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Nick_Tarleton comments on The danger of living a story - Singularity Tropes - Less Wrong
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Possible dangers of thinking you're living in a story:
Believing that if you're right and/or virtuous, you're going to win
Underestimating the power and usefulness of large organizations
Believing that what you're doing is the main story.
Of course, this is assuming that the story you think you're in is a certain kind of popular fiction.
If you thought that you were living in a realistic/naturalistic story, you'd be underestimating your chance of making a significant difference. I have no idea what thinking you were living in a tragedy would do to your presuppositions.
After Douglas Adams' death, I read a fair number of tributes which said his books had a large emotional effect-- people absorbed the attitude of expecting things to be absurd. I don't know what effect that's had on their lives.
More:
(Most of these are more accurately described as "errors almost everyone makes all the time" than "dangers of thinking you're in a story", but thinking of them that way seems pretty useful for identifying them.)
Edit: After reading this comment, I'll amend that to "Assuming villainy is the usual explanation for apparent bad behaviour."
So what is villainy, if it's not that?
They mean well, rather than being out to deliberately fuck you up.
This is so common as to be an adage: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor)