That would be an example of a story without a protagonist. Your life has, by definition, a protagonist; you. it cannot therefore be a story without a protagonist. It might not be ‘story’ as a whole, but as long as you desire something, it seems to me that the story of your life will fit into that definition.
The story of your life would definitely include a protagonist. But I think there are other things we could agree would fit the category of a story (like perhaps “How the Universe was born” with an actual scientifically supportable account of the big bang), but which wouldn’t have any type of human or living protagonist.
Yes, that makes perfect sense. I can list several ideas for stories without a protagonist, as well; any physical process (e.g. the hydrological cycle) would do, amongst others.
My point was that, though these are stories, they are not and cannot be the story of a person’s life (due to the lack of a protagonist). Looking back over my comment, I see it was a good deal less clear than I thought it was at the time, and for that I apologise.
I think we’re on similar ground. But let me be clear, stories exist (according to my best estimates) to create positive emotions. So a physical process would be a story IF it was something you could or would tell to other people to interest them. Or, similarly, to thrill or excite them (I think some people would view stories about comets impacting planets etc as exciting).
You’re right though that these definitely are NOT the story of someone’s life. I was just trying to point out originally that the quote used the term “story” without any additional qualifiers when talking about a person and so on...and I wanted to make it clear that while it is VERY common and useful to use people or main characters when telling stories...it’s not actually a requirement. And of course, knowing the core requirements and meanings for terms or ideas help us to think about those ideas clearly and use them properly.
Similar to what you said at the end, I know that my examples may not have been perfectly chosen, and I hope this helps. Like I said, this is my personal pet-topic and I’m looking into starting a series of posts on it, since I don’t see much related to it here, and there are amazing things to be learned when you approach books, movies and other modern stories with rational tools to understand how they really work.
But let me be clear, stories exist (according to my best estimates) to create positive emotions.
Hmmm… some stories are written with the intention of creating negative emotions (sadness, anger, fear). While these are not the stories I enjoy, they do exist. And some stories are written with the intention of passing along information, not emotion (for example, to give a true account of some historical event(s)).
“Story” is a very broad term.
I’m perfectly in agreement with your second paragraph, and I do believe I would find such a series of posts interesting. One can learn things from books, yes, but one must be careful what lessons one takes away; not all things that fiction teaches are true.
Yes, there are stories that seem to have the sole effect of pissing people off. And there are also some rare people who write what they think are stories with the intent of making people angry or sad (fear in a lot of cases creates excitement or adrenaline, which is why a lot of people like horror movies so I can’t list fear among the negatives).
But I think in the majority of those cases, if you speak to most of those people and look at their work, you’ll find that their intent was, in their minds, to “educate” or “inform” other people. (though often these people don’t have anything very insightful to really say), so their intent was to do something positive via negative means.
At the end of the day though, and here’s an example of how my thoughts aren’t coming out in a clear order, there’s an important distinction here and I’m glad you found it to help me clarify myself. Stories exist, according to our modern usage, to create emotions, positive OR negative, but we WATCH stories to get positive emotions. When we get overall good feelings (whichever they may be, excitement, satisfaction etc), we will say things like “that was a damned good movie.” And when we don’t get those feelings, we’ll say and think that it was bad.
A lot of people who write stories do so to create the negative emotions, and I think those people are confused and, if their goal is to be professional writers and build an audience, they’re dooming themselves to fail. As I’m sure you can know from other fields, writing has many people who don’t really understand what they’re doing and don’t think clearly about it and get bad results because of it.
As far as sad stories go, I do believe that one particularly famous example can be found in Romeo And Juliet (Shakespeare). Some people actually do enjoy a well-written sad story; there’s even a whole page on tvtropes called “Downer Ending” which lists a lot of sad stories, some of which are actually quite well-written and thought-provoking.
I don’t think they were all written with the explicit intention of being sad stories, though. I imagine that quite a few were written with the intention of, instead of provoking an emotional response, rather provoking some other response. For example, Flowers for Algernon (I don’t know if you’re familiar with it) is most certainly a sad story, especially near the end; but the intention seems to be to inspire thought and raise questions rather than to inspire emotion. (It also won a few awards; sad stories don’t necessarily fail).
So, yes, while inspiring emotion is one reason to write stories, even a common reason, it is far from the only reason.
(I don’t know the formatting yet, so when I use capitalized words here, I’m just doing it for emphasis, not to yell at you, of course)
Hi CCC,
That is a great thing to bring up, and very important. There are indeed stories, like Flowers for Algernon (or my favorite example, almost every episode of the original Twilight Zone), that quite clearly exist to give IDEAS instead of what appears to be basic emotions. And this leads us to one of the most eye-opening conclusions I ever had about storytelling.
You see...YES, some stories ARE primarily intended to inspire thought and raise questions, BUT...and here’s one of the things that was a “eureka moment” for me...getting those new ideas...those inspiring ideas or things to think about...ALSO give us a positive emotion...and THAT positive emotion...a feeling I refer to as “enlightenment”...IS why those stories exist.
This is exactly why I say (and I’m sure others say) that a good scientist has to BE right, regardless of how he sounds, but a good storyteller has to SOUND right, regardless of whether or not he actually is right.
Quick example...THIS is why creation-myths are so popular as stories. They aren’t actually RIGHT, but they are plausible enough to satisfy the curiosity of the ancient people who heard them. They wanted to know where the Sun came from. The idea that Horus created it (or a chariot pulled it across the sky), did the job for them nicely, so that story was successful and spread through the culture. If you had tried to tell them about gravity as a physical force, it wouldn’t have involved things they understood, so it wouldn’t have worked. It would’ve been fine for science, but would’ve failed to spread, interest and capture the imagination of the audience, which is basically what a great story does.
There are plenty of ways this applies, and lots of ways we get these feelings of new, useful or satisfying ideas from stories...but it is indeed one major thing that stories can do. But I hope I did a decent job here of describing how it fits with this idea of stories existing to generate emotion.
