The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall

Humans live in landscapes of make-believe: we spin fantasies, we devour novels, films, and plays and even our sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It's easy to say that humans are "wired" for story, but why?
Here, a provocative young scholar shows how storytelling has made our species successful and how it continues to shape us in startling ways.
jonathangottsch...

[@TheStoryConsultancy]

storytelling is about battles won and lost, its the essence of who we all are, great heroes, tales of daring do and how someone overcame all the odds, mystery, tragedy, passion and commitment, comedy - storytelling in business context - selling is so old hat...we all want to be engaged and drawn in and sit on the edge of our seat and lose ourself in the moment - a story gives us something we will never forget ever - selling takes it away from us.

[@UMLondon]

Working in media communications, UM London takes the art of storytelling very seriously! Very important not only for individuals but for businesses too

[@Strombuch]

Storytelling will survive. Always! Dirk Meißner, strombuch

[@achase47]

This is fascinating. I plan to order this book now, and can't wait to read it. True story!

[@ray1351]

i was talking in terms of using number combinations to represent a letter for example 01 = A 02 = B etc.. and yes - it is guaranteed because it is infinite.

[@nochita8]

same here!

[@Mike10four]

One popular story was the one of our unalienable Rights. Until the recent book titled: “Scientific Proof of Our Unalienable Rights” came along. Now that once romantic story is scientific fact.

[@sallyhoward9070]

using narrative seriation has been found to improve cognition. Developing scientific reasoning in the very young can only be good.

[@ray1351]

heres a good way to calculate it - you calculate the probability of the event not occuring - let me use soemthing simpler like dice as an example - you have a 1 in 6 chance of getting the number you want but a 5 in 6 chance of not - if you keep multiplying the 5/6 with 5/6 - the number will eventually become very small - if you multiply it by infinity it will forever get closer to 0 this means that the chance of the opposite number occuring will forever get closer to 100% - just use a pen/paper

[@ray1351]

with the monkey thing - the analogy is trying to say "if you hit keys randomly for a long enough time - sooner or later you will have typed out hamlet or something else." - just because there is a low chance of something happen doesn't really mean it will never happen - there is no "how?" to it - if you play lottery enough, sooner or later you will win (although it may take a long long time - longer than your life span) - Because it is random - you can find any pattern if you look long enough.

[@ray1351]

the chance of getting 5 different letters is 1/26 * 1/25 * 1/24... and so on - eventually you are left with a pretty small number but the fact is that even though the number is small - its not zero - right?

[@shadywolf91]

I'm not trolling you I was simply curious. How does infinity guarantee a specific combination if it is random every time. Remember I'm not talking about Pi I asked about letters. Are you saying a specific combination it' likely within infinity or guaranteed?

[@ray1351]

if you have 1% x 10^-1000000 chance of something happening - in an infinite amount of time the chance becomes 100% therefore - no matter how unlikely something will happen eventually.

[@shadywolf91]

Yes but how?

[@shadywolf91]

How does it avoid a gambler's fallacy? There doesn't seem to be a guarantee that it will eventually land on the letter you want.

[@shadywolf91]

Yes that's why I said "statistically everything is possible" but I'm talking about monkeys. So moving on to a different example other then monkeys is moot.
Off topic could you explain to me how everything is statistically possible? Every time someone tries to explain it to me it seems like a gambler's fallacy. If I line up a five letter word and spin a dial that has all 26 letters of the English alphabet on them won't I have a 1/26 per letter no matter how many times I spin the dial?

[@johnpotter26]

TJ

[@ray1351]

anything that is possible within the laws of physics - so if the chance isn't an absolute 0 - anything is basically possible :P

[@ray1351]

Ok here is a better example than monkeys - as you may know Pi is an irrational number that has the most random numbers after it > this is why you can any number combination in Pi if you keep on going through it long enough - you can eventually find the whole shakespearen play if you code every digit. If you are going to say that "well thats unlikely" then i aggree with you but im saying thats irrelevant in a very very long time span. anything can happen that wont violate the laws of physics.

[@ray1351]

rofl - ok so you are asking "how do dice roll a specific way" - or how does pi produce random numbers ? - those are not really great questions to ask - as you know you have 1/6 chance of getting a 6 in dice - so if you wanted to get 2 6s - your chances before you start rolling are 1/36 - im not sure how i can simplify this concept any further - Try this - type a sentence on google - you will probably find one just like it - why? because the amount of sentences on the internet are huge so 1wilmch

[@ray1351]

now i just feel like you are trolling me - So Pi divides infinitely with an infinite amount of combinations yes? yes. therefore there is a combination with the play. - i think you are underestimating infinity lmao - statistics are statistics no matter how much you deny them, hate them or call them gambler's fallacy.

[@FaganRoberts]

Ummm, because it's an escape, a diversion from reality?