Be suspicious of stories | Tyler Cowen | TEDxMidAtlantic

[@fraxus]

This has to be the best TEDx talk I've ever heard. I've been amazed for years at how many ppl post comments that show they've bought into some 'story' or conspiracy theory. Observing the facts, and omitting the assignment of good & evil, and avoiding appeals to motive leaves one with an accurate, but emotionally unsatisfying explanation.

[@sdprz7893]

Yeah truly top tier

[@alexandercartwright5047]

This is my favorite Ted talk , period :)

[@deenalev]

This talk makes me feel better about myself. I often hate stories. They usually don't sit 100% right with me. But I feel badly for not buying into them because they are often considered great. Also, I am a writer but can't really tell stories and always feel badly about that. I write about real things and that just doesn't seem very creative but I don't want to make stuff up and stories often feel like they're lacking. So, thanks for making me feel like I'm actually a forward-thinking person. :)

[@hellomate639]

This makes me realize how manipulative stories can be. If you lull someone into liking where a story you are telling is going, and they can find some way of applying it to themselves, it's like you can transform the way a significant number of people think. How scary. And, wow human irrationality makes a lot more sense after watching this talk. I'll be taking a closer look at myself over the next several days, weeks, months and years.

[@bonchbonch]

This talk is even more fascinating in light of the Mike Daisey controversy.

[@mizztotal]

Excellent, relevant, and timely. I agree with what @wytcld said: "He's coming close to a central truth here, a realization about the architecture of modern consciousness." He's coming close to telling us how to get out of the box. Let those who have ears...hear.

[@akistepinska]

Bottom line: Be more comfortable with messy stories. We are told to use stories to convince and clarify an idea. We are told that people remember stories but not facts, so we should use stories to sway. I love the books Blink and Nudge, which use stories to display our cognitive biases. However, they also seduce us by overly simplified stories to sway us in a specific direction. By discovering one type of cognitive biases, we actually start making other biases worse. Great talk that goes against the grain of using stories. Unfortunately, stories sell, so the financial incentives triumph over the messy truth of life.

[@angolnyelvtanitas]

Here's a story easily grasped: stories work because they seduce us. And that's gooood. Period. Stories may lower my IQ by 10 but sometimes I need to think less (and act more) in order to get where I want to be. If a story does that to me, I'll simply be grateful. I may end up buying a product as a result of reading a marketer's story but if they CAN sell me something that actually HELPS through a story then BE IT. May storytellers live a long, rewarding and fruitful life.

[@animalcolm]

...love the irony : telling good vs evil stories is EVIL! great talk!

[@millenialmusings8451]

We only have direct access to our mind which is a model of reality created by our perceptions. We don't have direct access to reality itself. So when you say that life is messy you're referring to the model, when you tell a story you're also referring to that mental model you've created for yourself. There is no escape from creating these models, because we don't have direct access to reality anyways. The only thing we can realistically do is to try and make our models as accurate as possible so that they represent reality with a high fidelity. For example, "the law of gravitation" is a more accurate model of reality than "the earth is flat"..

[@yonalu2686]

- epistemological hovering as an uneasy solution, being comfortable with messiness - rejection of easy narratives, enjoying them (without critical consideration) - on both a macro and micro-level e.g. your own biography; or the acceptance of science as a truth-giving institution as a metanarrative - which he calls 'agnosticism' - becoming aware of the stories we tell ourselves, or others impose on us - stories as fundamental to human nature - that, in itself, being a story? - enjoying your categories, but not allowing yourself to become too happy with them/too easily satisfied these are some interesting points brought up by this speaker, tyler cowen, which is tied to ideas by social theorists such as zizek on the matrix and the third pill, lyotard and latour on metanarratives, the frankfurt school (horkheimer, adorno, marcuse) on manipulation and the cultural industry (although they are less nuanced in allowing for our response/agency)

[@LeonardGarden]

Alexandre Dumas was told by a mentor of his that there are about 200 stories known to man. Master them and you will master writing. In my humble opinion, stories are not told to provide us with an accurate account of what happened, (the fiction) rather what our reaction was and why (a more likely reality). Use this tool (like Dumas) and you'll compel those who are listening and make them think.

[@marlonborreo]

I am not so sure what to feel, think or take away from this talk. So, should we now be suspicious of everything anybody tells us? How do we now communicate with each other then if we are to be suspicious of each other's stories? And even when I talk to myself in my mind, I have to be extra suspicious of the stories I tell myself, so that I...what? I don't know exactly. But maybe, THAT is his point? To be comfortable to not have answers? This message manages to feel both liberating and (very) paralyzing. What is it like to have a world where everybody is suspicious of everybody's else's story?

