I agree with some commenters (e.g. Taran) that the one example I gave isn’t persuasive on its own, and that I can imagine different characters in Alec’s shoes who want and mean different things.  But IMO there is a thing like this that totally happens pretty often in various contexts.  I’m going to try to give more examples, and a description of why I think they are examples, to show why I think this.

Example: I think most startups have a “plan” for success, and a set of “beliefs” about how things are going to go, that the CEO “believes” basically for the sake of anchoring the group, and that the group members feel pressure to avow, or to go along with in their speech and sort-of in their actions, as a mechanism of group coordination and of group (morale? something like this).  It’s not intended as a neutral prediction individuals would individually be glad to accept/reject bets based on.   And the (admittedly weird and rationalist-y) CEOs I’ve talked to about this have often been like “yes, I felt pressure to have beliefs or to publicly state beliefs that would give the group a positive, predictable vision, and I found this quite internally difficult somehow.”

When spotting “narrative syncing” in the wild, IMO a key distinguisher of “narrative syncing” (vs sharing of information) is whether there is pressure not to differ from the sentences in question, and whether that pressure is (implicitly) backchained from “don’t spoil the game / don’t spoil our coordination / don’t mess up an apparent social consensus.”  So, if a bunch of kids are playing “the sand is lava” and you say “wait, I’m not sure the sand is lava” or “it doesn’t look like lava to me,” you’re messing up the game.  This is socially discouraged.  Also, if a bunch of people are coordinating their work on a start-up and are claiming to one another that it’s gonna work out, and you are working there too and say you think it isn’t, this… risks messing up the group’s coordination, somehow, and is socially discouraged.

OTOH, if you say “I like pineapples on my pizza” or “I sometimes pick my nose and eat it” and a bunch of people are like “eww, gross”… this is social pressure, but the pressure mostly isn’t backchained from anything like “don’t spoil our game / don’t mess up our apparent social consensus”, and so it is probably not narrative syncing.

Or to take an intermediate/messy example: if you’re working at the same start-up as in our previous example, and you say “our company’s logo is ugly” to the others at that start-up, this… might be socially insulting, and might draw frowns or other bits of social pressure, but on my model the pressure will be weaker than the sort you’d get if you were trying to disagree with the core narrative the start-up is using to coordinate (“we will do A, then B, and thereby succeed as a company”), and what push-back you do get will have less of the “don’t spoil our game!” “what if we stop being able to coordinate together!” nature (though still some) and more other natures such as “don’t hurt the feelings of so-and-so who made the logo” or “I honestly disagree with you.”  It’s… still somewhat narrative syncing-y to my mind, in that folks in the particular fictional start-up I’m imagining are e.g. socially synchronizing some around the narrative “everything at our company is awesome,” but … less.

It seems to me that when a person or set of people “take offense” at particular speech, this is usually (always?) an attempt to enforce narrative syncing.

Another example: sometimes a bunch of people are neck-deep in a discussion, and a new person wanders in and disagrees with part X of the assumed model, and people really don’t want to have to stop their detailed discussion to talk again about whether X is true.  So sometimes, in such cases, people reply with social pressure to believe/say X — for example, a person will “explain” to the newcomer “why X is true” in a tone that invites capitulation rather than inquiry, and the newcomer will feel as though they are being a bit rude if they don’t buy the argument.  I’d class this under “don’t mess up our game”-type social pressure, and under “narrative syncing disguised as information exchange.”  IMO, a better thing to do in this situation is to make the bid to not mess up the game explicit, by e.g. saying “I hear you, it makes sense that you aren’t sure about X, but would you be up for assuming X for now for the sake of the argument, so we can continue the discussion-bit we’re in the middle of?”

I don't really understand... Suppose I am a computer scientist who has just learned about AI risks and am eager to contribute, but I'm not sure where to start. Then the natural step would be to ask someone who does have experience in this area for their advice (e.g. what careers should I go into), so I can take advantage of what's already known rather than starting from scratch.

