讲故事与叙事2021collaborativefund.com
会讲故事的人赢
Best Story Wins
导读
这篇文章主张：在说服他人、争取资源和塑造共识的竞争里，胜出的往往不是事实最扎实或想法最早出现的人，而是把复杂东西讲成一个好故事的人。文章提醒写作者，叙事不是包装，而是人理解世界的基本方式。对写作的人来说，它值得读的地方在于：它把“故事能力”说成核心生产力，不像通常那样只把它当技巧。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
先把抽象观点在自己脑中还原成一个具体、可感的场景或画面，再动笔写成文字，这样写出来的东西才有质感。
- 02
判断一段说明是否有效，标准不是信息是否齐全，而是读者能否在脑中“看见”你说的那件事。
- 03
别把通俗当成妥协：真正要警惕的是为了迎合更浮躁的读者而牺牲思考深度；达尔文式的耐心读者仍然存在。
- 04
想法本身不值钱，能说服世界相信它的人才拿到功劳；写作的终点是让人被说服，不是自己讲完。
HN 评论精选
故事和画面不只是沟通工具，更是思考本身的媒介；先有画面，再有符号。
故事不只用来劝别人，也会帮到你自己。爱因斯坦之所以出色，部分原因是他能把复杂问题蒸馏成脑中的一个简单画面。法国数学家阿达马晚年曾调查近百位顶尖数学家和物理学家“你怎么做研究”，结果只有少数人说自己用数学符号，几乎所有人都说主要靠意象或比喻，约三成（包括爱因斯坦）甚至说自己是“在泥巴里动手做”的。爱因斯坦说他有肌肉和动觉式的感觉，他能用手臂和手指的肌肉“感觉”到抽象的数学空间。Alan Kay 感叹：可悲的是，美国每个孩子学数学和物理走的是符号通道，而几乎所有有创造力的成年数学家、物理学家都不用这个通道做研究，他们只用它来交流。
yesenadam查看英文原文
> This is more than just persuading others. Stories help you just as much. Part of what made Albert Einstein so talented was his imagination and ability to distill complexity into a simple scene in his head. It sounds like every mathematician and physicist does this: "Jacques Hadamard, the famous French mathematician, in the late stages of his life, decided to poll his 99 buddies, who made up together the 100 great mathematicians and physicists on the earth, and he asked them, "How do you do your thing?" ... Only a few, out of the hundred, claimed to use mathematical symbology at all. Quite a surprise. All of them said they did it mostly in imagery or figurative terms. An amazing 30% or so, including Einstein, were down here in the mudpies [doing]. Einstein's deposition said, "I have sensations of a kinesthetic or muscular type." Einstein could feel the abstract spaces he was dealing with, in the muscles of his arms and his fingers... The sad part of [the doing -> images -> symbols] diagram is that every child in the United States is taught math and physics through this [symbolic] channel. The channel that almost no adult creative mathematician or physicist uses to do it... They use this channel to communicate, but not to do their thing." – Alan Kay, Doing With Images Makes Symbols http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987
人靠故事运转，讲故事是在满足人的基本需求，不是在迁就读者懒惰。
在一个理想世界里，信息的重要性不该取决于作者的口才。但我们生活的世界里，人们会厌倦、会不耐烦、会情绪化，需要把复杂的东西压缩成容易 grasp 的场景。没错，最好的故事会赢，但原因不是我们“无聊”或“没耐心”，而是我们本来就需要故事：宗教、政治、商业、爱情、科学，本质上都是一个个有说服力的故事集合。做人的过程，就是消费故事和产出故事。
bambax查看英文原文
> In a perfect world the importance of information wouldn’t rely on its author’s eloquence. But we live in a world where people are bored, impatient, emotional, and need complicated things distilled into easy-to-grasp scenes. It's absolutely true that the best story wins, but it's not because we are "bored" or "impatient". It is because we need stories. That is how we operate and it always has been the case. Religions are mostly a collection of compelling stories. Politics. Business. Love. Science. Being human is consuming and producing stories.
受众越大众化，胜出的故事标准越被拉低；深度写作要接受自己服务的是愿意思考的读者。
这话很对，但漏掉一个关键点：信息获取的民主化，逼着故事为了赢而变得更“降智”。把《物种起源》和《人类简史》相比，说这话的人大概只读过后者。达尔文写得好，不只因为文笔好；它有说服力，是因为它比之前任何人都更深入地传达了进化意味着什么。没有人在雀类和藤壶身上花的时间比他多。读《物种起源》需要一个有耐心、肯思考的读者。最好的故事依然会赢，但“最好”的定义随时代变了——就像工程实践越来越不信任开发者自己实现方案一样：受众规模一扩大，你能期待的平均投入就必然下降。
mihaic查看英文原文
I find this very true, and at the same time missing a crucial aspect: the democratization of access to information has forced stories to be more dumbed down to win. Comparing "The origin of species" with "Sapiens" probably means the author only read the later. Darwin's writing is not just good storytelling because of the quality of the prose. It's convincing because it conveys how he thought about the implications of evolution more deeply than anyone before him. Nobody had spent more time on finches and barnacles than Darwin! Reading "The origin of species" requires a patient and thoughtful audience. Best story still wins, but the definition of what this is has changed over time, just like how engineering best practices are putting less and less trust in the developer to implement his own solution -- a huge growth in audience almost always means a lower level of effort you can expect from the average audience member.
说服力本身就是成果的一部分；先想到不等于赢，讲明白才算。
“在科学上，功劳归于那个说服了全世界的人，而不归于最早想到这个想法的人。”——弗朗西斯·达尔文（达尔文之子）
breck查看英文原文
"In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to whom the idea first occurs." - Francis Darwin https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02569050 Mackay AL, Ebison M. A Harvest of a Quiet Eye. A Selection of Scientific Quotations. London: The Institute of Physics, 1977: 43.
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