[@jametowne]

You nailed it. The comfort of thinking you have the answers to everything is false. Nobody has that, but many believe they do. Be flexible, be able to change your mind, be able to entertain multiple ideas. Yeah B)

[@Kormac80]

+Marlon Borreo I strongly support your line of thinking and hope you take the next logical step which is essentially about self-awareness. The stories we tell ourselves speak only about us. We believe we're attributing events to external events, making sense of them, etc... but what we're really doing is revealing ourselves. Our emotions, our fears and our personal history and POV.

[@programmer1840]

You don't have to be suspicious of everything, but this realisation allows you to be selectively skeptical when needed. For example, someone telling you about a good restaurant, you can usually believe their story and probably, more often than not, that will be the best choice. However, when it comes Tyler's example of buying a car, e.g. spending half your annual salary, it is worth the extra time spent being suspicious of whatever story someone is incentivised to tell you.

[@gwrameshlisbeth522]

Vintage Tyler Cowen .Contrarian ,Challenging and insightful

[@Kormac80]

The reason the stories are repetitive is bc our emotional patterns are repetitive and those emotions author our stories. Feedback loops are powerful. The one that drives peoples daily lives is: Emotion - Story - Behavior. The trick is to understand that beneath all of it are our unconscious beliefs. Repeat: UNCONSCIOUS. We don't have direct access to our unconscious, but we have indirect access. If your unconscious belief is that you deserve to suffer (there are many reasons for this, ancestral trauma, childhood trauma, etc) you will run anger, fear and sadness stories. Good news is you can switch it to "I deserve peace, joy and well-being." Repeat that phrase, or your version of that statement. Do things to make it real. Eat well, be kind, share compliments, etc. If you wanna go deep, go to the Peruvian jungle and work with Grandmother Ayahuasca.

[@anonymousmouse237]

If he referred to stories as myths or narratives there would likely be no controversy in the comments. Stories have a positive emotional association in the minds of most people while myths imply falsehood and backwardness. The words we use may contain implicit emotional content that can form unintended stories of their own if the speaker is careless with his language. All that aside, I think this is a very useful talk and I don't think he means that stories are bad. It's more like he's trying to say 'don't believe everything you think' and thoughts often take the form of narratives.

[@philipgoetz8681]

This was later elaborated on by Jonathan Gottschall in /The Story Paradox/.

[@Kormac80]

I believe he's overlooking an important, maybe the single most important component of story and that is how our emotional life is the driver behind the stories we tell and those we are attracted to. The emotion closest to dominating your psyche authors your story. We tend to explain how we feel with a narrative, what we don't realize is that it's the emotion authoring the narrative. The data points or events we choose to build our narratives are the product of our unconscious mind, which we have no conscious access to. The unconscious is the ocean but we live on the shoreline of our consciousness and believe we have access to the ocean. We do not. There are ways to access that ocean, and as far as I can tell, you have to go via the jungle. Those that have used the medicines from the jungle will understand. Access to the unconscious is not without its challenges, but it's very worth the trip.

[@millenialmusings8451]

Can you give some practical tips to access the unconscious mind? One is trying to remember dreams, other is meditation?

[@Kormac80]

@@millenialmusings8451 References to the "jungle" are specifically Ayahuasca. That is the best possible access to your unconscious. Engage responsibly with experienced facilitators or shaman. Many psychenauts including Terrence McKenna will tell you that nothing really matches Aya for the information, healing and learning we seek. LSD is a synthetic, so that is suboptimal to me. Mushrooms are valuable and easier to access, so they're a good place to start, but if you really want to learn and heal, Aya is along with Huachuma, the best. Huachuma is a very peaceful and quiet way to heal, so for many people, it's preferable. I love them both. I've done Aya 68X and Huachuma (aka San Pedro) 94X. Good luck. Feel free to ask questions.

[@Silvertestrun]

Thank you!

[@programmer1840]

The way to not think in terms of stories is to be rational. Stories are designed to evoke an emotion, they are evolutionarily valuable as they transmit information about what is good and what is bad without the receiver having to expend time and energy by going through the whole logical process themselves. An amount of trust has to be attributed to the storyteller in order for you to believe their story. So a non-story takeaway from this talk would be to purely takeaway the information, such as "emotional responses are leveraged by people who are incentivised to compel you to do something".

