On the Dangers of Narrative

Every so often the universe whomps you on the head to teach you a lesson.*

I was recently reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan, a discursive rant about the random nature of the world we live in, our failure to comprehend this, and what it means for us.

One of the points NNT makes is that humans have a deep-seated need to utter the word "because."  That is, we want to find causation, even to the point of making it up when it's not there.  Given a set of data we humans will come up with elaborate theories to explain "why" something happened, e.g., that thing B happened "because of" thing A.  Sometimes we're right.  Often we're not.  Frequently things are more complicated than they seem.

NNT suggests that much of the danger of narratives comes from stories being so powerful and alluring -- once you have a good narrative that you think fits the data, well, stick a fork in you, you're done.  You will incorporate this story into your subconscious and believe it -- and repeat it -- without a second thought.

Jason Scott also warned of the dangers of narrative in his "One Last Time: The Hack/Phreak History Primer" talk at the HOPE Conference last weekend. He said many of the same things NNT does but said them from a historian's perspective rather than that of a cranky polymathic physicist turned options trader.

As Jason spoke I nodded to myself in the audience and thought, "Yep, I totally get this.  I completely see the dangers.  I hate it when other people do it.  It's a darn good thing I'm so self aware and that I don't engage in this sort of behavior."

(Have I set myself up enough yet?)

The next day I gave my talk on the history of phone phreaking.  One of the slides in my presentation dealt with YIPL/TAP, a phone phreak newsletter that predated 2600 by, oh, 13 years.  YIPL started in 1971 and its initials stood for the "Youth International Party Line", a play on the organization's roots in the Yippie movement as well as its interest in telephones.  A few years later it changed its name to TAP, the "Technological American Party."  A few years after that it changed its name to the less political "Technical Assistance Program."

As I was discussing the slide I said, "In 1976 TAP changed its name to the Technical Assistance Program because it had become less political."  Note the "because."

During the Q&A period, Cheshire Catalyst, the last TAP editor, stepped up to the microphone and said, "Actually, we changed our name to 'Technical Assistance Program' because we were unable to get a bank account if we had the word 'Party' in our name."

Oh.

Later, in the bar across ther street from the hotel he said, "Don't feel bad!  You were right, we did become less political!"

But that wasn't why they changed their name.  So much for me being so self-aware.  :-)

* Yikes!  Do you see the narrative that crept in to my opening sentence without me even being aware of it?  NNT would spank me! "Phil, the universe may well have whomped you on the head, and while you might have learned a lesson from it, it is unlikely that the universe whomped you on the head in order to teach you a lesson!"

Comments

[Jim Fields]

Hi Phil, being a story teller type myself, can't help but take on the defense of the primal and very human need to tell and hear stories. Okay, maybe stories aren't the real representation of the universe but then again, maybe without STORY there IS no universe. Kind of a Phil K. Dick sorta thing. I dunno. It's possible. Point is, to me, there's nothing more primal to human nature and to what we are and to our condition than narrative. We can no more reject it than Sex and Love. And I find, as in your example, there's a real core of truth to almost all stories in SOME way: allegorical or even factual. So it's both a profoundly useful gift to have AND a bit of hazard (as in religious narratives taken literally and malicious gossip). It is good to be mindful that stories ARE stories and not always to be taken literally.