BUT...and here’s one of the things that was a “eureka moment” for me...getting those new ideas...those inspiring ideas or things to think about...ALSO give us a positive emotion...and THAT positive emotion...a feeling I refer to as “enlightenment”...IS why those stories exist.
Huh. I never thought of it that way.
Hmmm… some stories might be designed as warnings (this is what happens if you throw too many nuclear bombs about!), or to try to get more people to work on a difficult problem (this is what happens if we don’t solve world hunger!) or to try to promote a worldview (this is why my proposed political system is the best!). In the latter two cases, they would work best if they also inspire a positive emotional response, encouraging more people to share the story; in these cases, as with the thought-inspiring stories, inspiring a positive emotion is not the major aim of the story, but it is an important part of the story nonetheless.
This still leaves the warning story; the story of the person who went down a dark path, and comes out the worse for it. Hmmm… now that I think about it, I guess such a story could be written to appeal to a sort of feeling of moral superiority, a sort of smugness, a “I-wouldn’t-be-so-evil” sort of feeling. (I’m not sure that that’s necessarily a positive emotion, but it is a pleasant one).
Hmmm. You raise a surprisingly good point. I’m sure there are still counterexamples out there (how would you class Macbeth, for example?) but they’re clearly a lot rarer then I’d thought.
This is very exciting. I was hoping to be able to share some of my ideas here about this field with rational-minded people and see if they found them interesting (I find this site’s content and its members extremely interesting), and even this little chat here is quite encouraging.
Anyway, there are certainly stories that are designed with an agenda (like you said, as warnings) or to get people to care about something. BUT, if the story doesn’t actually work and doesn’t feel correct to people, it won’t be effective. For example (and I hope this is a good example), imagine if we took a story that illustrated the Big Bang back to some of our ancient ancestors. They would laugh us out of the village (if they didn’t kill us) and tell us that Vishnu created the Universe in a flower from his belly. In this case, our story has failed, even though we had the intent to tell them something extremely important and much more true than what they already believed.
Now, the second point you brought up is great, and it is indeed separate from giving “enlightenment”. Which is the story of a person who goes down the dark path and fails. This is a fine story obviously and many successful stories (like tragedies) take this form. But while these are not giving us a NEW idea, instead, they’re UNDERLINING what we already believe or know is true, which ALSO feels very good, though not QUITE as good as enlightenment. I label this, underlining what we know, as “Confirmation.” And in short, THIS is why we want to see the right guy get the girl, and people who have tragic flaws suffer from them, and why Batman can’t lose in the end (and you’d better not try it if you write the new Batman movie). We expect (though we may not know it consciously) movies to give us that feeling in the end...that what we believe is true, in this case that the person who shows the good traits eventually wins.
I actually haven’t been able to read Shakespeare yet, (the Old English is a tough barrier for me), but I do intend to...and we may find that Macbeth gives this feeling of confirmation, as many tragedies do, which is why it functions well.
Anyway if I get started this post will run all day. But I hope this is interesting and makes sense. I’m using this exchange as a measure for whether or not people might like posts on this topic.
There are all manner of ways that message boards do their formatting and give information about their formatting. “Help” buttons, absent any additional labeling, aren’t necessarily quick formatting lists, they might talk about dozens of things that people may require help with, such as forum standards of conduct, how the rules for thread starting, karma, your personal page and so on function before they get to such smaller issues, if they do so at all. Likewise, formatting itself may simply rely on users being already familiar with HTML tags or bracket-style functions. So absent your pre-existing knowledge of where it is, it is not so automatically clear to those who are new.
Please keep this in mind when you speak to others in the future, as your incorrect hindsight bias appears to have effected your tone.
There are all manner of ways that message boards do their formatting and give information about their formatting. ”
I know. This is why my instructions consisted of new information. You expressed ignorance (by way of excuse). That’s fine, once. And by social convention in exchange for not getting downvoted to oblivion for yelling, that expression of ignorance obligates you to listen when you get an explanation you prompted with some modicum of grace. It isn’t condescension if you literally ask for it.
It so happens that it took me several years before it occurred to me that the ‘help’ button showed formatting help. Prior to that I referred people to the markdown boards after deducing what formatting system was being used by googling what how reddit-clones work. When I say “you now have” I meant that literally, with the direct implication “you did not previously have”.
Please keep this in mind when you speak to others in the future, as your incorrect hindsight bias appears to have effected your tone.
Your mind reading is flawed. (Come to think of it, it is verifiably flawed. If we really cared we could look at the public record of conversations held in past “welcome, formatting guide” discussions.)
Now, let me revise my earlier instruction to something more appropriate to someone with your tone, so that we are abundantly clear. It’ll also give you some much needed contrast so you will be better able to identify actual abrasive tone. I do use it (and endorse it) sometimes, just not in response to implied format guide queries. Typically it is in response to people combining aggression or condescension with being wrong.
Please do not YELL at people on this forum. Ignorance was once an excuse but only barely… it was still lazy, unnecessary and mildly disrespectful. People write entire novels without without once relying on formatting for emphasis and their books tend to be better for it. Now you have been given simple instructions that take only several seconds to follow continuing to do so would be obnoxious and treated as a defection against the community.
No, I’m sorry, but this nonsense is not worth the digression.
Earlier in this topic I noticed already that you used the term “ceretus paribus,” which is flat-out wrong. The term is “ceteris paribus.” I could just as easily have replied to you in a snide manner telling you to go to google and put in that word you found and “now you know not to say that again.” But I choose not to because it’s not necessary or constructive to address people that way, and when viewed in the proper light, you understand that a simple overlap of one’s knowledge where someone else lacks knowledge is not evidence nor justification for me to try to speak down to them.
Please learn this and figure out how to conduct yourself better in the future in your interactions with people.
No, I’m sorry, but this nonsense is not worth the digression.
And yet you did, and seem to be persisting.
Please learn this and figure out how to conduct yourself better in the future in your interactions with people.
Please leave the site.
