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Narrative Fallacy

Edited by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg), Grognor, Vladimir_Nesov, PeerInfinity last updated 3rd Oct 2020

The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them. Explanations bind facts together. They make them all the more easily remembered; they help them make more sense. Where this propensity can go wrong is when it increases our impression of understanding.

—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

Blog posts

  • Tell your Anti-Story by Robin Hanson
  • The Bad Guy Bias by Robin Hanson
  • Missing the Trees for the Forest by Yvain
  • Why You're Stuck in a Narrative by hegemonicon
  • Biases of Fiction by Robin Hanson

External Links

  • Tyler Cowen on Stories (transcript)
  • Systems and Stories by Katja Grace
  • Living in the Epilogue: Social Policy as Palliative Care by Sister Y

See also

  • Privileging the hypothesis, Positive bias
  • Mind-killer
  • Near/far thinking
  • Hindsight bias
  • Fake simplicity
  • Black swan
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Posts tagged Narrative Fallacy
88Missing the Trees for the Forest
Scott Alexander
16y
159
46Why You're Stuck in a Narrative
[anonymous]16y
32
44Conspiracy Theories as Agency Fictions
[anonymous]13y
117
30Bayesianism for humans: prosaic priors
BT_Uytya
11y
11
16Heuristic: How does it sound in a movie?
Stabilizer
13y
15
10Andrew Gelman on "the rhetorical power of anecdotes"
[anonymous]13y
12
9Fiction Considered Harmful
abramdemski
10y
82
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