[@itsmagicinhere]

To be suspicious of another's story is also a story. Also to see life as a mess is only a story about your life. He is right in talking about the importance of awareness about how you manipulate yourself or are manipulated through stories. But he never talks about a solution, how you should think instead of "no stories". Why? Because humans think in stories. We think causally, that's why B happens after A. And even that's a story. So in my oppinion it's important to pick the story that works for you - may it be seeing life as a mess or a journey and not picking the story dogmatically. The flexibility in changing the story right for the present situation is what really seems to be king for me.

[@kendallcoombs9551]

+Christian Erfurt I dont think seeing life as a mess is a story, at least not in the common definition as he is using it. What i got from him was that a story is one that has specific intent that shapes how it plays out.....by it being a mess, by life being uncontrollable completely, intent is irrelevant, and thats why a mess isnt really a story. I think what he wanted to get people away from was the tendency to go easy on ourselves by making ourselves in the right, to make conflicting views simplified as bad, to make things black and white when they are gray. to just accept that more things are gray than many of us seem to like to believe. Self awareness I agree with you on. The more we are aware of our biases and what we do not really know, the less we can be manipulated and the more we can understand the world we live in

[@itsmagicinhere]

+Kendall Coombs I completely understand your point of view. Cool and right one ;)

[@NumeroSystem]

Stories are fine as long as you know that they are all optional and not factual.

[@danieltenreiro9056]

I wish Tyler had elucidated alternatives to thinking in narrative form.

[@programmer1840]

In my opinion, the answer is to think rationally. Stories are designed to work on our emotions, they are an effective tool evolutionarily as they can convey whether something is good or bad without the listener having to think through all of the logical steps themselves. That's why books like the bible have these parables, people aren't able or don't have the time to think through scenarios logically, so now they have an easy to reference story that they can reference when a familiar emotion is invoked. If you want to avoid story thinking it will take you an extra amount of energy and time to analyse what you're thinking about, but you may learn something new and valuable through that process, i.e. like Tyler was saying, the story may be inaccurate.

[@millenialmusings8451]

@@programmer1840 the problem with rational thinking is that life cannot be modeled completely rationally. So you cannot use rationality as a crutch to navigate life in each and every situation. There are some situations in life where rationality is actually a hindrance. There's a reason why humans are irrational as it was a trait selected for my evolution for its survival value. And if you think about it, the pursuit of survival is itself irrational. There is no rational reason to exist either. But that's a very simplistic picture and not necessarily an accurate one. Like everything else in life it's a Grey area when to use rationality and when not to.

[@idontcarewtfwhat]

Jean-Francois Lyotard has explored the issue of narratives pretty extensively, though not exactly scientifically. One of his more powerful ideas is that grand narratives (religion, Marxism) have lost out to a surfeit of "micronarratives" which we develop idiosyncratically in place of the larger tales that were told to us in centuries past. In other words, we were once provided narratives or at least the outlines of narratives; these days we have to manufacture them more individually.

[@mike4ty4]

2 fallacies highlighted: 1. Black and white fallacy 2. Dunning Kruger effect. 2 cures: 1. Remember there's more to that guy who got arrested for Grand Larceny on the local news than just his disapprovable act of Grand Larceny, 2. Tell yourself always that you don't know enough about anything. Or let others judge your knowledge/competency.

[@philosophe5319]

Cowen is a nuanced thinker, great talk. However it is ironic that his most recent book employs a story about the rate of productivity during our grandparents generation versus our generation.

[@albert93911]

In Tyler we trust.

[@yamahaU3]

OK this guy is basically telling people to think more like an economist, but he is doing so in a very convoluted way in my opinion.

[@millenialmusings8451]

Cool story bro

[@Apuravsingh88]

That's a nice story..

[@zarkoff45]

Should someone complaining about stories being too simple use Nazi's as a counter example? That was simplest good and evil story I ever heard. Tyler Cowen tells a nice story, but I'm suspicious.

[@kendallcoombs9551]

+zarkoff45 it was an example of when thingss are simple, as sometimes they just are. that was why he used it

[@zehh]

It's a very good example because most people assume it's simple, when in fact it's much more complex than that. How do you explain a whole nation supporting what the Nazi did? A nation doesn't suddenly turn "evil". Finding the answer to that is the crux of understanding the mess that was behind the time, and getting past the simple _story_ as most people assume.

