These narratives are frameworks, or models. There’s the famous saying that all models are wrong, but some are useful. Here, the narratives take the complex world and try to simplify it by essentially factoring out “what matters”. Insofar as such models are correct or useful, they can aid in decision-making, e.g. for career choice, prioritisation, etc.
Even Less Wrong itself was founded on such a narrative, one developed over many years. Here’s EY’s current Twitter bio, for instance:
Ours is the era of inadequate AI alignment theory. Any other facts about this era are relatively unimportant, but sometimes I tweet about them anyway.
Similarly, a political science professor or historian might conclude a narrative about trends in Western democracies, or something. And the narrative that “Everyone is going to die, the way things stand.” (from aging, if nothing else) is as simple as it is underappreciated by the general public. If we took it remotely seriously, we would use our resources differently.
Finally, another use of the narratives in the OP is to provide a contrast to ubiquitous but wrong narratives, e.g. the doomed middle-class narrative that endless one-upmanship towards neighbors and colleagues will somehow make one happy.
These narratives are frameworks, or models. There’s the famous saying that all models are wrong, but some are useful. Here, the narratives take the complex world and try to simplify it by essentially factoring out “what matters”. Insofar as such models are correct or useful, they can aid in decision-making, e.g. for career choice, prioritisation, etc.
Even Less Wrong itself was founded on such a narrative, one developed over many years. Here’s EY’s current Twitter bio, for instance:
Similarly, a political science professor or historian might conclude a narrative about trends in Western democracies, or something. And the narrative that “Everyone is going to die, the way things stand.” (from aging, if nothing else) is as simple as it is underappreciated by the general public. If we took it remotely seriously, we would use our resources differently.
Finally, another use of the narratives in the OP is to provide a contrast to ubiquitous but wrong narratives, e.g. the doomed middle-class narrative that endless one-upmanship towards neighbors and colleagues will somehow make one happy.