There's this presumption whenever I read this argument that every person is story dominant.
Sure, many people need captivating stories and poorly comprehend statistics and orders of magnitude. You probably need stories to reach a majority of people. The cinema is more popular than abstract math classrooms.
But some people are different. They don't watch TV, movies, Netflix or read fiction. They live fully productive lives without being constantly enraptured in melodramas.
These people will read a story and think "bullshit bullshit blah blah". Don't forget about those people as well. They're often the ones put in control of the money.
I think this is about different kind of stories. Not "captivating stories" and "melodramas". More like... whatever it is one would produce if asked to ELI5 something.
Like the two cases 'pjs_ mentions[0] - double-slit experiment and the self-stability of bicycles. In both cases, we know it's a real thing, and it's easy to demonstrate it. In the double-slit case, we even have a relatively simple mathematical model describing the phenomenon. But try to explain why either happens to a random person, without ending up at "the math says so" or "look, we've tested it many times; it just works like this", and... well, that's the story many (most?) of us seek to understand something.
If I hadn't gone into biology I have long thought I would have gone into either math or history. Don't presume there's a huge dichotomy between the people in either field.
There's this presumption whenever I read this argument that every person is story dominant.
Sure, many people need captivating stories and poorly comprehend statistics and orders of magnitude. You probably need stories to reach a majority of people. The cinema is more popular than abstract math classrooms.
But some people are different. They don't watch TV, movies, Netflix or read fiction. They live fully productive lives without being constantly enraptured in melodramas.
These people will read a story and think "bullshit bullshit blah blah". Don't forget about those people as well. They're often the ones put in control of the money.