[@tracysample6942]

You should be very suspicious.

[@JonBritton]

Cool story bro.

[@wraft]

The problem is that evil people really do conspire.

[@OlgaFB1]

great!

[@Bride_of_Tankenstein]

David McRaney's YOU ARE NOT SO SMART does emphasize the heuristic narratological basis of self-delusion (though it appeared in book form two years after this presentation). Nietzsche and his successors are all about the stories and metaphors we seduce ourselves with. Does Cowen seriously believe scholarship has overlooked embedded narratological bias, or is he just peeved that Malcolm Gladwell is a millionaire?

[@wytcld]

He's coming close to a central truth here, a realization about the architecture of modern consciousness. But all he can do is dance around it. As they say in another context, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Nice enough dance though. Basic Buddhist/Taoist stuff. But then he's not telling an origin story.

[@thrillscience]

You would think Tyler Cowan would be invited to real TED and not one of the fake TEDs

[@bjpcorp]

We tell ourselves narratives to justify our unfamiliar purpose...

[@ActronJimmy]

Basically people just need to question everything. Question what you hear; what is that you're listening to? What is the music saying? To party all the time? Does it promote drugs, sex, crime, hate, misogyny? If it does you need to STOP LISTENING. Question what you watch; what is that you're watching? What are those images? Death, dying, evil? Nightmarish images, (Mad Max), indulgence, sex, drugs, violence, hate? If it does you need to STOP WATCHING. Question what anyone tells you; what do they have to gain by telling you this? Are they going to get your money? Are they going to get you to live more liberally, giving in to all your wants and desires, (weakness), which in turn will make them more money? If they are trying to manipulate you, you need to STOP BELIEVING.

[@1maxroman]

Sometimes it is a bit funny how people take some common things everyone does and name it somehow. I more often see this in computers. how just common sense takes and named as some kind of theory. ex: waterfall model of software development. of course people think in terms of stories. if they did not, they would think in some other way, and that way would have been described here huh. also sad that it is obvious from aside, but when it comes to me personally :) I am lost..

[@ericbrown9900]

Comments = stories.

[@jimmyTradesIt]

By the way, the whole behavior economics field hasn't done any improvement in the way we invest in the financial markets. He forgets that the best investors are good story tellers because they know how to connect the dots and simplify the complex world to make decisions rather than rely on mechanical formulas that these economist churn out of their ivory towers. If anything, it is truly a dismal science.

[@IrishDutchman]

To be honest, I'm not impressed. He uses such a loose a definition of 'story' that applying it to all of our thought processes isn't very meaningful at all. Basically, his point is: 'don't oversimplify or romanticize'. Nothing new, and not worth 16 minutes of my time.

[@aboko123]

so then why should i believe your story

[@gregzeng]

Another anti-scientific rant (economics is not a science). Qualitative descriptions are almost meaningless without reproducible quantitative data. Religion, marketing, economics are 'stories'. Retired science teacher & researcher.

[@RichardMinkley]

dont confuse this with a talk on literature. its about myths and economics.

[@richardhod2]

Quoting Christopher Booker is generally a bad idea #nutjob

[@film_magician]

I'm sorry. This was stupid. "That idea might make a good movie" BE AWARE! uh, ok?

[@hamzamalik9705]

watccing this now in 2022 when Biden is saying we need to get tough with Putin lol

[@jodogohoo]

@PoledniceWP looolololol

[@eKoush]

hmm, word!

[@IrishDutchman]

I guess I could complain that you're oversimplifying my symplification of his oversimplification, but let's not open that whole 'nother can of worms. ;)

[@Alkrodion]

Cool Story bro... TeD talks have declined massively...

[@barkal100]

@whatevyouknow

[@andy4an]

Another great TED with a terrible name. Should be called "The danger of stories" or "Cultivating healthy suspicion".

[@Fingolfin3423]

I love TED talks, but this is a weak one.

[@Maxdwolf]

You're oversimplifying his oversimplification. :)

[@Heaskedwhatistruth]

Dislike. I

[@jimmyTradesIt]

This guy is spending his short time on this earth on how to make our lives more boring by not thinking in terms of inspirational stories. This whole behaviorism school is making every thing look irrational even though they are the same irrational agents they criticize. The end of the road is complete nihilism and void and maybe short of suicidal for the human race.

[@millenialmusings8451]

Yep, I don't se any rational reason for humans to exist in the first place.