Thread by @conways_law, “Man is a story-telling primate.”I thought that was just my core belief. [...]

“Man is a story-telling primate.”

I thought that was just my core belief. But it’s turning out to be an axiom in a theory of politics. This is a work in process but I’ll give you an outline here.

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The ancient human practice of forming alliances through stories told around the campfire is embedded deep in our brains. In other words, “I believe” and “I believe in” are about personal association, not semantics.

Association is primary; truth and logic secondary.

2/14

The key idea here, and what distinguishes this from other approaches, is the definition of a “narrative”. Here, a narrative is defined, not by its story but by the group of people who identify with it. Let’s call them “adherents”.

3/14

When you adopt this framework, current events fall into place:
1. The 180 degree shifts in Republican statements make sense.
(e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2mvmeklx8I)
2.">https://www.youtube.com/watch... The Senate acquittal of Donald Trump makes sense.

4/14

3. General James Mattis said as much: “...even people who believe in him somehow believe in him without believing what he says.”
(see https://www.businessinsider.com/most-revealing-quotes-on-trump-from-mattis-in-bombshell-book-2020-9)

5/14">https://www.businessinsider.com/most-reve...

'Dangerous,' 'unfit,' and 'felony stupid': The most revealing quotes from Jim Mattis on Trump's...

"This degradation of the American experiment is real. This is tangible," retired Marine Corps general and former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said.

https://www.businessinsider.com/most-revealing-quotes-on-trump-from-mattis-in-bombshell-book-2020-9

4. The futility of debating issues with adherents who are captured by a prevailing narrative is evident on social media and cable news.
* *
What this framework suggests to me is that, if we are to heal America’s current divisions, we must focus on people, not propositions.

6/14

But how does this actually work with groups like the whole Republican Party? I’ve tweeted fragments about this. In the following, you can replace “open lie” by “prevailing narrative”.
https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1285990003244503044

7/14">https://twitter.com/conways_l...

https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1285990003244503044

The dynamic that makes a prevailing narrative sticky is its “restoring force”; that can range from rolled eyes to death threats, all in evidence today.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/08/05/dr-anthony-fauci-security-threats-gupta-vpx.cnn

8/14">https://www.cnn.com/videos/he...

Dr. Anthony Fauci tells Dr. Sanjay Gupta his family gets death threats - CNN Video

Dr. Anthony Fauci tells CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta that he has had to get security protection after his family received threats and harassment.

https://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2020/08/05/dr-anthony-fauci-security-threats-gupta-vpx.cnn

Also this thread, in which I introduce the idea of a network of adherents.
https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1291359016698945537

9/14">https://twitter.com/conways_l...

https://twitter.com/conways_law/status/1291359016698945537

The Mafia term “omertà” embodies this idea. The “stickiness” of a prevailing narrative is a measure of the external force that would be required to disrupt the network of adherents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0

10/14">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omer...

In a crime syndicate the Boss is surrounded by a ring of Captains, all of whom adhere to the group’s core belief. When this network has a capacity for inflicting inescapable pain it can get really sticky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caporegime

11/14">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capo...

In the recent CNN documentary “The Insiders” you see a view of the White House and the Pandemic Task Force as rings of Captains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xJosP7prQ

12/14">https://www.youtube.com/watch...

This framework gives us a formalism for modeling politics. A *divisive* question is one with a small number of answers whose respective sets of adherents are disjoint. Political parties are organized around divisive questions.

13/14

Remaining to be explored is whether this approach can be fruitful. I believe it suggests an approach to building agent-based simulators that model group behavior based on the dynamics of individual psychology, where restoring-force models can be tested.

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