How Stories Deceive

newyorker.com

40 points·jseliger··5 comments

How ironic that the magazine that hosts Malcolm Gladwell would post a piece on how effectively one can use stories to promote oneself, even (especially) if you don't care about its accuracy.

His stories aren't of the sort of those in the article, but he's certainly no stranger to abandoning accuracy in favor of a story, and profiting from it.

While Gladwell himself is notorious for lack of factual rigor (as a former math person, I especially wince at his "Igon value"), the New Yorker itself is famous for its rigorous fact-checking. In this age of fast-food quality writings littered with half-assed research or mere speculations, I appreciate the time and the effort that the New Yorker team puts into their craft.

At the same time, the New Yorker is indeed known for their over-the-top narratives. There's both pros and cons to this approach. For example, a great work of literary journalism like "In Cold Blood" and "Hiroshima" were first published on the New Yorker because of this editorial tendency. On the other hand, their long-form content makes their subjects less approachable to a large swath of English-reading (especially those who aren't native readers of the language) population.

This is precisely why every time someone pitches a business idea to me using a story I flag it as one that requires addition validation of facts. Not because I think all story tellers are charlatans (some definitely are)but because I want to make sure that I compensate for the activation of the non-rational parts of my brain.

I wonder how many people bought this story wholesale without fact-checking it? :)

Reminds me a little of Catch Me If You Can.

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