Cowen's is a very good and very useful insight, because so many people, especially in the popular press, seem to think solely in terms of pre-fabricated narratives. But it's also a deleterious one if you hold on to it too tightly—in the real world, decisions must be made under uncertainty, and insisting on (an always arbitrarily determined level of) rigor in one's decisionmaking while deprecating stories entirely is likely to lead one astray. Reason needs to be tested against experience, and stories can be valuable condensations of experience that serve as... (read more)
Cowen's is a very good and very useful insight, because so many people, especially in the popular press, seem to think solely in terms of pre-fabricated narratives. But it's also a deleterious one if you hold on to it too tightly—in the real world, decisions must be made under uncertainty, and insisting on (an always arbitrarily determined level of) rigor in one's decisionmaking while deprecating stories entirely is likely to lead one astray. Reason needs to be tested against experience, and stories can be valuable condensations of experience that serve as... (read more)