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Comment by justanotherjoe | Hacker News Reader

I find Robin Hanson's interpretation resonates more (on lex podcast). According to him, the executive brain (which is a huge chunk of consciousness) acts more like a press secretary than a dictator. It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others. So making a narrative is THE JOB of the consciousness.

Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really. It's for the Tribe: the judges and the jurys. So trying to weave an esoteric or arcane narrative won't work, and you know it wont, if you know others won't buy it or understand it. You need a narrative that others, or at least a subset of others that represents authority, would be able to buy. You don't really have a choice in it. It's just how we are built. And why would you want to go against it really.

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You might like these two ideas of Daniel Dennett, multiple drafts model and fame in the brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_drafts_model

https://kenyonreview.org/2008/04/fame-in-the-brain/

Yes, but that’ a narrative of our internal mind.

The article is talking about the narratives we construct of the external world.

The two may not be entirely unrelated; our facility for constructing an narrative of the external world might have led to us constructing a narrative of our internal world.

> It creates a narrative to justify our actions to others

I would disagree on that point.

I believe that you create that narrative for yourself, to create an illusion of consciousness. More than that, an illusion of consciousness through time. That's why memories are so easily modified/created by outsiders. That how placebo/nocebo effect works. That's why you create fake memories from a photography, or why you sometimes tries to justify reactions post hoc.

This is also just a theory (inspired by Keith Frankish).

> Think of life as one long trial. The narrative you weave is not for your benefit, really.

I like the trial metaphor, but disagree about who it is for. It has to be for yourself. How you explain life, your actions, etc is only for you - it is an end in itself - and you have to be happy about it.

Alternatively, you can consider the idea that once you die, you then become the judge at your trial. How do you find yourself - guilty or innocent?

"This is the reason we can tell the business world." ( says one fictional CEO ) The real reason may be something else altogether, but people will accept this rationale based on that if provided. I don't think you are wrong.

Pareto is well known for his 80-20 split; he's less well known for dividing bases for action into residues (sentimental bases, differing largely by whether one is conservative or progressive by inclination) and derivations (the logical rationales one gives for proposed or taken actions).

Homo sapiens or Homo praetexendo?

Consider Dolphus Raymond in To Kill a Mockingbird. He weaves one narrative for his birth Tribe, but when Scout looks on the other side of the fabric, there's a plot twist for himself and his adopted Tribe.

INCONCINNVM SED LIBERVM

if it's not for my benefit then why would he conclude that it must be for the tribe? are there no other options?

all very confusing

that part is my own words. His was only the first paragraph of my comment. I tend to make things more complicated than it needs to be, maybe.

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