My surface question is about careers, but my true/implicit question is actually asking for help on getting started contributing to AI risk. It's not about wanting to know how to be considered a real member of the group? I would be annoyed by the first answer because it answers my superficial question while rebuffing my true question (I still don't know what to do next!). I am asking you for help and advice, and yet your response is that you have no answer. I mean it is technically true and it would be a good answer for a peer, but in this context it sounds like you're refusing to help me (you're not playing your role of advisor/expert?).

Answer 3 is good because you are sharing your experience and offering help. There's no need to make reference to culture. I would be be just as happy with an answer that says "no one really knows" (instead of "I don't know"), because then you are telling me the current state of knowledge in the industry.

A similar example:

When I asked someone who was teaching me how to cook how much salt I should add to the dish, they answered "I don't know". I was annoyed because it sounded like they were refusing to help me (because they're not answering my implicit question of how to decide how much salt to put when I cook next time) when they were the expert. It would have been better if they'd said that the saltiness varies based on the type of salt and the other ingredients and your own preferences, etc. so it's not possible to have a known, fixed amount of salt. What cooks do is that they try adding a bit first (e.g. half a teaspoon) then taste and make adjustments. Nowadays I would know how to rephrase my question to get the answer I want, but I didn't use to be able to.

A possible limitation of “narrative syncing” as a term is when you’re syncing your own narrative. It seems to mainly suggest a social interpretation, but many such statements are intended to shape one’s own future behavior.

In general, the action being taken is a suggestion, model, or command for what to do or not to do, who’ll be in charge of directing those efforts, and how to communicate about it.

I might call this something like “leadership language.” It’s also imperfect. What I like about it is that it explicitly calls out the power dynamic. “Narrative syncing” suggests a neutral, computer-like update, while “leadership language” emphasizes that a person is exerting power and influence.

At the same time, “leadership” has broadly positive connotations, which I think is appropriate to the term.

This also suggests that leadership language interferes with epistemic when many independent and considered judgments are preferable to a uniform coordinated social action. When directing people toward independent thought, leadership language is appropriate.

Leadership language happens a lot in public statements by politicians and CEOs and activists, in Facebook posts, in the arts, and during ceremonies.

>Note that in this example, the “me” character does do narrative syncing – but in a way that does not disguise itself as information sharing about AI.

Well, it's better, but in I think you're still playing into [Alec taking things you say as orders], which I claim is a thing, so that in practice Alec will predictably systematically be less helpful and more harmful than if he weren't [taking things you say as orders].

>How can a person shift things toward less confusing patterns?

[Tossing out ideas, caveat emptor]

You could draw attention in the moment to that dynamic, so that Alec can get introspection on the phenomenon, or metaphorically so that Alec can start to get a "brain-computer interface readout" on "right now I'm looking to be told what to do".

You could abstractly clarify the situation (which this post helps with, thank you!).

You could do improv-y stuff, playing low status, playing like you're looking for orders from Alec. (Warning, might be a kind of deception.)The supposed upside is to "shake things loose" a little so that Alec gets exposed to what it would be like if he was High and you were Low, so that when he's back to his usual Low play, he can know it's happening and know what's different about it.

You could refuse to answer Alec until it seems like he's acting like his own boss.

You could technically explain why you don't want to give him orders.

You could address why Alec locally wants to be told what to do.

>Is it something we should simply try to minimize if we want good epistemics?

My wild guess is that first-order minimizing narrative-syncing isn't that important, but being open to second-order corrections is very important, because that's what determines your trajectory towards correct beliefs vs. delusion. There's always a ton of narrative-syncing taken for granted, and primordially speech is corrections to that; just-trying-to-be-epistemic speech is a rarefied sort of thing. I don't know how to balance being open to corrections against "losing momentum", but the obvious guess is to not sacrifice any ability to correct at all, because subtle failures-to-correct can propagate as a narrative-sync to just not think about something. In other words, yay to simply minimizing pushes against correcting errors, boo to minimizing narrative-syncing.

>What’re some places where this happens a lot?  

This happens a lot with a power / status differential. This isn't a vacuous claim: one consequence is that I'm claiming that for each person Alec, there's a roughly 1-dimensional value called "power" (well, maybe it depends on social context...) that Alec assigns to each other person Berry, and this "power" variable predicts all of: the extent to which Alec imputes narrative-syncingness onto Berry's utterances; the extent to which Alec expects others to take Blob's utterances as narrative-syncing; the extent to which Alec expects Berry to take others's statements as narrative-syncing; the extent to which Alec, if so inclined, to punish deviations from those expectations.

