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.
Even shorter - "narrative syncing" is speech-act contingent on social context and not much else. "information sharing" is a property of a given sentences given syntax and semantics independent of social context. Pitting the two against each other is a confusing way of doing philosophy.
Partial attempt to make sense of: On Doing the Improbable
Epistemic status: On my inside view, this seems like a clear and useful distinction that could use a short, shared term. Hasn’t been checked much by others. Some edge cases I’m still confused about. Also I may have a suboptimal term; help generating the right term greatly appreciated.
I’d like a short term for such sentences as:
I’m going to suggest the term “narrative syncing.” I’d like to distinguish “narrative syncing” from “sharing information” of a sort whose accuracy is not intended to be created/affected by the act of thinking/stating/believing the given sentence, i.e. to distinguish the sentences above from such sentences as:
That is, I’d like to use the term “narrative syncing” (or some better such term that y’all suggest; suggestions appreciated) to distinguish sentences whose primary purpose is to sync up with some set of other people as to how we all think or talk about a given thing around here (as opposed to sentences whose primary purpose is to describe a piece of outside reality).
A situation where the concept of “narrative syncing” seems to me to add clarity
One reason I’d like a short term for this, is IMO having such a term would’ve helped me understand some past social situations I was in.
Example: Narrative syncing about “helpful” careers
Sometimes participants at CFAR’s/MIRI’s “AI risks for computer scientists” program would ask me something like “what careers should I go into, if I want to help with AI risk?” And I would sort-of interpret this as a request for information, and would nevertheless feel a predictable frustration when I heard it as I braced for the subterranean/confusing-to-me conflict that I anticipated would follow my words, without really understanding why (I would anticipate this based partly on the particular person’s nonverbals as they asked the question -- not all participants were like this). I’ll elaborate how this interaction tended to go by describing a stereotyped conglomerate participant of this sort named Alec:
Scenario 1: “I try to tell the truth”
Scenario 2: “I go along with what he seems to want”
My current models of what was happening here
The way the above interaction seems to me now, is that Alec was actually trying to request narrative syncing rather than information exchange. He wanted to know: “which careers are should I go into, if I want you / MIRI / the EA community to, in exchange, regard me as ‘committed’ and as ‘a real member of the group, who should be supported and included and viewed as legitimately taking part in the shared effort’? What are the agreed-on local rules for which careers count as ‘AI Safety’?” And in response to this question, in scenario 1, I was sort-of saying “sorry, I don’t play that game,” but I was doing it non-explicitly, in a way that was hard for Alec to process. This was especially so since I was sending other signals, elsewhere in AIRCS, that I was playing games of that sort – that I did play a conscious role in the community’s decisions about who was/wasn’t inside the community, or about which ideas counted as legitimate. Thus Alec felt frustrated; and I sensed a difference in wavelengths but failed to quite understand why.
In scenario 2, I was answering the question in a way Alec could take as narrative syncing: “These are the careers such that, if you pursue them, I and such others as I can predict/influence/sync with will regard you as being part of the real AI safety effort; I will take on some of the responsibility for your choice; if you choose these things, your views and actions can be part of us.” But I wasn’t actually okay with doing that, and so I felt weird/bad/as though my new relationship with Alec was unacceptable to me in some way.
If I had that scene to do over again:
Scenario 3: Using my new understanding of “narrative syncing”
(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. Instead, I bid for the norm that “we” try to have a culture “around here” in which we each form an inside view, rather than syncing about which inside view of AI is the “us view” or the “good view” or something. This may still involve sharing misleading info about how "we" do things around here, which may still lead to problems.)
My take-aways from the above
It seems to me that narrative syncing is not always bad, and in fact, has real uses. It is nice to be able to create “house rules” for a board game, to decide that colloquium is at 3pm on Wednesdays, and to create norms for what “we” do and do not “do around here.”
However, narrative syncing is sometimes mistaken for (or deliberately disguised as) information sharing, and this is bad for epistemics in at least two ways:
So, it’s valuable to be aware that “narrative syncing disguised as information requests / information sharing” is a thing, and to have some notion what it looks like, what kind of places you’re likely to find it, etc. Much as it’s valuable to be aware that people lie sometimes, and to have some notion what kinds of things people are likely to lie about.
(Though, unlike the situation with more textbook examples of "lying," I'd like to emphasize that most people doing this "disguised narrative syncing" stuff do not have an explicit model under which this is harmful, and so the thing to do is more like to look into things curiously and collaboratively, or to just sidestep the dynamic, and less to tell people "cut it out please" as though it has been established that that's the thing to do. Also my concepts need vetting.)
Less importantly: understanding the positive uses of narrative syncing seems at least a bit useful to me also vis a vis understanding what social requests people sometimes have, and being able to meet those requests more straightforwardly. Though this part is more speculative, and is not a crux for me for most of the above.
My remaining confusions and open questions
My biggest remaining confusion is this: what’s up with self-fulfilling (or partially self-fulfilling) predictions playing a role in internal coordination? For example, I tell myself that I’d like to write this before I sleep, and now I have more of a desire and plan to write this than I did before; or, parents tell a kid they like the color blue and it catches; etc.? What’s a good ontology around this? “Truth-telling” vs “lying” vs “bullshitting” doesn’t seem like the most natural set of distinctions for this sort of loopy sentence. And while this is arguably a weird edge-case if your goal is to make Bayesian predictions about the outside world, it seems basic and not at all an edge-case if your goal is to understand what humans are or how humans or groups of humans act in the world or where agency comes from.
A few other questions that’re still open for me, mostly as recap: