The Narrative Fallacy
Going Into Overdrive
Hello reader, this is day four of Going Into Overdrive. It is going well so far and I am optimistic about a seven-day run that will produce tremendous results. If you are reading for the first time, you can begin reading from this post and you can go backwards. It is worth your time.
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Today on Going Into Overdrive, I wish to share with you my dear reader some fault lines in thoughts, discussion, and arguments. In other words, these fault lines are often called fallacies and everyone is prone to them. It is my sincere wish that when you are done with this essay, you will recognise these fallacies in your own thoughts first and foremost, and then consequently when others fall for them. It is not enough however, to just recognise them. You must know how to address, correct, and adjust them. Enjoy.
Narrative Fallacy
Any properly functioning human being loves stories. The best way to pass information across is through stories. Cultures and traditions have survived for generations because of the enticing tool of storytelling. But this great tool is itself a fault line that does not just appear in our thoughts and transmission of thoughts; they attempt to take over our thoughts and transmission of thoughts.
The narrative fallacy is the tendency to create a story with cause-and-effect explanations out of random details and events. We fall victim to the narrative fallacy because our brains want to make sense of a random world.
The narrative fallacy is our need to fit a story, or pattern, to a series of connected or disconnected facts. The statistical application is data mining.
-Nicholas Nassim Taleb
So understand this: we live in a messy world. There is so much randomness, instability, and volatility in the world. This randomness then breeds a certain uncertainty. And this uncertainty leaves us with a world we do not completely understand. But here is the other thing you need to understand: we want to understand the world with certain certainty. This then leaves us conflicted.
If the world is messy, and in a state of certain uncertainty, there has to be a way for us to reach certainty. There has to be ways we can draw cause and effect inferences to explain what is going on around us. One of such ways is the use of narratives. And the extreme use is the resulting narrative fallacy. Narrative fallacy is the construction of more cause and effect explanation than reality supports.
The temptation to connect dots, and even find dots where there are none just so you can have a comprehensive report is the epitome of the narrative fallacy.
A simple example of the narrative fallacy is Karma.
With Karma as a form of justice, we tend to think, and draw salient observations that people are suffering some terrible predicament rightly because of their past actions or more accurately, for their past lives.
We always desire an explanation. And the way we satisfy this craving is by using available points, facts, and events to construct a good sounding narrative that if properly scrutinized, will show no clear causality.
Other examples of narrative fallacies are rags-to-riches stories and dreams-turned-reality stories.
The Narrative fallacy is seductive simply because it gives you an illusion of truth, order, and cogent chain links of explanations. It just “makes sense.”
Conspiracy theories (like the Illuminati trend of 2012) are examples of the narrative fallacy. People cherry pick real-life events to form a sensible pattern, and attribute it as truth or facts. You sometimes have to slow down and think twice lest you be seduced by the appearance of factuality.
At the moment, analysts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine may be committing the narrative fallacy as they have very interesting explanations for why the invasion is happening. Or even more beautiful an example (which is total farce) is POTUS blaming Putin for inflation in the US.
There are fields of studies which are prone to the narrative fallacy. Any discipline like Gender Studies that relies on narration, standpoint theories, and cherry picked data will always have an intimate relationship with the narrative fallacy.
Now that you know what it is, how best can you avoid it?
Simple: slow down and think twice. Learn to be comfortable with not having an ordered explanation. Learn to agree that things will not always make perfect sense. Be open to more evidence – especially evidence that disconfirms rather than confirms the narrative. Lastly, don’t let people move authoritatively on you because their narratives have sensational appeal. People might not accept your disordered position. But it won’t make your position less true.
Thank you for reading. I will be with you again tomorrow.
Of course, have a meme
