You are already playing the narratives game

There is no way out and everything is at stake

The concept of “homo narrans” brought me here, and now you are here too. According to Wikipedia:

Fisher wrote that ‘many different root metaphors have been put forth to represent the essential nature of human beings: homo faber, homo economicous, homo politicus, homo sociologicus, “psychological man”, “ecclesiastical man”, homo sapiens, and, of course, “rational man”. I now propose homo narrans to be added to the list.’

That is misleading.¹

Homo economicus represents “the essential nature of human beings,” as much as spherical cows represent the essential nature of cows.²

Similarly, stories and narratives are not the essential nature of human beings or an essential part of what makes us humans. If you are not a good storyteller, do not like PowerPoint storytellers in your team, or do not enjoy The Neverending Story, please do not feel any less human for that.

Some of us may self-identify as engineers or scientists and share a passion for raw, pure, absolute, unadulterated, objective data; and scoff at “narratives.” Well… don’t.

“If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.” — Thomas theorem

Stories and narratives are powerful tools. As reality distortion fields, they impact perception, decisions, and actions. They shape our societies and our world for the good or the bad.

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell

The same data points may be interpreted from radically different narratives. (Please do not get distracted by the axes labels)

Data scientists and analysts are not supposed to be storytellers.³ But everyone else is, at least in their performance reviews, they need to persuade their bosses about how they saved the company from bankruptcy multiple times since the last performance review. This includes data scientists and analysts. Similarly, in job interviews, candidates are expected to explain how several companies thrived because of them and how the interviewing company will do the same.⁴

Complete objectivity may be impossible. Narratives are powerful and everywhere, and even if you want them out of your life, you will be competing with people using them in their favor. Most people will never be free of them. But that does not mean just rolling with them.⁵

What to do then:

1. If you are on a two-way door, you may not need narratives, data, elaborate processes, or further consideration. Just look inside.

2. Facts without stories are partial information and may misinform you. Avoid them, e.g., avoid the McNamara fallacy in company valuation.

3. Stories without facts may be worse than wrong, especially if they are not falsifiable. Try to avoid them too.

4. Postpone an opinion or a decision if you have not done the required work. — Deciding as late as possible is a principle in lean software development.

5. Avoid doing the work to have an opinion or make a decision if you can, i.e., having an opinion or making a decision at all. — Eliminating is the first step in the time management funnel. You do not need to have an opinion on absolutely everything.

6. Manage your ignorance and your knowledge, and get comfortable with partial information. Avoid both a false sense of certainty and seeking unattainable certainty. Work with probabilities.

7. Great power entails great responsibility. If you decide to exercise your powers of storytelling, narrative strategy, and related areas, please do so responsibly.

8. Beware of biases and rationalization. You may think you do not hold an opinion, and you are not making a decision, or you are doing so based on other criteria; when, in fact, you are applying wrong narratives unconsciously.

9. You will most likely need some storytelling skills to survive, even if you do not like or enjoy it. Deal with it, “git gud.”

If you need to have an opinion or make a decision:

1. Gather the data and the facts.

2. Collect competing narratives. They are a dime a dozen; it should be easy.

3. Try to prove as false as many of them as possible.

4. Rate by likelihood, with heuristics, Occam’s razor, first principles,…

5. Decide while being aware of the risk (probability and downside) in case of a mistake.

If “errare humanum est” and “the essence of human beings is falling prey to the illusions of narratives,” I hope this helps you to be super-human.

If this is interesting to you, you may want to read about the following:

• Pygmalion effect

• Postpositivism

• How what’s in our heads changes what’s in the world

• Reason seen more as weapon than path to truth

• Why facts don’t change our minds

• Not so much rational but rationalizing: humans evolved as coherence-seeking, fiction-making animals

• Problem of induction (often referred to as “inductivist turkey”)

• This short thread

• Anscombe’s quartet shows the opposite: four different datasets, summarized for the same “narrative”

• Adding data points may alter the narrative and the decisions, e.g., “Are we in control of our decisions? | Dan Ariely”

1. Misleading narratives might be the most salient feature of the homo narrans. On a side note, I think “homo economicus” is the most useful concept on the list.

2. Several plays on words with “homo sapiens” have been proposed but are not comparable. “Homo economicus” is a term that highlights the difference between the “human” behavior used for mathematical economic models and the real behavior. It is a way to show how the models are wrong and useless for some purposes. It tells us nothing about the essential nature of humans other than humans are not “homo economicus,” opening the possibility for different models, e.g., behavioral economics.

3. Therefore, when pointy-haired bosses ask data analysts to summarize their findings into actionable stories, they show many things, none of which are good. At the core, they are showing that they want smooth-talking bullshitmongers, and that is what they will get. If this is unimaginable in your experience, I have good news: some of your competitors are rotting inside out.

You will always need to sell yourself and your ideas. But the more you have to, and the less objective and informed the “buyers” are, the uglier it will get. There is no fighting against a dead horse; run for your life.

4. Please do not take my “comedy” literally. In interviews, please stick to the facts, and find a narrative for them that shows your best side fairly and honestly. If in doubt, refer to the image, the rest of the text, and the links. Or ask; you can even reply to emails.

“Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.” — the Comedian, as written by Alan Moore.

5. Similarly, no matter how clean your room is, it will never be a cleanroom. But that does not mean you should indulge in eating dirt, rolling on it, or throwing it at passersby. In modern societies, we have hygiene and rules for civilized coexistence.