I haven’t been able to construct any hypotheticals where I’d use it…. tl;dr I think narrative syncing is a natural category but I’m much less confident that “narrative syncing disguised as information sharing” is a problem worth noting,
I’m curious what you think of the examples in the long comment I just made (which was partly in response to this, but which I wrote as its own thing because I also wish I’d added it to the post in general).
I’m now thinking there’re really four concepts:
Narrative syncing. (Example: “the sand is lava.”)
Narrative syncing that can easily be misunderstood as information sharing. (Example: many of Fauci’s statements about covid, if this article about it is correct.)
Narrative syncing that sets up social pressure not to disagree, or not to weaken the apparent social norm about how we’ll talk about that. (Example: “Gambi’s is agreat restaurant and we are all agreed on going there,” when said in an irate tone of voice after a long and painful discussion about which restaurant to go to.”)
Narrative syncing that falls into categories #2 and #3 simultaneously. (Example: “The 911 terrorists were cowards,” if used to establish a norm for how we’re going to speak around here rather than to share honest impressions and invite inquiry.)
I am currently thinking that category #4 is my real nemesis — the actual thing I want to describe, and that I think is pretty common and leads to meaningfully worse epistemics than an alternate world where we skillfully get the good stuff without the social pressures against inquiry/speech.
I also have a prediction that most (though not all) instances of #2 will also be instances of #3, which is part of why I think there’s a “natural cluster worth forming a concept around” here.
I’m curious what you think of the examples in the long comment I just made (which was partly in response to this, but which I wrote as its own thing because I also wish I’d added it to the post in general).
I’m now thinking there’re really four concepts:
Narrative syncing. (Example: “the sand is lava.”)
Narrative syncing that can easily be misunderstood as information sharing. (Example: many of Fauci’s statements about covid, if this article about it is correct.)
Narrative syncing that sets up social pressure not to disagree, or not to weaken the apparent social norm about how we’ll talk about that. (Example: “Gambi’s is a great restaurant and we are all agreed on going there,” when said in an irate tone of voice after a long and painful discussion about which restaurant to go to.”)
Narrative syncing that falls into categories #2 and #3 simultaneously. (Example: “The 911 terrorists were cowards,” if used to establish a norm for how we’re going to speak around here rather than to share honest impressions and invite inquiry.)
I am currently thinking that category #4 is my real nemesis — the actual thing I want to describe, and that I think is pretty common and leads to meaningfully worse epistemics than an alternate world where we skillfully get the good stuff without the social pressures against inquiry/speech.
I also have a prediction that most (though not all) instances of #2 will also be instances of #3, which is part of why I think there’s a “natural cluster worth forming a concept around” here.