Narrative Economics:
The digitization of human text, and the ability to track this data and make sense of human behaviour using it as an lens. #BX2019
Why is this important?
People change their minds. This is largely driven by human speech, and speech involves narratives at its core. #BX2019
Narrative: Meaning the telling of a story. An invisible script that is worth following in some situations. #BX2019
Medical epidemiology (e.g virus outbreak/contagion) as a good way to understand economic epidemics.
Example: The Bitcoin epidemic #BX2019
Don’t think about a single narrative. What moves people are constellations of co-dependent narratives, mutating and evolving together. #BX2019
The narrative doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be contagious and the counter-narrative must be non-contagious. #BX2019
Is the ‘inverted yield curve’ narrative a good signal of a coming depression (I mean recession) simply because it has the characteristics of a good self-fulfilling prophecy. #BX2019
Going forward: We need to collect data more systematically. E.g Church sermon texts.
What other sources might be interesting to study, as potential entry points for contagious narratives? #BX2019
The social function of narratives.
A conversational mechanism that was adaptively necessary within tribes during our early evolution. #BX2019
Does our need for narrative doom us to a dangerous oversimplification of the modern world? #BX2019
Prescription: Encourage narratives that are as truthful and honest as possible. #BX2019
Prominent contemporary theme: Nostalgic narratives. What is driving this theme? Identifying with the narrative seems important (identity economics). Identity is contracting in ways instead of expanding. #BX2019
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The lessons learnt building, marketing and running an independent cohort-based online course.
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Some context:
I began 2020 with the ambition to build a new kind of development programme.
THE PURPOSE OF THE PROGRAMME:
To provide people with a framework, toolkit and group platform for building behaviourally-informed systems to solve the recurring self-control challenges.
My initial strategy was to start offline with a small local cohort, gather feedback, iterate and then slowly move online.
COVID added a plot twist to that story.
The game changed and I had to learn and adapt quickly.
They explore Lisa’s incredible work on emotions, the predictive brain hypothesis, body budgeting, and the importance of focusing on our physical, mental and social health activities.