
When scale confounds our perceptions, stories can clarify them - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/why-you-didnt-see-it-coming
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tikhonj
You know what's wonderful about allegories? You can make them say anything you
want. Stories can as easily mislead as clarify; their effectiveness rests on
_verisimilitude_ —they have to _seem_ plausible, not _be_. And that, it turns
out, can be divorced perfectly happily from the actual truth.

One of the first examples in the article makes this point, actually, but maybe
not on purpose.

> _The late physicist Albert Bartlett was concerned that people didn’t fully
> comprehend the consequences of exponential population growth and the
> inevitability (and speed) of resource depletion. “The greatest shortcoming
> of the human race,” he said, “is our inability to understand the exponential
> function”—that is, change that builds on previous changes._

You know who else noticed that and wove a compelling story about it?
Malthus[1].

The point is that stories and analogies on their are not sufficient—but people
treat them as if they are. After all, what convinces is, well, how
_convincing_ the story is, and that's a quality unto itself. It's orthogonal
or, at least, loosely correlated with what we _should_ care about.

But they're oh-so-satisfying! A neat explanation, just counter-intuitive
enough to seem like a revelation but reasonable enough to accept, perhaps a
bit glib, makes you feel like you really understood something. There's a whole
genre of books like this now—think _Freakanomics_ and Malcolm Gladwell. Even
if the arguments in a book like that are reasonable (not always the case!),
the sheer quality of storytelling dominates and makes them more convincing
than they have any right to be. Which in turn makes people more confident in
their own understanding than _they_ should be.

Then this is compounded by the second-order effect people look for: social
proof. Perhaps better known as "popularity". Not a great system either!

It's funny that the author mentions social media as a way to spread stories
because that's where I see _a lot_ of extremely pat stories get shared
around—regardless of their merits. Even ignoring my own judgement, enough of
them are self-contradictory that they're obviously unreliable. And yet they
all get viral and spread around quickly and effectively.

This is not to say that stories are useless, by any means. They're great for
building up intuition which is crucial for understanding. But you can't rely
solely on stories.

In essence, I guess, I agree with the article that stories are _powerful_.
They really are. But I disagree, vehemently, about what that power entails. In
the end, stories are about _convincing_ , not _understanding_. And using
social media to spread stories? Again: powerful. And again more about
manipulation than edification. Fundamentally, your stories are no different
from propaganda hammering away at a Big Lie. Your lie just happens to be true.
(Or so you believe, presumably.)

I'm a bit conflicted with the whole mode of thought presented in this article
which also seems to pervade modern politics. (Or perhaps all politics?) It's
the idea that the obstacle to overcome is not finding the right conclusions
and properly motivating them, but rather—given conclusions that are assumed
right—the problem is to convince everybody else. And I agree with a lot of the
specific details this mode of thought espouses, but solely as effective
tactics for convincing people. It feels incredibly manipulative even if I
agree with the ideas people are pushing. (As it happens, I see this mostly
with progressive issues. People are very open about relying on social
manipulation to push their views since their views are so obviously correct.
But that's just the circles I move in; I'm sure it's just as true for people
trying to push religion.)

The problem, of course, is that these tactics work regardless of the
underlying issue. But people who use them don't see it this way: they see
success as justification of their own narratives. Both parts of that, I think,
are unhealthy. Pushing our views at any cost means that they are left
unchecked, and we can't be right about everything! And then interpreting
_success_ —a mix of convincingness and popularity—as a strong signal
exacerbates these problems.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus)

~~~
_Adam
I think you've made a good point here. The article talks about emergent
phenomenon, and how difficult it is to describe high level dynamics when one
is simply looking at the components.

A "story" is the way to convey the dynamics of a complex system while
conveniently discarding the constituents of that system. If we don't keep the
components, how can we prove the story is true? One problem is no one really
cares or thinks they know enough to challenge the story. They accept it at
face value.

I feel this is a deeper limitation of human thinking. It's very difficult to
see something at different levels simultaneously. We can understand behaviour
on a high level (e.g. income inequality), and we can understand behaviour on a
lower level (e.g. not having enough money to eat), but we can't intuitively
understand how low level behaviours effect and affect high level behaviours.

It's not like we're not trying to understand, it's more that we don't even
have a basis for understanding. We know how elections work, but it's so easy
to intuitively think "my one vote doesn't really count". We're observing high
level dynamics while simultaneously contributing to them.

It's weird. Like thinking about one's own consciousness.

