To prevent dominators from taking over bands, early human foragers used language and weapons to empower a talky collective to coordinate to watch for and then punish moves toward such takeovers.
This resonated with me, though perhaps for somewhat personal reasons.
When I was younger, I had much more confidence in explanations. I tended to believe that people generally understood their own motives, that institutions knew what they were doing, and that social problems had reasonably clear causes and solutions. Age has steadily eroded that confidence.
Part of that comes from having lived abroad and then returned home. Part comes from spending years managing people. Part comes from raising children and discovering that even siblings raised in the same household can respond very differently to the same incentives, encouragement, and constraints. And part comes from simply getting older and accumulating examples of people surprising themselves.
The older I get, the less convinced I am that we understand each other nearly as well as we think we do. Most people seem to have mixed motives, incomplete self-knowledge, and a remarkable capacity to rationalize their actions after the fact. Yet much of our media, politics, and policymaking proceeds as if motives are obvious and legible.
What I found intriguing about this post is the suggestion that our appetite for simplified stories may not be an accident. Perhaps we are drawn to narratives that make people easier to read because such stories once served an important social function. The challenge, of course, is that modern societies are far more complex than a foraging band.
As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly skeptical of claims that journalists, activists, managers, experts, or policymakers understand people's interests better than those people understand themselves. Not because expertise is worthless, but because human beings seem far more opaque than our stories allow.
Interesting insight. Does seem to be truthy. I was wondering again today as I do from time to time why people are so susceptible to story telling. People will fall for a compelling story even if it contradicts the observable facts. Cohesiveness of the talky collective does seem to explain this as cohesiveness is more important than being factually correct when the most serious threat is from ones fellow societal members when resources are in short supply.
Markets ran this play last week: they priced the Iran framework in hours and oil fell, because "the war is over" is a clean, cohesive story. The Pentagon's estimate of six months just for mine clearing in Hormuz is a less satisfying tale, so it got ignored until later. A story that closes the loop beats a fact that leaves it open, even with money on the line.
The problem is that observation is based on narrative hypotheses to produce a confirmation or negation. Most people are simply not verbally intelligent enough to construct different sets of narrative hypotheses and see which one fits best. Also, some narratives - like the Calvinist/Capitalist success narrative - generate considerable anxiety, so they tend to be moved back in salience. Or not be taught at all.
This would suggest that writers (modern storytellers) would often become politicians, or try to, but that doesn’t seem to be the case much. (Except a few journalists?) That said, politicians do quite often write books, usually non-fiction political books, which is in line with your thesis (though one might expect them also to write fiction).
Similarly for actors and politicians, insofar as actors are modern storytellers. Actors rarely become politicians (Reagan and Schwarzenegger notable exceptions); and politicians rarely become actors, though arguably much of their job involves acting (speeches, media training, bare-faced lies etc)
I suspect the simple premise of alliances/bands in direct competition goes a long way toward explaining some universal features we observe in people: A love of stories, endless political maneuvering, cult followership (overlooking the weaknesses of leaders), virtue signaling, social taboos, and the like.
It wouldn't surprise me if bands of chimps or elephants – both intelligent creatures – have some analogue of virtue signalling and so on that we don't perceive.
Oh my, needing some notion that we know others better than they know themselves? Sounds like an anxiety disorder. The assumption that humans wanted control, that's the projection right there. Why are people so eager to believe it?
Ya'll remind me of the nuclear detonation ending in The Stanley Parable where the narrator says, "Oh Stanley, you didn't just take control of the machine for yourself did you? You were supposed to turn off the machine, and leave."
This resonated with me, though perhaps for somewhat personal reasons.
When I was younger, I had much more confidence in explanations. I tended to believe that people generally understood their own motives, that institutions knew what they were doing, and that social problems had reasonably clear causes and solutions. Age has steadily eroded that confidence.
Part of that comes from having lived abroad and then returned home. Part comes from spending years managing people. Part comes from raising children and discovering that even siblings raised in the same household can respond very differently to the same incentives, encouragement, and constraints. And part comes from simply getting older and accumulating examples of people surprising themselves.
The older I get, the less convinced I am that we understand each other nearly as well as we think we do. Most people seem to have mixed motives, incomplete self-knowledge, and a remarkable capacity to rationalize their actions after the fact. Yet much of our media, politics, and policymaking proceeds as if motives are obvious and legible.
What I found intriguing about this post is the suggestion that our appetite for simplified stories may not be an accident. Perhaps we are drawn to narratives that make people easier to read because such stories once served an important social function. The challenge, of course, is that modern societies are far more complex than a foraging band.
As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly skeptical of claims that journalists, activists, managers, experts, or policymakers understand people's interests better than those people understand themselves. Not because expertise is worthless, but because human beings seem far more opaque than our stories allow.
Interesting insight. Does seem to be truthy. I was wondering again today as I do from time to time why people are so susceptible to story telling. People will fall for a compelling story even if it contradicts the observable facts. Cohesiveness of the talky collective does seem to explain this as cohesiveness is more important than being factually correct when the most serious threat is from ones fellow societal members when resources are in short supply.
Markets ran this play last week: they priced the Iran framework in hours and oil fell, because "the war is over" is a clean, cohesive story. The Pentagon's estimate of six months just for mine clearing in Hormuz is a less satisfying tale, so it got ignored until later. A story that closes the loop beats a fact that leaves it open, even with money on the line.
The problem is that observation is based on narrative hypotheses to produce a confirmation or negation. Most people are simply not verbally intelligent enough to construct different sets of narrative hypotheses and see which one fits best. Also, some narratives - like the Calvinist/Capitalist success narrative - generate considerable anxiety, so they tend to be moved back in salience. Or not be taught at all.
This would suggest that writers (modern storytellers) would often become politicians, or try to, but that doesn’t seem to be the case much. (Except a few journalists?) That said, politicians do quite often write books, usually non-fiction political books, which is in line with your thesis (though one might expect them also to write fiction).
Similarly for actors and politicians, insofar as actors are modern storytellers. Actors rarely become politicians (Reagan and Schwarzenegger notable exceptions); and politicians rarely become actors, though arguably much of their job involves acting (speeches, media training, bare-faced lies etc)
A reasonable-sounding hypothesis; could be correct. But also a just-so story. Can you make predictions with it whose results we don't already know?
I suspect the simple premise of alliances/bands in direct competition goes a long way toward explaining some universal features we observe in people: A love of stories, endless political maneuvering, cult followership (overlooking the weaknesses of leaders), virtue signaling, social taboos, and the like.
It wouldn't surprise me if bands of chimps or elephants – both intelligent creatures – have some analogue of virtue signalling and so on that we don't perceive.
Oh my, needing some notion that we know others better than they know themselves? Sounds like an anxiety disorder. The assumption that humans wanted control, that's the projection right there. Why are people so eager to believe it?
Ya'll remind me of the nuclear detonation ending in The Stanley Parable where the narrator says, "Oh Stanley, you didn't just take control of the machine for yourself did you? You were supposed to turn off the machine, and leave."