叙事拔河 Narrative Tug-of-War

source: Narrative Tug-of-War - Not Boring by Packy McCormick

🗒️我的笔记

从意识形态辩论到叙事的拔河拉锯战

• 不要专注于中间的绳结

  • {:height 208, :width 420} One of the biggest changes to how I see the world over the past year or so is viewing ideological debates as games of narrative tug-of-war.

    在过去一年左右的时间里，我看待世界的方式发生了最大的变化，就是将意识形态辩论视为叙事拉锯战的游戏。

    For every narrative, there is an equal and opposite narrative. It’s practically predetermined, cultural physics.

    对于每一种叙述，都有一个平等和相反的叙述。这实际上是预先确定的，文化物理学。

    One side pulls hard to its extreme, and the other pulls back to its own.

    一侧用力拉到极致，另一侧拉回自己。

    AI is going to kill us all ←→ AI is going to save the world.

    人工智能将杀死我们所有人←→人工智能将拯救世界。

  • What starts as a minor disagreement gets amplified into completely opposing worldviews. What starts as a nuanced conversation gets boiled down to catchphrases. Those who start as your opponents become your enemies.

    从一个小分歧开始，会被放大成完全相反的世界观。从细致入微的对话开始，可以归结为标语。那些从你的对手开始的人会成为你的敌人。

    It’s easy to get worked up if you focus on the extremes, on the teams tugging the rope on each side. It’s certainly easy to nitpick everything they say and point out all of the things they missed or left out.

    如果你专注于极端情况，专注于在每一边拉绳子的团队，就很容易感到疲惫。当然，很容易挑剔他们所说的一切，并指出他们错过或遗漏的所有事情。

    Don’t. Focus on the knot in the middle.

    不要。专注于中间的结。 That knot, moving back and forth over the center line as each team tries to pull it further to their own side, is the important thing to watch. That’s the emergent synthesis of the ideas, and where they translate into policy and action.

    当每支球队试图将它进一步拉到自己的一侧时，这个结在中线上来回移动，是值得关注的重要事情。这是这些想法的涌现性综合，并将它们转化为政策和行动的地方。

• “奥弗顿之窗”（Overton Window）

  • There’s this concept called the Overton Window: the range of policies or ideas that are politically acceptable at any given time.

    有一个概念叫做“奥弗顿之窗”（Overton Window）：在任何特定时间在政治上可以接受的一系列政策或想法。Concept Since Joseph Overton came up with the idea in the mid-1990s, the concept has expanded beyond government policy. Now, it’s used to describe how ideas enter the mainstream conversation where they influence public opinion, societal norms, and institutional practices.

    自从约瑟夫·奥弗顿（Joseph Overton)在1990年代中期提出这个想法以来，这个概念已经扩展到政府政策之外。现在，它被用来描述思想如何进入主流对话，影响公众舆论、社会规范和制度实践。

  • The Overton Window is the knot in the narrative tug-of-war. The teams pulling on either side don’t actually expect that everyone will agree with and adopt their ideas; they just need to pull hard enough that the Overton Window shifts in their direction.

    奥弗顿之窗是叙事拉锯战中的结。任何一方的团队实际上并不期望每个人都会同意并采纳他们的想法;他们只需要用力拉，让奥弗顿窗朝他们的方向移动。

• 价格锚定叙事

  • The same thing happens with narratives, but instead of one company carefully setting prices to maximize the likelihood that you buy the Pro tier, independent and opposed teams, often made up of people who’ve never met, loosely coordinated through group chats and memes, somehow figure out how to pull hard enough that they move the knot back to what they view as an acceptable place. It’s a kind of cultural magic when you think about it.

    同样的事情也会发生在叙事上，但不是一家公司精心制定价格，最大限度地提高你购买专业级产品的可能性，而是由素不相识的人组成的独立对立团队，**通过群聊和备忘录进行松散的协调，以某种方式想出办法，使劲拉扯，将症结拉回到他们认为可以接受的地方。**仔细想想，这简直就是一种文化魔法。