That is to say, you are entirely welcome here and I presume absolutely no right to expel people. Nevertheless I entirely endorse my responses here in all regards except the typographical error that I made (thankyou for pointing that out). Given that you reacted so poorly even to polite and necessary information granting (of the same kind that has been given and received hundreds of times before) I have reason to believe you will behave even more poorly when you attempt to discuss something where there is an actually important or difficult question at hand. I anticipate that unless you change we would be better without you and that your experience here will be negatively.
I certainly don’t plan on being influenced to pay you undue respect whenever you throw your little tantrums and if I judge correctly I am only slightly less accommodating than average in that regard. It’s hard enough for most people to get along via text on forums without people who start and escalate social dominance battles on a whim. Just take it elsewhere.
You’re welcome not to reply to anything else I say, and I will gladly do the same with you.
My typical (and suggested) policy with respect to people with whom interaction is not desired but who are present in a shared community is to respond only for the purpose of making necessary contributions to the broader conversation. There is a correlation between the groups and the groups . (If not for such an approach there would be a rather glaring exploit. Just escalate conflict with anyone who disagrees with you until nobody is permitted to argue.)
Totally false. If one person escalates conflict with anyone who disagrees with them, they will quickly have no one to talk to, or have too many enemies to have a positive experience, while you can ignore them. You’re welcome to try this approach. Buh-bye.
Where I previously expected EGarrett to exhibit undesired social behaviour I now anticipate him combining that with a complete incomprehension of simple game theory.
You’re welcome to try this approach.
This is an utterly bizarre retort given that the entire reason I do not recommend that people must refrain from replying to people who do not treat them well is because of the perverse incentives it creates. I myself help ensure that the approach doesn’t work (even to the extent of publicly opposing it when used by a particularly high status individual here) so clearly I’m not going to use the approach. Since I assume you are not intending to be deliberately disingenuous with your insult it would seem that you do not understand the position being expressed (since one of those two must be true).
Nope, and that’s a completely wrong interpretation of what I said. It’s best for you to move onto other topics that might actually add something to your experience here, and I intend to do the same.
Apologies to anyone else scrolling through this topic. I won’t be replying again and will skip over anything else wedrifid says to try to perpetuate it.
In such exchanges both people lose almost all the time.
It is possible but extremely difficult to actually come off ahead in such things but I certainly don’t have that skill. The choice I have to make when deciding whether to engage is whether it is worth spending the karma and reputation in order to ensure that the initial defection has a negative rather than positive incentive. It is a much milder and more common variant of the decision faced regarding dueling in honour based societies that serve the role of reducing small social costs by risking larger ones.
As a general tendency I likely err too much on the side of “refuse to submit to social dominance ploys” and so in retrospect would advise myself to be more conciliatory in most cases. In this case, however, I seem to reflectively endorse my approach and would only change details to optimise effectiveness, not general strategy.
You see...YES, some stories ARE primarily intended to inspire thought and raise questions, BUT...and here’s one of the things that was a “eureka moment” for me...getting those new ideas...those inspiring ideas or things to think about...ALSO give us a positive emotion...and THAT positive emotion...a feeling I refer to as “enlightenment”...IS why those stories exist.
That depends on what level of causation you’re talking about. Even then it helps if the story gives good advice since it’s more likely to be passed on if the person doing the passing was successful.
One thing I noticed earlier about my post that you quoted is that I should’ve added that the positive emotion we get from new ideas is quite verifiable as a pleasure chemical in the brain (I think dopamine), so it didn’t look like I was simply throwing new ideas in as positive emotion after the fact.
Anyway, it seems like you’re saying good advice will help a story spread because it’s more likely to be felt as right. And in one way that makes sense, but it’s not always true and I wouldn’t rely on that. Audiences very much enjoy things that have no chance of being true (like The Incredible Hulk or pretty much anything in the Avengers), as long as you make it believable enough that they can feel that it’s true while they’re watching...and the other positive emotions that you create with that thing can far outweigh something more mundane but accurate. (which is one way of explaining why the Hulk and other superheroes are so popular)
So I wouldn’t agree that it helps to give good advice in a story. If we can find a way to make the good information believable to our audience, then great. But if we can’t, then building a story around it will cause us to fail. We might succeed as scientists, since we have the best intentions and the best theory, but we will fail as storytellers.
the positive emotion we get from new ideas is quite verifiable as a pleasure chemical in the brain (I think dopamine),
How is this relevant to anything?
Anyway, it seems like you’re saying good advice will help a story spread because it’s more likely to be felt as right.
No, I’m saying that good advice will help a story spread because it makes the person listening to the story more successful and thus better able to spread it to others.
Audiences very much enjoy things that have no chance of being true (like The Incredible Hulk or pretty much anything in the Avengers),
In the sense of superpowers not existing, I agree. In the sense that superheroes represent how heroes should act in some sense, the story is indeed true on that level.
I didn’t want my earlier post to appear to anyone as though I was “band-aiding” my statement by adding the category of new ideas to my initial statement of things being for positive emotion after new ideas were brought up. But since you both had already replied, I thought it might be confusing to go back and edit it. As I’m sure you understand, we can’t always express ourselves perfectly and since you quoted that exact part, I figured I’d mention it.
No, I’m saying that good advice will help a story spread because it makes the person listening to the story more successful and thus better able to spread it to others.
Ah, but the person will only listen to the story and tell it to others if it feels true to them in the first place. If we want to spread an actual true idea amongst that group, it better be coupled with things that feel good or feel right to them. Thus, since feeling right will make the story spread regardless of its truth, and truth will only spread if its coupled with feeling right, I maintain that feeling right is the primary factor.
In the sense of superpowers not existing, I agree. In the sense that superheroes represent how heroes should act in some sense, the story is indeed true on that level.
Yes, and we responded to that as audience members. But we also responded to the excitement that’s created by the action scenes, which we would never have put in the story if our primary goal was to be accurate instead of to find what makes the most feeling.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that truth in general is not a good thing. It’s probably even the best thing when it comes to what we discuss. But in terms of what makes stories successful, I’ve found that truth simply isn’t primary, though I’ve seen it often stated as though it is.
