The Descartography of Mythopoesis: The Simulation Theory of Stories
Been spendin most our lives, Livin in Baudrillard's Paradise.
I. Stories
When I first watched The Dark Knight, I remember coming away perplexed. There was something special about it, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. I was young and hadn’t developed much of my worldview at this time. So I spent a lot of free time simply thinking about why the movie felt so interesting. Was it something about the acting? Was it the spectacle? Perhaps it was the dark, desaturated palette. Eventually though, I realized what made that movie interesting: it was The Joker. Heath Ledger's Joker was interesting because most of the scenes that featured him involved the Prisoner's Dilemma. The bank robbery subplot: the Prisoner's Dilemma. The hospital explosion subplot: the Prisoner's Dilemma. The criminals' "try-outs" scene: the Prisoner's Dilemma. The two ships subplot: the Prisoner's Dilemma. I saw the film a long time ago, so my memory is too hazy to recall whether every scene involved the Prisoner's Dilemma. But suffice to say, it was a reoccurring theme.
And this was the beginning of a train of thought which unraveled a question I'd long pondered: What's the nature of a story? If you ask the Average Joe "what's a story?", you'll probably be met with a response along the lines of "it's a sequence of events". But somehow, that definition feels unsatisfactory to me. Because people love stories. A well-crafted story is fun to listen to, and grabs attention. A story seemingly has a special reverence, which can't be explained away by its status as a mere "sequence of events". Why are people so drawn to stories, if it's merely a sequence of events? Pondering The Dark Knight eventually led me to an answer: stories are simulations, and simulations are about decision-making.
At another point in my life, I encountered another idea: sports:war::porn:sex. I can't remember where I first read this, but it's been stuck in my head ever since. The idea is to first observe that porn is a simulation of sex, in the sense that porn offers some of the pros of sex, but without the worst cons of sex. Similarly, sport is a simulation of warfare. The camaraderie and athleticism offer some of the benefits of warfare, but with less of the injury. Additionally, an observation was made that the layers of indirection in sports is in fact 3 layers deep. Because: A) the game is a simulation of warfare; B) the television simulates the feeling of sitting in the stadium; and C) the sportscasters are imbuing the game with a narrative.
When I first realized this, I felt my worldview undergo a shift in perspective. Before I'd seen the sports analogy, I had imagined myself at least somewhat objective. Of course, I'd been familiar with Immanual Kant and David Hume's notions that noumena were beyond the direct reach of my limited, mortal perceptions. Still though, I felt as though my senses were more or less an accurate and objective representation of reality. But after I'd seen the sports analogy, I slowly began to realize how much of my subjective experience consisted of what one might call "useful fictions".
II. Useful Fictions.
Sports? fiction. Stories? Fiction. Videogames? Fiction. Fiat money? Fiction. Religion? Fiction. Culture? Fiction. Status hierarchy? Fiction. Promises? Fiction. Literacy? Synesthesia (and therefore fiction). Sleepiness? Fiction. And so on, and so forth. I think what captures this feeling most comprehensively is Emily Dickenson’s poem "The Brain—is wider than the Sky".
The Brain—is wider than the Sky— For—put them side by side— The one the other will contain With ease—and You—beside— The Brain is deeper than the sea— For—hold them—Blue to Blue— The one the other will absorb— As Sponges—Buckets—do— The Brain is just the weight of God— For—Heft them—Pound for Pound— And they will differ—if they do— As Syllable from Sound—
To me, this poem encapsulates how experience itself is inherently a simulation of reality. Like I said before, I've known for a long time on an intellectual level that the map isn't the territory. But Dickens's poem goes further because it inverts my perspective. Before, I'd always felt my perception of reality to be reality per se, and I imagined I had a homunculus inside my head which performed computations. But this perspective is wrong. Because I don't have a homunculus, I am the homunculus. My actual body is somewhere beyond the perceptual bounds of the universe. There's now a visceral sense that, if my locus of awareness rode a rocket into the sky, beyond the atmosphere, beyond the solar system, beyond the galaxy, and beyond the edge of the observable universe, I would crash into the firmament, which also happens to be the inside of my skull. So now I permanently have this odd sense in which everything in my field of perception is rather dream-like and unstable. Because there's a sense that the objects in my field of perception are ephemeral hallucinations, which correspond to reality only by coincidence.
