Sunday, September 28, 2014

narrative fallacy


did you see John Kerry's article on Afghan unity government? link below and my thought is:

Politicians have us convinced that their measure is useful by pointing out instances where it proved helpful, not those where it was a waste of time, or, worse, those numerous objectives that were not met inflicted a severe cost on society owing to the highly unempirical nature of their approach. we naturally tend to look for instances that confirm our story and our vision of the world (narrative fallacy). one of those visions deal with the duality of nature - evil and good. this makes it possible for the government to construct stories that would fit our vision of the world and have us get behind it. You take past instances that corroborate your theories and you treat them as evidence. they will brush aside the numbers instances they failed. any fool with the tool can prove what they are looking for, a series of corroborative facts is not necessarily evidence. The government has massive resources to hire researcher to prove whatever they needed to be proven.  the exploitation of our confirmatory bias is then mixed with attempts like this; they will deliberately confuse audience when it suits them, they will be happy to show us their "accomplishment” and frame it as social accomplishment while there is no societal benefit from them having their job done. 


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