
Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/most-of-the-mind-cant-tell-fact-from-fiction
======
keiferski
This article is ultimately a bit philosophically underwhelming because it
doesn't delve deeper into the notions of "fact" and "fiction" and how
(according to many philosophers, at least) they are ultimately messy
linguistic concepts. There are many things considered facts which are really
little more than fictions which have been accepted society-wide. Indeed the
existence of a coherent continuing society seems almost dependent on a shared
semi-fictional narrative. Jorge Luis Borges' _Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius_ is a
fantastic short story on this idea. [1]

 _Very young children “can rationally deal with the make-believe aspects of
stories,” distinguishing the actual, the possible, and the fantastical with
sophistication, as Denis Dutton has written in The Art Instinct. “Not only
does the artistic structure of stories speak to Darwinian sources: so does the
intense pleasure taken in their universal themes of love, death, adventure,
family conflict, justice, and overcoming adversity.”_

An alternative view would be that children haven't been indoctrinated, for
lack of a better word, into the socio-linguistic world of adults, which has
privileged some fictions and relegated others.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlön,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlön,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius),
[http://art.yale.edu/file_columns/0000/0066/borges.pdf](http://art.yale.edu/file_columns/0000/0066/borges.pdf)

~~~
em-bee
indeed, many things that we take as facts are really just theories that have
been generally accepted. even for things like gravity, fact is only that
masses somehow attract each other. how that actually works is a theory, and
it's accepted until we find a better one.

~~~
quibono
This is something I often think about. What is the difference between me,
accepting some scientific theories as fact, even though I have no physical
means of testing all of them myself, and someone deeply religious who chooses
to believe in some higher spiritual ideas? There are things I can be
reasonably sure of, maybe because I see what the theory behind it says and
predicts, and it agrees with what actually happens in real life, yet there are
also things that I just have to take for granted (and I guess hope that the
other knowledgeable people alive will make sure it's actually correct).

~~~
Retric
The difference is you get to choose what to verify.

Science says you can use electricity to turn water into oxygen and hydrogen
and then burn them to get water again. It further says what the flame will
look like and how much heat it will produce etc etc. Now, if any of that seems
unlikely it’s fairly cheap to verify, if something else bothers you then
verify that.

Sure, verification of every idea is impossible, but pick a few at random and
that should logically give you more confidence in the others.

On the other hand with matters of faith you can’t verify any of it. Which
should then give you some pause.

~~~
em-bee
religion largely claims to make your life better by teaching you how to
interact with each other. it uses believe and fear of an unprovable entity to
do that, sure.

but you can verify if it does make your and everyone elses life better or not.

those that claim to be messengers of god should be recognized by their fruits,
that is, by the effect they have on society.

------
TaupeRanger
I don't really see any insights here. This entire thing is just saying "our
brains make us believe fiction". We already know that. The mysteries, which
are the parts that are actually interesting, surround the underlying nature
and character of emotions. So fiction tricks our brain like an illusion. Of
course it does, but so what? That doesn't explain why we are so obsessed with
it. The Shepherd Tone is an auditory illusion, but we don't sit and listen to
albums of Shepherd Tones for hours on end. What compells us about fiction? It
is the emotions themselves that are mysterious and interesting, not the fact
that fiction elicits them.

~~~
mistermann
> This entire thing is just saying "our brains make us believe fiction". We
> already know that.

I'm not so sure about that. Go into any political thread here on HN and
observe the amount of on polar opposites of an issue, while most everyone
_sincerely_ believes that they are arguing on "the facts".

Just one example:

U.S. to leave global postal union next month barring last-minute action

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965145)

And this is conversations among smarter than average people, it's no wonder
discourse is breaking down in the political realm resulting in massive
polarization in the public.

I think there's something about the massive increase in information people are
consuming due to 24 hour cable news and the internet that's at the root of the
problem, is it perhaps overwhelming people's ability to think straight? Maybe
we never even evolved to handle this much complexity.

I think it's something like.....the world is infinitely complex (infinite
dimensions), so the mind _must_ compress and simplify it to make sense of it.
In doing so, it compresses it into a smaller set of dimensions, but with the
increase in independent thinking due to members of societies having less in
common (we don't go to the same church, we don't even watch the same TV shows,
we don't watch the same evening news, etc), people are compressing things into
different dimensions - two people consuming the same information will view it,
store it, recall it, and discuss it completely differently from each other,
while at the same time be under a completely transparent illusion that they
each see "the truth". This has always been the case of course, but 30 years
ago life was much simpler - lots of people barely followed the news back then,
you had to make a serious effort, but nowadays it takes effort just to avoid
it.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
Oh wow, I was skeptical people would frame politics around debates of fact,
but that word is really thrown around in that discussion.

------
RaceWon
The original classic book "Psycho-Cybernetics" -Dr. Maxwell Maltz is based on
the theory that our brains can't tell the difference between reality and a
vivid imagining of an event. So true.

I urge you to buy and read the original--not the Dan Kennedy version.

