讲故事与叙事2019nautil.us
大多数人的大脑无法分辨事实与虚构
Most of the Mind Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction
导读
这篇文章讨论一个认知现象：大脑在多数层面上并不区分事实与虚构，故事因此能像真实经验一样影响我们。对写作者来说，它值得一读，因为它把“为什么具体、可信的叙述比抽象说理更有力”这件事，放在认知机制上解释；不过评论也提醒，文章停在“虚构能骗过大脑”这一步，没解释我们为何如此痴迷故事。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
读者的大脑默认相信叙述，所以用具体的场景和细节（例如“快跑，狮子来了”）比先声明“这只是虚构”更能抓住注意力。
- 02
人们依靠“相信别人告诉我的话”这一省力的启发式来生活，写作时可以顺势利用它：先给出可信、紧迫、有用的信息，再谈抽象观点。
- 03
真实与虚构的界限本身是模糊的，社会靠共享的半虚构叙事维系；写故事时可以调用群体共识中的原型与神话，让读者产生“这说的就是我们”的感觉。
- 04
仅靠“幻觉骗过大脑”不足以解释故事的吸引力，真正打动人的是情绪本身；写 fiction 时，重心应放在情绪的来龙去脉，而不只是情节的机关。
HN 评论精选
事实与虚构的边界是社会语言建构的，写作者可利用共享的半虚构叙事。
这篇文章在哲学上有些薄弱，没有深入探讨“事实”和“虚构”这两个概念——很多哲学家认为它们本身就是混乱的语言概念。许多被当作事实的东西，其实只是被全社会接受的虚构；一个连贯持续的社会，几乎就依赖于共享的半虚构叙事。博尔赫斯的《特隆、乌克巴尔、奥比斯·特蒂乌斯》正是讲这个想法的绝佳短篇。此外，很小的孩子就能理性地处理故事中“假装”的成分，能老练地区分真实的、可能的与奇幻的；另一种解读是：孩子只是还没被成年人那套赋予某些虚构以特权、贬斥另一些虚构的社会语言世界所驯化。
keiferski查看英文原文
This article is ultimately a bit philosophically underwhelming because it doesn't delve deeper into the notions of "fact" and "fiction" and how (according to many philosophers, at least) they are ultimately messy linguistic concepts. There are many things considered facts which are really little more than fictions which have been accepted society-wide. Indeed the existence of a coherent continuing society seems almost dependent on a shared semi-fictional narrative. Jorge Luis Borges' Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is a fantastic short story on this idea. [1] Very young children “can rationally deal with the make-believe aspects of stories,” distinguishing the actual, the possible, and the fantastical with sophistication, as Denis Dutton has written in The Art Instinct. “Not only does the artistic structure of stories speak to Darwinian sources: so does the intense pleasure taken in their universal themes of love, death, adventure, family conflict, justice, and overcoming adversity.” An alternative view would be that children haven't been indoctrinated, for lack of a better word, into the socio-linguistic world of adults, which has privileged some fictions and relegated others. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlön,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius, http://art.yale.edu/file_columns/0000/0066/borges.pdf
“大脑分不清真假”并不解释故事的吸引力，真正的谜是情绪本身。
我没看出什么洞见。全文只是在说“我们的大脑让我们相信虚构”，这我们早就知道了。真正有趣、真正神秘的，是情绪的本质与特性。虚构像幻觉一样骗过大脑——那又怎样？这解释不了我们为何如此痴迷它。 Shepherd Tone 是一种听觉错觉，但我们不会连着几小时听 Shepherd Tone 专辑。是什么在驱使我们投入虚构？神秘而有趣的是情绪本身，而不是虚构能唤起情绪这件事。
TaupeRanger查看英文原文
I don't really see any insights here. This entire thing is just saying "our brains make us believe fiction". We already know that. The mysteries, which are the parts that are actually interesting, surround the underlying nature and character of emotions. So fiction tricks our brain like an illusion. Of course it does, but so what? That doesn't explain why we are so obsessed with it. The Shepherd Tone is an auditory illusion, but we don't sit and listen to albums of Shepherd Tones for hours on end. What compells us about fiction? It is the emotions themselves that are mysterious and interesting, not the fact that fiction elicits them.
生动的想象会被大脑当作真实经历，这支持了细节化描写的效力。
麦克斯韦尔·马尔茨博士的经典原著《心理控制术》（Psycho-Cybernetics）就基于这样一个理论：大脑分不清现实和对事件的生动想象。确实如此。建议你买原著来读，而不是丹·肯尼迪改编的版本。
RaceWon查看英文原文
The original classic book "Psycho-Cybernetics" -Dr. Maxwell Maltz is based on the theory that our brains can't tell the difference between reality and a vivid imagining of an event. So true. I urge you to buy and read the original--not the Dan Kennedy version.
默认信任他人叙述是生存策略，故事正是搭这趟便车。
我们有一个很强的启发式：“相信别人告诉你的事”。如果有人说“快跑！狮子来了！”或者“别吃这些浆果，会中毒”，默认相信对方是最好的策略。同样，“嘿，你钱包掉了”也是这样。正因为这个启发式如此强大，它当然容易被利用。但如果我们对每一条符号输入都做深入的认识论分析，大概还没饿死就先被吃掉了。
gumby查看英文原文
We have a powerful heuristic which is “believe what people tell you”. If someone says “quick, run! There's a lion coming!” Or “Don’t eat these berries: you’ll get sick” it’s best to believe them by default. Likewise, “Hey, I think you just dropped your wallet”. Because this heuristic is so powerful it’s of course easy to subvert. But if we did a deep epistemological analysis of every symbolic input we’d probably be eaten before we had time to starve to death.
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