon, you're wrong. This is brilliant. I tend to fall back…

Not to pick on you; I like this comment.

But it's about the most HN comment I've ever read!

Beautiful.

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