Sunday, September 10, 2023

Narrative Enstupids Us

"…as a general rule, we’re too inclined to tell the good vs. evil story. As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine every time you’re telling a good vs. evil story, you’re basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more. If you just adopt that as a kind of inner mental habit, it’s, in my view, one way to get a lot smarter pretty quickly. You don’t have to read any books. Just imagine yourself pressing a button every time you tell the good vs. evil story, and by pressing that button you’re lowering your IQ by ten points or more."  Tyler Cowen, economist.  TED talk, 2010.

I would have said that TED talks temporarily lower your IQ, but I have always been impressed by Cowen. 

Which reminds me...

3 comments:

  1. This is the reason why I don't usually call opponents or arguments "stupid." Some of them really are, of course.

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  2. There's a transcript of that TED talk here:

    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4kphivjxngJmEdWsN/transcript-tyler-cowen-on-stories

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  3. A corollary of this point applies to partisan political arguments.

    ReplyDelete