Why Fiction Beats Truth
nytimes.com
Why Fiction Beats Truth
1–10 of 89 posts
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#2Truth doesn't have to make sense AND it is often hidden from view.
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#3Tldr:
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.
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#4Tldr: 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.
Truth seldom makes for a good product. Fiction can be optimally thrilling, engaging, easy to understand, intuitive, and on-message. The truth is whatever it is. With great skill one can make a messy truth easier to understand and more plausible... but what for truth takes great effort to construct is nearly automatic for fiction.
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#5I hadn’t thought of it this way; but it does seem like a pragmatic framework for understanding truth at societal scale. Ultimately, the truth is messy and fiction is often easier to understand.
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#6Fourth: 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 materialize at scale. For instance, taking whatever bullshit news sources publish at face value works as long as it only matters in bar conversations; unfortunately, these things also shape public pressure on governance - in particular in democracies, where people end up voting on it.
WRT. article's point 2, politics example: I really wish people would learn better. Believing a leader - any leader - uncritically is generally unsafe for your own survival.
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#7Tldr: 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 case. It's rare that there's a story (or scientific research) that doesn't have some warts and things that don't fit, and to me those aspects are part of what give it a ring of authenticity... although they are also falsifiable.
Many current memes (and science press releases) are terribly simplistic and made for those who truly don't care about truth, but are looking for that hit of satisfaction of discovering they were always right.
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#8So 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.
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#92 must have Churchill quotes:
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on (unsourced, but why not attribute it to Churchill anyhow? he deserves it)
Re: Why Fiction Beats Truth
#10So 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.