The sun-and-moon story is intended to create the release of the pleasure-chemicals (I think dopamine) that we feel when we get a new idea or are exposed to new or interesting thoughts.
This feeling (I just refer to it as “enlightenment”) is actually one of the strongest positive emotional experiences we can have. And that feeling, of an interesting or correct new idea, is what actually is important for the story to work. Whether or not the idea is true in reality is basically irrelevant.
Your post was not about selling the sun-and-moon story but about telling a story about how stories create positive emotions.
If you want to understand stories you don’t learn much when you only focus on the kind of stories that you see on TV, read in fiction books or tell at campfires.
Start investigating the stories that you tell other people. Start investigating the stories that you tell yourself.
As far as strength of stories I don’t think the sun-and-the-moon story in the form you told it is very strong.
I do have the experience at being at NLP seminars (Bandler line, the line after Grinder is less narrated). There you have people who tell stories that take away someone’s phobia of spiders without the person noticing. Other stories did affect me on a physical level in a way where I switched from having my body weight from being in the inside of my feet to being at the outside of my feet.
Apart from the experience of NLP I did QS press work that about telling a story. After doing it for half a year I found myself giving a talk in front of 300 hackers at the Chaos Computer Congress. In addition I had brought along 3 journalist to cover it for their documentary about measurement in general. Two of them do the core documentary and the third was the camera man.
Dealing with the energy that flows when you throws yourself into a bigger story isn’t easy. I did things like giving an interview for two hours knowing that the journalist picks less than one minute of what I say. Doing that and not saying details that I don’t want in the story is mentally challenging.
Most of my Lesswrong posts aren’t heavily narrated. On LW I focus on trying to communicate intellectual ideas instead of focusing on telling stories. I do sometimes add narration into a post but not at the expense of intellectual depth.
If you want to understand stories take a look at my latest LW post about stories: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jly/on_straw_vulcan_rationality/ahns . When you have got the first layer of the story, read it again and see what payload it contains besides the obvious message. It’s a story that does a little more than just creating positive emotions (despite being narrated the post is all true facts).
Your post was not about selling the sun-and-moon story but about telling a story about how stories create positive emotions.
If you want to understand stories you don’t learn much when you only focus on the kind of stories that you see on TV, read in fiction books or tell at campfires.
I’m focused on any type of story that causes a positive reaction from people or spreads among people. I personally have found it to be wonderfully complex and have learned an incredible amount studying this.
Start investigating the stories that you tell other people. Start investigating the stories that you tell yourself. As far as strength of stories I don’t think the sun-and-the-moon story in the form you told it is very strong.
Let’s not misunderstand each other. I didn’t say that it was a strong story, that goes into a list of multiple things that stories can do for us, that would be enough for a number of discussions...and strong stories do many things from that list. I only provided a single example to try to isolate one thing, which is that stories don’t require protagonists.
I do have the experience at being at NLP seminars (Bandler line, the line after Grinder is less narrated). There you have people who tell stories that take away someone’s phobia of spiders without the person noticing. Other stories did affect me on a physical level in a way where I switched from having my body weight from being in the inside of my feet to being at the outside of my feet.
Well firstly, neuro-linguistic programming is speech. It might overlap with stories, but it is not the same category. We’d have to discuss the actual nature of what was said to see if it fits the commonly accepted idea of a story (and of course we’ll have to come to some reasonable definition). Also, we would investigate whether you enjoyed this experience, and if so we can see if you spread or shared what happened to you because of that enjoyment, which would bring us back to what I said about what makes stories spread or be successful.
Apart from the experience of NLP I did QS press work that about telling a story. After doing it for half a year I found myself giving a talk in front of 300 hackers at the Chaos Computer Congress. In addition I had brought along 3 journalist to cover it for their documentary about measurement in general. Two of them do the core documentary and the third was the camera man.
I’m sure you’re a very intelligent person with relevant experiences. Naturally though, I’m most interested in the ideas we’re discussing, and the examples, logic and so on we can bring to it, as we can always be wrong regardless of what qualifications we have.
Dealing with the energy that flows when you throws yourself into a bigger story isn’t easy. I did things like giving an interview for two hours knowing that the journalist picks less than one minute of what I say. Doing that and not saying details that I don’t want in the story is mentally challenging.
Most of my Lesswrong posts aren’t heavily narrated. On LW I focus on trying to communicate intellectual ideas instead of focusing on telling stories. I do sometimes add narration into a post but not at the expense of intellectual depth.
I understand totally. We always have to strike the balance between covering what we need and not saying too much. I certainly at times have this issue too.
If you want to understand stories take a look at my latest LW post about stories: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jly/on_straw_vulcan_rationality/ahns . When you have got the first layer of the story, read it again and see what payload it contains besides the obvious message. It’s a story that does a little more than just creating positive emotions (despite being narrated the post is all true facts).
Let me clarify my point here. Stories CAN do more than give you positive emotions (like give you actual true and useful information), but I hold that positive emotions are the primary thing they do, and play the major role in causing people to like stories and spread them to others, which are key to stories (and books, movies, storytelling speeches, myths etc etc) being profitable or just well-known and “successful.”
I don’t think the prime reason that journalists want to interview me about QS is the fact that the story about QS provides positive emotions for the audience of the news article.
Memes can profit from bringing people positive emotions but plenty of memes spread throughout society because it’s beneficial to spread them for other reasons.
Is the core reason that I recommended HPMOR to another person that it’s fun? No, it’s not. I find the story fun but I recommend it for reasons that are deeper.
Stories CAN do more than give you positive emotions (like give you actual true and useful information
That’s not what I meant with payload. The post makes quite controversial claims and if you look at my posts in general you will find that posts with negative claims often do receive a few downvotes. This post is voted 100% positive as of the time of this writing. There’s a reason for that. It’s not that the post provides mainly actual true and useful information.
Or to be more accurate there are two reasons one is more obvious than the other. Writing the post in a NLP way to have it 100% positive was an act of walking my talk. Highly manipulative but anyone who sees the manipulation and that it effects them has to accept the point I’m making.
