I made a new post just now, “Believing In,” which offers a different account of some of the above phenomena.
My current take is that my old concept of “narrative syncing” describes the behaviorist outside of a pattern of relating that pops up a lot, but doesn’t describe the earnest inside that that pattern is kind of designed around.
(I still think “narrative syncing” is often done without an earnest inside, by people keeping words around an old icon after the icon has lost its original earnest meaning (e.g., to manipulate others), so I still want a term for that part; I, weirdly, do not often think using the term “narrative syncing,” it doesn’t quite do it for me, not sure what would. Some term that is to “believing in” as lying/deceiving is to “beliefs/predictions”.)
People around me often say things like, “We have a new toy! The norm is to put away all the pieces when you’re done playing with it” (or, more subtly, “I propose a norm of putting away all the pieces”), or “the Schelling time is tomorrow at noon”, or “now it’s common knowledge that I went to the shops [after saying ‘I went to the shops’]”. I often feel a little upset at this use of language. And then it helps me to think of the speech act as narrative syncing. My hackles are still a little raised (at least by the ‘norm’ one), but I understand more that the narrative syncing is doing something valuable.
I made a new post just now, “Believing In,” which offers a different account of some of the above phenomena.
My current take is that my old concept of “narrative syncing” describes the behaviorist outside of a pattern of relating that pops up a lot, but doesn’t describe the earnest inside that that pattern is kind of designed around.
(I still think “narrative syncing” is often done without an earnest inside, by people keeping words around an old icon after the icon has lost its original earnest meaning (e.g., to manipulate others), so I still want a term for that part; I, weirdly, do not often think using the term “narrative syncing,” it doesn’t quite do it for me, not sure what would. Some term that is to “believing in” as lying/deceiving is to “beliefs/predictions”.)
I’ll expand a little on how I use the concept.
People around me often say things like, “We have a new toy! The norm is to put away all the pieces when you’re done playing with it” (or, more subtly, “I propose a norm of putting away all the pieces”), or “the Schelling time is tomorrow at noon”, or “now it’s common knowledge that I went to the shops [after saying ‘I went to the shops’]”. I often feel a little upset at this use of language. And then it helps me to think of the speech act as narrative syncing. My hackles are still a little raised (at least by the ‘norm’ one), but I understand more that the narrative syncing is doing something valuable.