Neurotypica

A good story delivers a small prediction error: it violates a weakly held belief or reframes something you took for granted, and that violation feels like an "a-ha" moment. Your brain was predicting one thing, the story showed you another, and the mismatch generates affect and salience---it feels interesting, insightful, worth remembering. The catch is, the feeling of insight doesn't depend on the story being true. It just depends on it surprising you in the right way.

So what can you do? Recognise that "interesting" and "true" are orthogonal. A story can be fascinating and completely wrong. When something feels compelling, pause and ask: is this surprising because it's revealing something real, or because it's violating a prior I don't actually hold strongly? Good misinformation works by generating mini prediction errors that feel like learning without requiring evidence. To counteract this, check whether the story survives scrutiny beyond the initial "whoa, I never thought of it that way" reaction. Does it hold up when you look for evidence? Does it make accurate predictions? Or does it just feel good?

Stories spread not just because they're interesting but because they fit a frame that's already active in a community. Conspiracy theories don't spread randomly; they spread in communities where "distrust institutions" is a shared prior. Self-help stories spread in communities where "individual transformation" is valued. The frame makes the story feel natural, obvious, and true---not because the story has evidence, but because it matches the way the community already chunks experience.

So what can you do? If you're trying to spread a true but unexciting idea, don't just present facts---embed them in a frame that your audience already uses. Find the narrative structure they find compelling, and fit your idea into it. Alternatively, if you're trying to resist a sticky but false story, name the frame it's using and show how it's selective. "This story feels true because it fits the 'hero's journey' narrative we all love, but real change doesn't usually work that way." You're not just correcting the content; you're showing how the frame is shaping perception.

Stories stick because they're pre-chunked: they come with memorable phrases, vivid images, clear heroes and villains. These chunks are easy to retrieve and repeat, which makes them spread. Accurate explanations often resist chunking---they're full of caveats, dependencies, "it depends"---which makes them harder to remember and share. The simpler, more stylised story wins not because it's better, but because it's more portable.

So what can you do? If you care about truth spreading, make it chunk-able. Find the memorable phrase, the vivid analogy, the clear structure that makes the accurate story easy to repeat. You're not dumbing it down; you're packaging it so it can travel. But also, when you encounter a too-neat story that's spreading, check whether its portability is a feature or a bug. Stories that survive every context unchanged are usually oversimplified. Good explanations need some friction---they should feel different in different contexts, because reality is context-dependent.