I don’t think the prime reason that journalists want to interview me about QS is the fact that the story about QS provides positive emotions for the audience of the news article.
Well journalism might be a slightly different category, but I still think we can use it. I’ll try to demonstrate this in as clear and concise a manner as possible. Which newspaper are you more likely to buy, one that tells you things you feel are true and interesting, or one that tells you things you DON’T feel are true and interesting?
Memes can profit from bringing people positive emotions but plenty of memes spread throughout society because it’s beneficial to spread them for other reasons.
Is the core reason that I recommended HPMOR to another person that it’s fun? No, it’s not. I find the story fun but I recommend it for reasons that are deeper.
We need examples of these reasons in order to discuss them.
That’s not what I meant with payload. The post makes quite controversial claims and if you look at my posts in general you will find that posts with negative claims often do receive a few downvotes. This post is voted 100% positive as of the time of this writing. There’s a reason for that. It’s not that the post provides mainly actual true and useful information.
I can’t agree immediately that positive votes accurately represent a story being spread or giving people these types of emotions. They might, but there might be other factors there, like personal issues, flames etc. But that’s a tangent and let’s not go off on too many of those.
Highly manipulative but anyone who sees the manipulation and that it effects them has to accept the point I’m making.
But why? Why do they accept the point? Because it strikes them as true. This is separate from whether it’s actually true. Remember my example of ancient creation myths. They are most definitely not true, but they spread and effected people because the ancient villagers felt that they were true, or felt that it satisfied their curiosity. Perhaps you can see why I thus state that feeling true or feeling useful or correct is what’s important here, rather than actually being so. (actually being true is what’s important for science)
That would be an example of a story without a protagonist. Your life has, by definition, a protagonist; you. it cannot therefore be a story without a protagonist. It might not be ‘story’ as a whole, but as long as you desire something, it seems to me that the story of your life will fit into that definition.
Hi CCC,
The story of your life would definitely include a protagonist. But I think there are other things we could agree would fit the category of a story (like perhaps “How the Universe was born” with an actual scientifically supportable account of the big bang), but which wouldn’t have any type of human or living protagonist.
Hopefully this makes some sense.
Yes, that makes perfect sense. I can list several ideas for stories without a protagonist, as well; any physical process (e.g. the hydrological cycle) would do, amongst others.
My point was that, though these are stories, they are not and cannot be the story of a person’s life (due to the lack of a protagonist). Looking back over my comment, I see it was a good deal less clear than I thought it was at the time, and for that I apologise.
Hi CCC,
I think we’re on similar ground. But let me be clear, stories exist (according to my best estimates) to create positive emotions. So a physical process would be a story IF it was something you could or would tell to other people to interest them. Or, similarly, to thrill or excite them (I think some people would view stories about comets impacting planets etc as exciting).
You’re right though that these definitely are NOT the story of someone’s life. I was just trying to point out originally that the quote used the term “story” without any additional qualifiers when talking about a person and so on...and I wanted to make it clear that while it is VERY common and useful to use people or main characters when telling stories...it’s not actually a requirement. And of course, knowing the core requirements and meanings for terms or ideas help us to think about those ideas clearly and use them properly.
Similar to what you said at the end, I know that my examples may not have been perfectly chosen, and I hope this helps. Like I said, this is my personal pet-topic and I’m looking into starting a series of posts on it, since I don’t see much related to it here, and there are amazing things to be learned when you approach books, movies and other modern stories with rational tools to understand how they really work.
I think I agree.
Hmmm… some stories are written with the intention of creating negative emotions (sadness, anger, fear). While these are not the stories I enjoy, they do exist. And some stories are written with the intention of passing along information, not emotion (for example, to give a true account of some historical event(s)).
“Story” is a very broad term.
I’m perfectly in agreement with your second paragraph, and I do believe I would find such a series of posts interesting. One can learn things from books, yes, but one must be careful what lessons one takes away; not all things that fiction teaches are true.
Hi CCC,
Yes, there are stories that seem to have the sole effect of pissing people off. And there are also some rare people who write what they think are stories with the intent of making people angry or sad (fear in a lot of cases creates excitement or adrenaline, which is why a lot of people like horror movies so I can’t list fear among the negatives).
But I think in the majority of those cases, if you speak to most of those people and look at their work, you’ll find that their intent was, in their minds, to “educate” or “inform” other people. (though often these people don’t have anything very insightful to really say), so their intent was to do something positive via negative means.
At the end of the day though, and here’s an example of how my thoughts aren’t coming out in a clear order, there’s an important distinction here and I’m glad you found it to help me clarify myself. Stories exist, according to our modern usage, to create emotions, positive OR negative, but we WATCH stories to get positive emotions. When we get overall good feelings (whichever they may be, excitement, satisfaction etc), we will say things like “that was a damned good movie.” And when we don’t get those feelings, we’ll say and think that it was bad.
A lot of people who write stories do so to create the negative emotions, and I think those people are confused and, if their goal is to be professional writers and build an audience, they’re dooming themselves to fail. As I’m sure you can know from other fields, writing has many people who don’t really understand what they’re doing and don’t think clearly about it and get bad results because of it.
As far as sad stories go, I do believe that one particularly famous example can be found in Romeo And Juliet (Shakespeare). Some people actually do enjoy a well-written sad story; there’s even a whole page on tvtropes called “Downer Ending” which lists a lot of sad stories, some of which are actually quite well-written and thought-provoking.
I don’t think they were all written with the explicit intention of being sad stories, though. I imagine that quite a few were written with the intention of, instead of provoking an emotional response, rather provoking some other response. For example, Flowers for Algernon (I don’t know if you’re familiar with it) is most certainly a sad story, especially near the end; but the intention seems to be to inspire thought and raise questions rather than to inspire emotion. (It also won a few awards; sad stories don’t necessarily fail).
So, yes, while inspiring emotion is one reason to write stories, even a common reason, it is far from the only reason.