~~~
1337biz
I like the idea. But I always wondered to what extend this holds up.
Rigorously followed wouldn't that imply the old argument that playing brutal
games makes people more brutal in real life?

~~~
spinach
Watching movies makes people want to be like what they see, why isn't it true
for video games? Because it is. Obviously not everyone is going to become
violent just because they play realistic violent games but it certainly
inspires a subset of people to do so. It puts the idea in their head and they
begin to imagine doing it. From thoughts, to words, to action.

~~~
reificator
> _Watching movies makes people want to be like what they see, why isn 't it
> true for video games? Because it is._

Shouldn't we be banning slasher flicks then?

When I was watching A Nightmare on Elm Street as a kid, I never once thought
"I wish I could murder people in their dreams with a glove full of knives."

Study after study refutes your unsubstantiated claim, so the burden of proof
is on you here.

------
gumby
We have a powerful heuristic which is “believe what people tell you”. If
someone says “quick, run! There's a lion coming!” Or “Don’t eat these berries:
you’ll get sick” it’s best to believe them by default. Likewise, “Hey, I think
you just dropped your wallet”.

Because this heuristic is so powerful it’s of course easy to subvert. But if
we did a deep epistemological analysis of every symbolic input we’d probably
be eaten before we had time to starve to death.

------
bjornsing
> At the same time, very young children “can rationally deal with the make-
> believe aspects of stories,” distinguishing the actual, the possible, and
> the fantastical with sophistication, as Denis Dutton has written in The Art
> Instinct.

One of my favorite quotes comes to mind:

“Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.” —
Euripides

------
siempreb
> The answer is that most of our mind does not even realize that fiction is
> fiction, so we react to it almost as though it were real.

