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Comment by bryanrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

I guess I'd handle it by asking what proof there was that humans are biologically inclined to commit this fallacy.

on edit: I mean biologically inclined implies some genomic proof. Not just psychological studies.

Why does this need to be genomic? Why is psychological proof not enough?

There is plenty of evidence that shows that humans are susceptible to these types of fallacies, whether it's at explaining the world around us or even explaining our own behavior. My favorite study on self-justification is the split-brain experiment. But essentially if we are susceptible to after-the-fact narrative fallacies of our own behavior, we are definitely susceptible to it for the rest of the world, about which we know much less and which is far more complicated.

because of the words "biologically inclined", psychological proof has a pretty big inductive gap to leap to get to establishing a biological inclination.

Aspects of human beings that are widely present in people all over the world, and are therefore likely resistant to effective removal using known practical tools, is generally considered reasonable (but not incontrovertible) evidence for biological inclination. It is not necessary to have linked this to a particular gene, and doesn't cease to be "biological" if it involves gene-environment interactions. It was correct to say that most plants were biologically inclined to use the sun's energy before photosynthesis and DNA were understood.

sure, a big enough psychological study without any obvious flaws might sufficiently bridge the inductive gap for me. But I'm unaware of any, and I doubt to see one because it would be real difficult to get right. That said I haven't really looked for one, for the reasons given.

There's lots of biological knowledge we have that existed before formal studies. What I said about photosynthesis applies to claims by non-scientists observing plants informally.

Because that is what the person that coined the terms claims. That it is a biological inclination. On what basis is he claiming that?

I think when one looks around, narrative fallacy is ever-present. The evidence is all around us, in virtually every newspaper and book. We seek to make the world cause and effect, to make people "good" or "bad", etc.

One of my personal pet peeves around this fallacy is how often it arises in sports. Before Jordan won 6 championships, he was a "great player who didn't elevate his teammates". After all the winning, he became "the greatest player to ever play". People just want a simple story, because they're busy - it's hard to have a nuanced view of everything you see or hear about.

Yep. "biological inclination" doesn't have to mean there's some "fallacy gene". It just means that our brains have evolved to extrapolate as much as possible for the least effort (you try running a computer on this wattage..), we want fast decisions & most people don't want to have to maintain dozens of constraints in their head (only recently have we started learning to write down these constraints, which is much easier to keep track of)

Meanwhile ideas have evolutionary pressure too. It's called memes. Memes work best when they require low effort from their carriers. If a meme requires some existing knowledge, & truth often relies on knowledge, that means it can only be transmitted to those with the knowledge, unless it brings that knowledge as baggage

>I think when one looks around, narrative fallacy is ever-present

Yes I think the same, it's certainly a comforting story to tell oneself about why people reduce the complex world to simple narratives, thus narrative fallacy if it exists falls prey to narrative fallacy.

However I have to assume that I could be wrong and what I perceive as examples of this narrative fallacy and demonstrating its existence do nothing of the sort.

Finally, the evidence all around us that I perceive does not lead to a proof of a biological inclination. It just leads to my consideration that there might be one.

So if Jeff Bezos or Nassim Taleb tells me it's a biological inclination, I would be inclined to find some polite way to tell him to prove it.

I don’t think that’s a useful standard. Reducing human psychology down to genetics is A bit like trying to reduce weather forecasting down to quantum mechanics.

That’s not a perfect analogy because there are some genes that we know have strong psychological impact, but that doesn’t mean all human behaviour is neatly connected to specific isolatable gene sequences.

Did you read the article? There it is claimed that narrative fallacy is a biological inclination. Why would you not question that claim and ask for some proof?

The narrative fallacy is just a way for people to describe errors caused when conclusions are based inadequate information. It is an ancient and mundane idea with analogs across time and cultures.

The article mentions the biological nature of it, but I interpret that as the biological reality that humans are not omniscient, thus are always susceptible to filling in the gaps between empirical evidence with unsubstantiated prose.

Yes I read it. When it says biology, I don’t think it’s reasonable to substitute in genetics and retain the same sense.

Suppose that the tendency towards the narative fallacy is due to such fundamental architectural structures in our brain that they go back to our early mammal ancestors. If that is true, any genetic change sufficient to modify it materially would have to be so radical that we essentially wouldn’t have mammal brains anymore. We’re way beyond population genetics and incremental natural selection at that point. There’s no genetic study or engineering intervention we could possibly contemplate in our lifetimes that would be relevant.

So when I say genetics isn’t really an issue here it’s not because the behaviour isn’t genetically determined, it’s that it may be so strongly tied to huge, mutually interconnected tracts our our genome that it’s just not a useful level of abstraction for us at the moment.

You make a great point, there's a big temptation to commit narrative fallacy when trying to explain narrative fallacy.

So we should look for empirical evidence.

At the same time brains are complicated, psychology is complicated, genetics is complicated.

We know a lot about all of the above but we don't really understand any of them.

The history of all three sciences is full of narrative fallacies.

Given what we don't know, absolute proof, especially in genetics, isn't currently possible. So we have to settle for the best working explanation based on what we know. I think there is plenty of peer reviewed support for the idea that we are biologically inclined to look for neat explanations so that we can file challenging concepts away as resolved and focus our bandwidth on other things.

I think this means we're in agreement that it is probably so, but not necessarily so?

But still enough in the air to refrain from claiming biological inclination.

Sure, but biological inclination is the best available explanation to the degree that I'm not sure it has any competition at this point.

Asking for proof is useful, but it's a token exercise if you don't have an alternative explanation.

the reason that I don't see it as a token exercise is that ascribing things to biological inclination seems to be its own easy to fall into fallacy. So I like to avoid it while still conceding it may very well be the case in particular cases.

Whether or not humans are biologically inclined to it, it's still a valid question to ask "Are you considering this potential mistake when telling our story and taking precautions to avoid it?"

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