(I don’t know the formatting yet, so when I use capitalized words here, I’m just doing it for emphasis, not to yell at you, of course)
Hi CCC,
That is a great thing to bring up, and very important. There are indeed stories, like Flowers for Algernon (or my favorite example, almost every episode of the original Twilight Zone), that quite clearly exist to give IDEAS instead of what appears to be basic emotions. And this leads us to one of the most eye-opening conclusions I ever had about storytelling.
You see...YES, some stories ARE primarily intended to inspire thought and raise questions, BUT...and here’s one of the things that was a “eureka moment” for me...getting those new ideas...those inspiring ideas or things to think about...ALSO give us a positive emotion...and THAT positive emotion...a feeling I refer to as “enlightenment”...IS why those stories exist.
This is exactly why I say (and I’m sure others say) that a good scientist has to BE right, regardless of how he sounds, but a good storyteller has to SOUND right, regardless of whether or not he actually is right.
Quick example...THIS is why creation-myths are so popular as stories. They aren’t actually RIGHT, but they are plausible enough to satisfy the curiosity of the ancient people who heard them. They wanted to know where the Sun came from. The idea that Horus created it (or a chariot pulled it across the sky), did the job for them nicely, so that story was successful and spread through the culture. If you had tried to tell them about gravity as a physical force, it wouldn’t have involved things they understood, so it wouldn’t have worked. It would’ve been fine for science, but would’ve failed to spread, interest and capture the imagination of the audience, which is basically what a great story does.
There are plenty of ways this applies, and lots of ways we get these feelings of new, useful or satisfying ideas from stories...but it is indeed one major thing that stories can do. But I hope I did a decent job here of describing how it fits with this idea of stories existing to generate emotion.
Huh. I never thought of it that way.
Hmmm… some stories might be designed as warnings (this is what happens if you throw too many nuclear bombs about!), or to try to get more people to work on a difficult problem (this is what happens if we don’t solve world hunger!) or to try to promote a worldview (this is why my proposed political system is the best!). In the latter two cases, they would work best if they also inspire a positive emotional response, encouraging more people to share the story; in these cases, as with the thought-inspiring stories, inspiring a positive emotion is not the major aim of the story, but it is an important part of the story nonetheless.
This still leaves the warning story; the story of the person who went down a dark path, and comes out the worse for it. Hmmm… now that I think about it, I guess such a story could be written to appeal to a sort of feeling of moral superiority, a sort of smugness, a “I-wouldn’t-be-so-evil” sort of feeling. (I’m not sure that that’s necessarily a positive emotion, but it is a pleasant one).
Hmmm. You raise a surprisingly good point. I’m sure there are still counterexamples out there (how would you class Macbeth, for example?) but they’re clearly a lot rarer then I’d thought.
Hi CCC,
This is very exciting. I was hoping to be able to share some of my ideas here about this field with rational-minded people and see if they found them interesting (I find this site’s content and its members extremely interesting), and even this little chat here is quite encouraging.
Anyway, there are certainly stories that are designed with an agenda (like you said, as warnings) or to get people to care about something. BUT, if the story doesn’t actually work and doesn’t feel correct to people, it won’t be effective. For example (and I hope this is a good example), imagine if we took a story that illustrated the Big Bang back to some of our ancient ancestors. They would laugh us out of the village (if they didn’t kill us) and tell us that Vishnu created the Universe in a flower from his belly. In this case, our story has failed, even though we had the intent to tell them something extremely important and much more true than what they already believed.
Now, the second point you brought up is great, and it is indeed separate from giving “enlightenment”. Which is the story of a person who goes down the dark path and fails. This is a fine story obviously and many successful stories (like tragedies) take this form. But while these are not giving us a NEW idea, instead, they’re UNDERLINING what we already believe or know is true, which ALSO feels very good, though not QUITE as good as enlightenment. I label this, underlining what we know, as “Confirmation.” And in short, THIS is why we want to see the right guy get the girl, and people who have tragic flaws suffer from them, and why Batman can’t lose in the end (and you’d better not try it if you write the new Batman movie). We expect (though we may not know it consciously) movies to give us that feeling in the end...that what we believe is true, in this case that the person who shows the good traits eventually wins.
I actually haven’t been able to read Shakespeare yet, (the Old English is a tough barrier for me), but I do intend to...and we may find that Macbeth gives this feeling of confirmation, as many tragedies do, which is why it functions well.
Anyway if I get started this post will run all day. But I hope this is interesting and makes sense. I’m using this exchange as a measure for whether or not people might like posts on this topic.
When typing a reply notice that to the right of the “comment” button is a “help” button. You now know how to do emphasis without yelling.
There are all manner of ways that message boards do their formatting and give information about their formatting. “Help” buttons, absent any additional labeling, aren’t necessarily quick formatting lists, they might talk about dozens of things that people may require help with, such as forum standards of conduct, how the rules for thread starting, karma, your personal page and so on function before they get to such smaller issues, if they do so at all. Likewise, formatting itself may simply rely on users being already familiar with HTML tags or bracket-style functions. So absent your pre-existing knowledge of where it is, it is not so automatically clear to those who are new.
Please keep this in mind when you speak to others in the future, as your incorrect hindsight bias appears to have effected your tone.
I know. This is why my instructions consisted of new information. You expressed ignorance (by way of excuse). That’s fine, once. And by social convention in exchange for not getting downvoted to oblivion for yelling, that expression of ignorance obligates you to listen when you get an explanation you prompted with some modicum of grace. It isn’t condescension if you literally ask for it.
It so happens that it took me several years before it occurred to me that the ‘help’ button showed formatting help. Prior to that I referred people to the markdown boards after deducing what formatting system was being used by googling what how reddit-clones work. When I say “you now have” I meant that literally, with the direct implication “you did not previously have”.
Your mind reading is flawed. (Come to think of it, it is verifiably flawed. If we really cared we could look at the public record of conversations held in past “welcome, formatting guide” discussions.)
