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Jus t finished reading Bill Bernstein's The Delusions of Crowds, which will be out in February. Smart, concise, and important, it has made me even more depressed at how stories, narratives, and social media echo chambers are breaking our ape brains. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BSQYQF7/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i4
People's inability to separate fact from fiction when presented with compelling ("transporting") narratives is troubling, especially with bad news, but how desperately we cling to such narratives and share them with others, is so important.
And the more we fall into this story-time trap, the worse it gets. In Bill's words, "... a high degree of narrative transportation impairs one's critical facilities". And not just in the topic at hand, but in all critical thinking. It infects every argument we consider.
This is among the reasons I'm hugely uneasy at all cases made via narratives, the "TED-ification" of argument. As soon as I get any sense that we're in "story time", where a compelling narrative, not the data, carries the argument, I force myself to become extra critical.
I am suspicious of the argument, of the source, and of my response to both. As Bernstein shows, "[O]nce a reader is rolling along with a compelling narrative, the source has diminishing influence". Propagandists and low-credible sources know this well.
Of course, most people who should read a book like Bernstein's won't, and most who do will go on finding narrative arguments compelling—"Let me tell you about a guy who ..."—and not even notice how it infects their critical thinking in all areas. We are such evolutionary misfits.
Bill isn't the first person to have written about this, of course. There is a long history on this topic, dating back to Charles Mackay's classic, and beyond, but he does a very good job of bringing it all up to date, adding the latest research, and linking it together.
¹ Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