Yes, we are dreamers and believers. And that is also the reason why we are so
easy to manipulate. I consider it a weakness that leads to stupidity. Most of
our opinions are 'fiction', we think we're 'right' but the truth is that most
often we're just dreaming. It's our minds favorite activity because it doesn't
require any effort. It just happens, like most things in life.

~~~
yepguy
I think humans who didn't find fiction compelling would be incredibly
uninspired. How could it be compelling unless the brain mostly reacted to it
like it were real?

Would science exist without alchemy? Or cell phones without Star Trek?
Civilization without religion?

------
chiefalchemist
> "Our brains can’t help but believe."

It would seem we'd be wired to believe that which is believable. We have
context, we compare, and we decide. Simple enough.

The questions then become:

1) Why do we believe (read: value) that which is unbelievable (e.g., Wizard of
Oz)?

2) Why don't we believe what which is believable even when presented with
crystal clear facts? Why do we insist on clinging to what amounts to fiction?

------
otakucode
The brain is exceptionally excellent at distinguishing between and dealing
differently between fiction and reality. Consider an actor. Either on a stage,
or on the set of a film. They walk into frame, and another person, a real
human being, is present. The actor raises a real gun, sneers with an acted
hatred which must be presented externally as realistically as possible (and
emotions are almost entirely composed of their external expression and
biofeedback from same), and points it at the other person. That other person
wilts in acted fear, irises expanding, eyes going wide, mouth dropping open,
again all the outward expressions matching actual mortal fear. Both actors
have the intellectual knowledge, SOLELY intellectual, that the gun is loaded
with a blank. The approaching actor pulls the trigger. The gun explodes with
its loud retort, the 'shot' actor crumples to the ground, wails in 'pain',
whines, and 'dies'. The brain of the shooter is receiving every sensory input
that tells them what is happening is real. Great effort is expended in trying
to 'sell' the scene, so there is gunsmoke in the room that burns the nostrils,
there is 'blood' leaking from the victim, etc. The shooter intellectually
knows it's not real. But that is the sole indicator to his brain - an
intellectual knowledge that he is an actor participating in a scene and what
is being experienced is not real.

In the case where this scene was real, the shooters brain would be scarred.
Their neurology would be branded by PTSD, their psychology would be turn apart
with regret, guilt, etc. And the only distinction between the two situations
is knowing it's not real. Clearly, knowing something is not real isn't just a
slight thing. It is tremendously strong (maybe impenetrable) armor against the
consequences that assail the brain of a person having a real experience.

The whole brain doesn't need to "tell fact from fiction". Only the one tiny
piece that holds the "reality" flag seems to be the only thing needed.

There is now a technology which can mess with this flag, and it freaks me out
a bit. It's something which feasibly could be done already in a consumer
space, but it's not being used, and probably shouldn't ever be except under
strict controls. It is usually referred to as "virtual embodiment" and
involves using VR in a particular way that tricks the brain into dissociating
from your physical body and identifying very profoundly and deeply with a
virtual body. It could be done by anyone with a VR headset and separate webcam
with the right software. Research is currently being done using the technique
for therapeutic uses, and it seems to have some efficacy. Those experimenting
with it, though, have realized its power. It could potentially do real,
profound, and potentially long-lasting damage to the internal mental 'model'
people have of their selves. It could get weird. Like imagine a 15 minute
experience that could afflict you with 'phantom limb syndrome' making you feel
like you have a painfully tightened fist on a third arm growing out of the
center of your chest. They've obviously not experimented with doing anything
like that, it would be tremendously unethical to do so, but the therapeutic
uses they have had success with being turned, even accidentally, to 'the dark
side', could be pretty harmful it seems.

A year or so back I read an article about virtual embodiment and the
researchers involved calling for a 'Code of VR Ethics'. They were considering
a much more general case which I disagreed with (and still do) and didn't seem
to be considering the situation like I described earlier of the actor. The
actor has more "immersion" than any VR scenario will ever be capable of
having. The actor knows the person they're pointing the gun at is a real human
being - a human being they have a personal relationship with - and the scene
is 'rendered' is infinite fidelity across all the senses including smell,
hearing, touch, proprioception, absolutely everything is dead on exactly what
an actual murderer would experience with only the one intellectual fact cluing
the brain in to the unreality. I reached out to Dr. Metzinger, the leader in
the field of research on virtual embodiment (I didn't realize who he was at
the time, I just dug up his email after the article and was surprised he took
the time out to carry on a discussion with me for awhile), and asked for his
thoughts, but he hadn't considered the situation before. At a first blush he
supposed that because it would be easier for the actor to turn their head and
see all the cameras, crew, etc, that might factor into it as it would be
easier than 'escaping' a VR situation, but that might be balanced with the
lack of fidelity in VR, the weight of the headset, etc.

It's really very fascinating that this intellectual knowledge about the fact
of the reality of a situation is so powerful. Intellectual knowledge is
usually not very effective at all in influencing how the brain responds to
things. Consider the situation where you are a person who was not raised in a
nudist/naturist body-positive environment (as statistics would suggest you
probably are), and one day you come to the rational conclusion that it is both
nonsensical and harmful to you for it to bother you if other people see you
naked. You can convince yourself of this totally and fully with perfect
rational consistency (because it is perfectly rational). Then imagine you get
'pantsed.' Your intellectual knowledge would not protect you from the
automatic emotional response and trauma. To change that would require repeated
exposure around others with conscious effort expended to alter your emotional
response, something which could take years to have a real effect on the
trained response that is your emotional system. Your intellectual knowledge
can guide that, but it's nowhere near the nearly impenetrable armor of knowing
something is not real. That distinction is, to me, very strange.

------
Smithalicious
Isn't this just a tautology? Fiction is by definition something which mimics
reality, that is to say, something that looks like reality to humans (= the
human brain).

------
breadandcrumbel
I find these kinds of articles fascinating

It reminds me when I read that ee can only dream of faces we've seen in the
past, whether we actively remember them or not. The brain cannot invent these.

~~~
gus_massa
> _It reminds me when I read that ee can only dream of faces we 've seen in
> the past, whether we actively remember them or not. The brain cannot invent
> these._

Do you have a source for this, it looks very suspicious

1) The memory is highly compressed. We remember only some interesting details
and then fill the gaps. It's easy to add false information in the gaps, for
example the experiment with the inexistent stop sign
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misinformation_effect)

2) Even if it where true: How did they test it?!

------
imvetri
Fact is a proven fiction. Fiction is yet to be proved to be fact.

Both fact and fiction are the same.

Title of the article doesn't make much sense

