What concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit? Kayfabe (2011)

Upvoted due to the interesting story, but the point is conceptually unclear (at least to me, but I'm quite slow) how would this improve my cognitive toolkit?

I understand the (one) example presented apart from wrestling, but it is not quite obvious that the actual framework of Kayfabe immediately maps to it. It feels like there are easier constructions that would explain this exactly as well, if not better (perhaps most notably, the Prisoner's dilemma and the fact that coordination games are hard[0]).

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[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.06580

As an example, when you hear a politician say something outrages, insane, or crazy. Instead of thinking "oh my, what a fool this person is", consider that they may be performing, in a way agreed upon by his or her follow politicians. They know it isn't true, but that doesn't matter, because the audience doesn't care.

I suppose it's a worthwhile concept. You can certainly look at professional politics, corporate messaging and the financial crises, basically all elite-preservation systems, through a kayfabe lens.

On the other hand, I think everyone would be better off reading Propaganda, by Bernays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)

It's short.

Put simply, one might think of kayfabe as a consensus on the agreement of illusion; a suspension of reality.

Why would anyone do this?

For one, suspended reality allows us to be creative and simulate outcomes that otherwise would not occur in real life.

But also, it can occur under information asymmetry. If something seems fake to me, but I am not sure if _you_ believe it is fake or not (and vice versa), we both might pretend something is real for the sake of not offending one another.

This segues into another of Weinstein's terms (originally from Timur Kuran) called "preference falsification": if no one has to falsify their beliefs, we might just _state_ things we don't actually believe in, since we don't know what other people actually believe, and we don't want to run the risk of being ostracized.

Overall, these two concepts explain how otherwise tenuous theories can be believed (or at least stated to be believed) by large groups of people.

Kayfabe is such an important concept in this historical moment! To me, the “audience” is the most interesting component, and the “performers” are almost irrelevant, except to the extent that they must provide some fantasy that (ever so nominally) purports to be reality (or lies purporting to be truth). The psychological process by which the audience fully commits to and “believes” the fantasy, while at the same time being fully aware on some level that the fantasy is obviously untrue is fascinating, and deserves much more attention and research. Obviously, this is closely related to the idea of doublethink, but kayfabe gives more agency to the audience. Rather than being forced to engage in doublethink by big brother and an authoritarian government, kayfabe “believers” are all together with each other the agents of their own delusion. I think the biggest contributor to whether someone “buys in” to a kayfabe fantasy is their capacity for conformity; seeing the rest of the crowd treat the obviously untrue fantasy as if it were reality gives the individual permission, or “cover”, to participate in the fantasy themselves.

I’m guessing anyone reading this knows what non-wrestling kayfabe scene I’m talking about—except maybe those who are already participating in it themselves—and even for those folks, well, it all depends on what “knows” means, doesn’t it?