# Narrative fallacy Also known as the "narrative bias". When an event occurs, we tend to consider it as part of a whole, even when it's just a random event. Our brains want to attach every event to a story. In reality, the universe is full of entropy, and most events are random. We prefer inventing a narrative, instead of considering events as outliers. Education systems reinforce this bias by presenting historical events as linear narratives, without considering the randomness of events. One example is when we look at a successful person, and fail to see that their success might actually have more to do with randomness than with anything else. The opposite can also be true. Sometimes, we don't know what people had to go through to get to where they are now. From [[Nassim Nicholas Taleb]]: [[The narrative fallacy addresses our limited ability to look at sequences of facts without weaving an explanation into them, or, equivalently, forcing a logical link, an arrow of relationship upon them]] Accepting randomness as a fact of life is important for remaining objectivity. We need to keep in mind that [[Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence]]. We have to remain skeptical and empirical. ## References - https://fs.blog/narrative-fallacy/ - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201612/what-is-narrative-bias - https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/narrative-fallacy - https://www.nngroup.com/articles/narrative-biases