Now, let me revise my earlier instruction to something more appropriate to someone with your tone, so that we are abundantly clear. It’ll also give you some much needed contrast so you will be better able to identify actual abrasive tone. I do use it (and endorse it) sometimes, just not in response to implied format guide queries. Typically it is in response to people combining aggression or condescension with being wrong.
Please do not YELL at people on this forum. Ignorance was once an excuse but only barely… it was still lazy, unnecessary and mildly disrespectful. People write entire novels without without once relying on formatting for emphasis and their books tend to be better for it. Now you have been given simple instructions that take only several seconds to follow continuing to do so would be obnoxious and treated as a defection against the community.
No, I’m sorry, but this nonsense is not worth the digression.
Earlier in this topic I noticed already that you used the term “ceretus paribus,” which is flat-out wrong. The term is “ceteris paribus.” I could just as easily have replied to you in a snide manner telling you to go to google and put in that word you found and “now you know not to say that again.” But I choose not to because it’s not necessary or constructive to address people that way, and when viewed in the proper light, you understand that a simple overlap of one’s knowledge where someone else lacks knowledge is not evidence nor justification for me to try to speak down to them.
Please learn this and figure out how to conduct yourself better in the future in your interactions with people.
And yet you did, and seem to be persisting.
Please leave the site.
That is to say, you are entirely welcome here and I presume absolutely no right to expel people. Nevertheless I entirely endorse my responses here in all regards except the typographical error that I made (thankyou for pointing that out). Given that you reacted so poorly even to polite and necessary information granting (of the same kind that has been given and received hundreds of times before) I have reason to believe you will behave even more poorly when you attempt to discuss something where there is an actually important or difficult question at hand. I anticipate that unless you change we would be better without you and that your experience here will be negatively.
I certainly don’t plan on being influenced to pay you undue respect whenever you throw your little tantrums and if I judge correctly I am only slightly less accommodating than average in that regard. It’s hard enough for most people to get along via text on forums without people who start and escalate social dominance battles on a whim. Just take it elsewhere.
If the site consisted solely of people like you, who don’t recognize what I said, I wouldn’t have posted.
You’re welcome not to reply to anything else I say, and I will gladly do the same with you.
My typical (and suggested) policy with respect to people with whom interaction is not desired but who are present in a shared community is to respond only for the purpose of making necessary contributions to the broader conversation. There is a correlation between the groups and the groups . (If not for such an approach there would be a rather glaring exploit. Just escalate conflict with anyone who disagrees with you until nobody is permitted to argue.)
Totally false. If one person escalates conflict with anyone who disagrees with them, they will quickly have no one to talk to, or have too many enemies to have a positive experience, while you can ignore them. You’re welcome to try this approach. Buh-bye.
Where I previously expected EGarrett to exhibit undesired social behaviour I now anticipate him combining that with a complete incomprehension of simple game theory.
This is an utterly bizarre retort given that the entire reason I do not recommend that people must refrain from replying to people who do not treat them well is because of the perverse incentives it creates. I myself help ensure that the approach doesn’t work (even to the extent of publicly opposing it when used by a particularly high status individual here) so clearly I’m not going to use the approach. Since I assume you are not intending to be deliberately disingenuous with your insult it would seem that you do not understand the position being expressed (since one of those two must be true).
Nope, and that’s a completely wrong interpretation of what I said. It’s best for you to move onto other topics that might actually add something to your experience here, and I intend to do the same.
Apologies to anyone else scrolling through this topic. I won’t be replying again and will skip over anything else wedrifid says to try to perpetuate it.
Who won? Who lost? YOU DECIDE!
In such exchanges both people lose almost all the time.
It is possible but extremely difficult to actually come off ahead in such things but I certainly don’t have that skill. The choice I have to make when deciding whether to engage is whether it is worth spending the karma and reputation in order to ensure that the initial defection has a negative rather than positive incentive. It is a much milder and more common variant of the decision faced regarding dueling in honour based societies that serve the role of reducing small social costs by risking larger ones.
As a general tendency I likely err too much on the side of “refuse to submit to social dominance ploys” and so in retrospect would advise myself to be more conciliatory in most cases. In this case, however, I seem to reflectively endorse my approach and would only change details to optimise effectiveness, not general strategy.
It’s like the dollar auction, but with social standing instead of money!
That depends on what level of causation you’re talking about. Even then it helps if the story gives good advice since it’s more likely to be passed on if the person doing the passing was successful.
Hi Eugine,
One thing I noticed earlier about my post that you quoted is that I should’ve added that the positive emotion we get from new ideas is quite verifiable as a pleasure chemical in the brain (I think dopamine), so it didn’t look like I was simply throwing new ideas in as positive emotion after the fact.
Anyway, it seems like you’re saying good advice will help a story spread because it’s more likely to be felt as right. And in one way that makes sense, but it’s not always true and I wouldn’t rely on that. Audiences very much enjoy things that have no chance of being true (like The Incredible Hulk or pretty much anything in the Avengers), as long as you make it believable enough that they can feel that it’s true while they’re watching...and the other positive emotions that you create with that thing can far outweigh something more mundane but accurate. (which is one way of explaining why the Hulk and other superheroes are so popular)
So I wouldn’t agree that it helps to give good advice in a story. If we can find a way to make the good information believable to our audience, then great. But if we can’t, then building a story around it will cause us to fail. We might succeed as scientists, since we have the best intentions and the best theory, but we will fail as storytellers.
I hope this makes sense.
How is this relevant to anything?
No, I’m saying that good advice will help a story spread because it makes the person listening to the story more successful and thus better able to spread it to others.
In the sense of superpowers not existing, I agree. In the sense that superheroes represent how heroes should act in some sense, the story is indeed true on that level.
I didn’t want my earlier post to appear to anyone as though I was “band-aiding” my statement by adding the category of new ideas to my initial statement of things being for positive emotion after new ideas were brought up. But since you both had already replied, I thought it might be confusing to go back and edit it. As I’m sure you understand, we can’t always express ourselves perfectly and since you quoted that exact part, I figured I’d mention it.