I also owe a great deal of my current perspective to Ribbon Farm. Especially his post Future Nauseous. While many people might describe the above perspective as "the matrix", I think this is too adversarial a term. Because these fictions often guide and coordinate our behavior in ways that serve our interests, both individually and collectively. In “Welcome to the Future Nauseous”, Venkatesh Rao instead calls it "theater". And he also describes a "manufactured normalcy field" in order to describe the feeling of comfort while e.g. riding a plane. A plane is essentially an aluminum tube hurtling through the atmosphere at hundreds of miles per hour. It can perform crazy maneuvers that are not within our evolutionary design specs. Pilots choose not to perform these maneuvers, in order to give passengers the illusion of normalcy. I prefer the term "theater" over "the matrix" since it's a much more neutral term, because fictions are often beneficial just as much as they are harmful.
III. Praxeology
Because of this perspective, I tend to view major organized religions with perhaps less reverence than average. By the same token, I tend to view stories with more reverence than average. Possibly in a similar manner to the way I imagine J.R.R Tolkien viewed stories.
The typical hardcore atheist these days often looks at religion with disgust. They often think of religion as lies because they contradict scientific reality. But to pit religion as competing against science is a mistake. Because the point of religion isn't to describe the natural world, the point of religion is to serve as an institution, i.e. a cultural repository of social technologies. E.g. Sunday is a social technology. I think there's one particular technology which is especially important and serves as the germ around which the rest of the institution precipitates: mythos, AKA stories.
I believe that the primary reason stories are attention-grabbing is because they embed us in a simulation, which trains our decision-making by crystallizing properties of our decisions into a value-system. And yes, not all stories are created equal.
I remember once reading an analysis of The Hobbit in the library, for example. I can't remember what the name of the book was, unfortunately. What I took away from it was that the Hobbit was a story about the nature of power or greed. Thorin Oakenshield was corrupted by his obsession with the Arkenstone. To that end, he pushed away all his friends and lock himself away in Erebor AKA the Lonely Mountain. He was redeemed eventually, but not before he received a mortal wound. This obsession was foreshadowed by Gollum's obsession with his precious ring, and was a constant temptation for Bilbo. But it turns out that the wisest of all were the High Elves. At the start of the story, the elves were sort of portrayed as dumb hippies. But the elves turned out to be the wisest off all, because they recognized that the only wealth they truly needed were the simple gifts of nature, like the stars, the woods, the river, etc. The Hobbit's alternate title "There and Back Again" is a comment on how Bilbo's perspective in many ways gets inverted on his way home from Erebor, compared to his perspective when he was journeying from his home to Erebor, and how this inversion was necessary for his character growth. And this only scratches the surface of the thematic complexity of the story.
But then consider something like The Bourne Trilogy. There's no lesson, no thesis, no moral, there's nothing to discuss. It's the literary equivalent of junkfood, in that it highjacks our attention with sex, violence, and power-politics without offering any long-term benefit.
There's a big subjective difference between knowing that greed is bad in the abstract, vs truly internalizing The Hobbit and thus drawing connections between decisions and consequences. But also, it's not just about one's decisions as an individual. It's about religion.
Where religion comes into play, is when a community forms around the values promoted by the story. These shared values means it's easier to form a culture, which means it becomes easier for the members to reap the economies of scale from cooperative behavior. And this is why I've become more interested in literature as of late. The quality of your literary diet influences the quality of your value-system, which may also influence the quality of the community you find yourself in. Choose wisely.
IV. The Truth vs The Good
One surprising consequence of this perspective is that there's a trade-off between The Truth vs The Good. It's often the case that The Truth and The Good are aligned. But sometimes, reality doesn't seem so ostensibly convenient. Many people seem to bite the bullet and say that truth is always good, and if a good outcome involves deception, then it's not actually that good after all. But on the other hand, watching a sports game is in some sense deceptive, is it not? And yet, sports fans know this. But they choose to do it anyway.
After becoming aware of how much of my subjective experience is dominated by The Theater, the possibility that Truth isn't always aligned with The Good is harder to ignore. What this calls for is an investigation into the nature of truth. Which I think I'll leave for my next post. "But Fance, didn't you already do that in your theory of knowledge?" Yes, but this is different. Because instead of investigating the nature of truth as it logically relates to knowledge, we'll be investigating truth as it pragmatically relates to utility.