>How can a person notice it?

If Berry "directs annoyance at" Alec in a way where the annoyance isn't hidden but the reasons for the annoyance are hidden, that might be because Berry expected Alec to coordinate in a narrative-sync but Alec didn't.

If Alec finds himself doing stuff on automatic, not really interested / curious / etc., that might be because he took orders from someone.

> “Why did I even sign up for this program?”

To say something maybe obvious, this seems like a great chance to pry your fingertips under the shield of narratives; why are you here Alec? You were expecting me to do something or know something? Here's a description of some of the tacks I've taken in trying to solve this thing, and why they can't work; what should we do?

I feel kind of conflicted about this post overall, but I certainly think using the concept fairly frequently.

Curated. I think the underlying concept here is valuable and if we can develop a good ability to notice and reflect on instances of it, this could both improve our collective epistemics and coordination. Kudos to Anna and everyone in the comments who are trying to flesh out the models.

I do think the concept is much the same as performative utterance and there might be some useful stuff in the literature on that, though mostly I don't care about the exact term used so long as we've got some shared handle for the concept. "Narrative syncing" does feel more likely to catch on in our community, maybe, so I'm happy to broadcast it.

As follow-up work, I would love to see someone (or multiple someones) collecting and fleshing out examples of the phenomenon. Or perhaps the best is for people to report their own concrete experiences. I might point to my wedding as a case where my wife and I synced the narrative about our relationship in a way that persists eight years later.

Scenario 3 bothers me. Did you really have to do the thing where you generalize about the whole social group?

Compare:

We try to have a culture around here where there is no vetted-by-the-group answer to this; we instead try to encourage forming your own inside-view model of how AI risk might work, what paths through to a good future might be possible, etc...

with

I don't think I have any specific best answer for this in general. My best suggestion would be to encourage forming your own inside-view model of how AI risk might work, what paths through to a good future might be possible, etc...

To me, the new version sounds more personal, equally helpful, and is not misleading or attempting to do "narrative syncing." (Maybe I just don't understand what's going on, because the first scenario sounded pretty reasonable to me, and seems to contain basically the same content as the third scenario, so I would not have predicted vastly different reactions. The first scenario is phrased a little more negatively, I guess?)

-

I find this a useful concept, but the term itself is a horrible misnomer? "Narrative syncing" is a poor way of describing what I would call "coordination" (as an activity - "he's in charge of coordination") or as speech-act (maybe "coordinative statement") - as in the "coordination problem": https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095637587#:~:text=A%20situation%20in%20which%20the,with%20what%20the%20others%20do.

This is an important misnomer! If you say something is "narrative syncing" as opposed to "information sharing", the implication is that the statement contains a "narrative" as opposed to "information" - whereas a "coordinating statement" can include only factual information but is for social purposes what you call "narrative syncing." I don't know how else to say this. To quote the author directly: “narrative syncing disguised as information sharing” - why use such language? "Disguised" implies that one isn't the other, except it clearly is? "Narrative syncing" or, as I would label it, "coordination" is why we communicate.  "Information sharing" is how we achieve our goals? If we didn't have a goal behind a sharing information, unless the goal is sharing information for its own sake, why would we bother spending the energy and effort at all? 

In short, I largely agree with AllAmericanBreakfast - it's "leadership language", but it's also just - language, meant to influence the behaviours and beliefs of others (which extends beyond leaders to every coordinative activity even from a subordinate's position). The confusion is almost academic - OP seems to be interested in how and why they are used is social contexts, and what effects result from it - which means that of course it depends on social context and culture. How the OP would argue about sentences being (linguistically) "narrative syncing" in say, a Chinese context, with (to make it more difficult for the OP) say tone and body language, as opposed to understanding it as speech-act (socially/politically) would be interesting to me.

If you are still looking for a different term for this phenomenon, I suggest “preaching” - persuasion by social pressure.