Ah, but the person will only listen to the story and tell it to others if it feels true to them in the first place. If we want to spread an actual true idea amongst that group, it better be coupled with things that feel good or feel right to them. Thus, since feeling right will make the story spread regardless of its truth, and truth will only spread if its coupled with feeling right, I maintain that feeling right is the primary factor.
Yes, and we responded to that as audience members. But we also responded to the excitement that’s created by the action scenes, which we would never have put in the story if our primary goal was to be accurate instead of to find what makes the most feeling.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that truth in general is not a good thing. It’s probably even the best thing when it comes to what we discuss. But in terms of what makes stories successful, I’ve found that truth simply isn’t primary, though I’ve seen it often stated as though it is.
All the best to you.
Which positive emotion is the story that you did tell in your post supposed to create?
Hi Christian,
The sun-and-moon story is intended to create the release of the pleasure-chemicals (I think dopamine) that we feel when we get a new idea or are exposed to new or interesting thoughts.
This feeling (I just refer to it as “enlightenment”) is actually one of the strongest positive emotional experiences we can have. And that feeling, of an interesting or correct new idea, is what actually is important for the story to work. Whether or not the idea is true in reality is basically irrelevant.
Hopefully this makes sense.
Your post was not about selling the sun-and-moon story but about telling a story about how stories create positive emotions.
If you want to understand stories you don’t learn much when you only focus on the kind of stories that you see on TV, read in fiction books or tell at campfires.
Start investigating the stories that you tell other people. Start investigating the stories that you tell yourself. As far as strength of stories I don’t think the sun-and-the-moon story in the form you told it is very strong.
I do have the experience at being at NLP seminars (Bandler line, the line after Grinder is less narrated). There you have people who tell stories that take away someone’s phobia of spiders without the person noticing. Other stories did affect me on a physical level in a way where I switched from having my body weight from being in the inside of my feet to being at the outside of my feet.
Apart from the experience of NLP I did QS press work that about telling a story. After doing it for half a year I found myself giving a talk in front of 300 hackers at the Chaos Computer Congress. In addition I had brought along 3 journalist to cover it for their documentary about measurement in general. Two of them do the core documentary and the third was the camera man.
Dealing with the energy that flows when you throws yourself into a bigger story isn’t easy. I did things like giving an interview for two hours knowing that the journalist picks less than one minute of what I say. Doing that and not saying details that I don’t want in the story is mentally challenging.
Most of my Lesswrong posts aren’t heavily narrated. On LW I focus on trying to communicate intellectual ideas instead of focusing on telling stories. I do sometimes add narration into a post but not at the expense of intellectual depth.
If you want to understand stories take a look at my latest LW post about stories: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jly/on_straw_vulcan_rationality/ahns . When you have got the first layer of the story, read it again and see what payload it contains besides the obvious message. It’s a story that does a little more than just creating positive emotions (despite being narrated the post is all true facts).
Hi Christian,
I’m focused on any type of story that causes a positive reaction from people or spreads among people. I personally have found it to be wonderfully complex and have learned an incredible amount studying this.
Let’s not misunderstand each other. I didn’t say that it was a strong story, that goes into a list of multiple things that stories can do for us, that would be enough for a number of discussions...and strong stories do many things from that list. I only provided a single example to try to isolate one thing, which is that stories don’t require protagonists.
Well firstly, neuro-linguistic programming is speech. It might overlap with stories, but it is not the same category. We’d have to discuss the actual nature of what was said to see if it fits the commonly accepted idea of a story (and of course we’ll have to come to some reasonable definition). Also, we would investigate whether you enjoyed this experience, and if so we can see if you spread or shared what happened to you because of that enjoyment, which would bring us back to what I said about what makes stories spread or be successful.
I’m sure you’re a very intelligent person with relevant experiences. Naturally though, I’m most interested in the ideas we’re discussing, and the examples, logic and so on we can bring to it, as we can always be wrong regardless of what qualifications we have.
I understand totally. We always have to strike the balance between covering what we need and not saying too much. I certainly at times have this issue too.
Let me clarify my point here. Stories CAN do more than give you positive emotions (like give you actual true and useful information), but I hold that positive emotions are the primary thing they do, and play the major role in causing people to like stories and spread them to others, which are key to stories (and books, movies, storytelling speeches, myths etc etc) being profitable or just well-known and “successful.”
I don’t think the prime reason that journalists want to interview me about QS is the fact that the story about QS provides positive emotions for the audience of the news article.
Memes can profit from bringing people positive emotions but plenty of memes spread throughout society because it’s beneficial to spread them for other reasons.
Is the core reason that I recommended HPMOR to another person that it’s fun? No, it’s not. I find the story fun but I recommend it for reasons that are deeper.
That’s not what I meant with payload. The post makes quite controversial claims and if you look at my posts in general you will find that posts with negative claims often do receive a few downvotes. This post is voted 100% positive as of the time of this writing. There’s a reason for that. It’s not that the post provides mainly actual true and useful information.
Or to be more accurate there are two reasons one is more obvious than the other. Writing the post in a NLP way to have it 100% positive was an act of walking my talk. Highly manipulative but anyone who sees the manipulation and that it effects them has to accept the point I’m making.
Well journalism might be a slightly different category, but I still think we can use it. I’ll try to demonstrate this in as clear and concise a manner as possible. Which newspaper are you more likely to buy, one that tells you things you feel are true and interesting, or one that tells you things you DON’T feel are true and interesting?
We need examples of these reasons in order to discuss them.
I can’t agree immediately that positive votes accurately represent a story being spread or giving people these types of emotions. They might, but there might be other factors there, like personal issues, flames etc. But that’s a tangent and let’s not go off on too many of those.
But why? Why do they accept the point? Because it strikes them as true. This is separate from whether it’s actually true. Remember my example of ancient creation myths. They are most definitely not true, but they spread and effected people because the ancient villagers felt that they were true, or felt that it satisfied their curiosity. Perhaps you can see why I thus state that feeling true or feeling useful or correct is what’s important here, rather than actually being so. (actually being true is what’s important for science)