One of the more interesting aspects of this article was that it touched on this concept I have of 'narrative density'. It's closely related to Brandolini's law, that the amount of energy it takes to create bullshit is an order of magnitude higher than the energy it takes to refute it.
A story takes more effort to explain than it does to simply read and experience it. The author's efforts to explain the story to the intelligence officials quickly turned into a re-narration of the story. At some point they weren't dealing with the original but rather a new story tailored to the need to give the intelligence officials something they could understand, because they certainly didn't have the training / education / smarts to connect the dots at the speed needed.
Any effort to explain a story that's not proper analysis invariably produces a new story. And to properly analyze a story you need a lot more in the way of training or prior experience than you do to just read or experience it.
The underlying mental model I'm using here is to see narrative as a kind of analytical tool in and of itself as a compressive technique for masses of information. The mind doesn't want to deal with complex things all at once. A story is a form of information that is uniquely capable of providing not just 'idea units', but also examples of that information being used, and also why anyone would care.
>It's closely related to Brandolini's law, that the amount of energy it takes to create bullshit is an order of magnitude higher than the energy it takes to refute it.
Perhaps, though I would call it a converse or inverse rather than an opposite. Either are close relations. You can't be a thing's opposite unless the two of you share a lot together. North has more in common with South than it does with East.
Yeah. The intriguing thing about knowledge and the study of it, epistemology, is that once discovered, it doesn't just go away. It sets the world on fire and burns away cruft.
Bullshit can be seen as both the cruft that gets burned away by true knowledge, or the fire that demolishes old ways of understanding, however true. To see it the other way, imagine attacking the hegemony of the Catholic Church with incisive bullshit.
Small societies have their reactions to the larger one and the veins of bullshit they'll propound onto the larger. By the time you or I see a particular incarnation, it's already been through numerous iterations. We can't have witnessed the genesis of Pizzagate, but we know that idea has to have one and the subsequent generations until it reached final, grotesque, form.
These ideas are self-defense weapons, shields against an onslaught of 'liberal' ideology.
The skeptical part of me says none of this actually happened and that the article is just a piece of publicity stunt. The other part thinks the author is too careless/not paranoid enough: he just guaranteed himself a spot on a watchlist by publicly admitting that he deceived the officers who interrogated him.
Unfortunately, as another Pakistani, I can tell you first-hand this account sounds very credible. I've known startup founders coming back from conferences in South Asia being interviewed by "Intelligence" and their companies audited just because someone was curious.
I've personally been tried to be interviewed for having a meeting at a foreign Consulate. The "Intelligence" may be hostile to journalists but their conduct is toxic to all civilians.
Talking about this encounter is the best thing he could've done. Think of it as protection against enforced disappearance. He's already on a "watch list", why else did they interview him?
It’s quite plausible that he has friends in Pakistani intelligence; many journalists (and, in the past, Marxists) came from élite families. Tariq Ali’s interview in the London Review of Books is very illuminating.⁰
> Our house was often filled with peasant leaders, trade-union leaders, radical poets, essayists, short-story writers, and occasionally, not encouraged too much, members of the family, or old family friends. In Pakistan, the Communist Party was banned, and two of its leaders, Muslim intellectuals from India who’d been sent to fertilise the barren land which was now Pakistan, were trying to create a party. One of them was a brilliant literary critic, Sajjad Zaheer, who was the party secretary. When the party was banned, they went underground, and Zaheer was put up in our house, pretending to be a professor of literature from Aligarh University. One night we were eating supper and there was a knock on the door. In walked one of my grandfather’s oldest and dearest friends, but who happened also to be inspector-general of the country’s police force. In he came, sat down and ate with us. There was a slight nervousness, but the professor/underground CP leader carried it off brilliantly. He knew how to deal with these people, discuss literature and Quranic interpretation, but after supper he beat a retreat: ‘With your leave, sir, I’m tired, I’ll just retire to bed.’ The inspector-general of police turned to my parents, and said: ‘I wish all your friends were like that! Where did you find such a cultured guy?’ A week later, when he was looking at pics of the disappeared CP leaders, he saw that the person he’d met at dinner was actually on the most-wanted list! So, it was a contradictory existence, though I never had any doubts which side I was on.
I think OP is implying talking to natives familiar with the culture confirms that the situation is not incredible. It's got nothing to do with stereotypes.
I'm Pakistani, would you say you know me well enough to judge whether every account I post online is truthful or not? If your answer to that is negative, then how can you make the same claim for the author?
> But many readers in Pakistan have come to me and asked how I uncovered it all. It’s almost frightening to think that people read a work of fiction full of fantastical happenings as a piece of history. A retired spy chief once cornered me at a party and said, “Son, you have written a brilliant book, but who were your sources?”
This dynamic should be familiar to anyone who works at the art of telling stories. People want pretty-sounding stories to be true and will believe in them regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Even if important aspects of the story are demonstrably, verifiably false, they'll seize on some other aspect of the made-up story to believe in the truth of it.
Once every three weeks or so, my father catches me up on the latest in the alt-right scroogery. There's always some grand reveal just over the horizon, and the time shifts from 'real soon now' to 'in a few years', to mine and draw out that human feeling of being in on the conspiracy as much as possible.
That's the real feeling being sold here. Certainty in a realm in which there can be none. They're willing to overlook countless bits of evidence that there can't be any certainty here either, just to keep the magic of the feeling of seeing things from a higher perspective alive.
On a lighter note, a friend and I often refer to the concept of the mondegreen, misheard lyrics or dialogue that winds up being more iconic than the original. One audience member for the play on which the term originated, upon learning the original reading, refused to accept that it was ever different from how she heard it.
It's a form of audience participation in storytelling and is probably older than civilization itself.
> Once every three weeks or so, my father catches me up on the latest in the alt-right scroogery. There's always some grand reveal just over the horizon, and the time shifts from 'real soon now' to 'in a few years', to mine and draw out that human feeling of being in on the conspiracy as much as possible.
Is he a watcher, or a believer?
> On a lighter note, a friend and I often refer to the concept of the mondegreen, misheard lyrics or dialogue that winds up being more iconic than the original
"Excuse me while I kiss this guy" and "Rock the Catbox"
Believer. Initially it was pretty darn annoying and I had to tune out his constant pleas for me to take him seriously. One time I fought back by compared his new direction to finding religion, which he seemed to take favorably.
But eventually he settled down, somebody must be coaching these media outlets to encourage the conspiracy without fomenting revolution. Now he's in a comfortable routine, spouting nonsense to whoever will listen. He'll find ways to convert any topic we find ourselves on to an angle into the conspiracy web. I let him wander around the conspiracy space, trying to find an angle to get me interested in it, then I'll hit back with actual history as I read it. Since these discussions don't have the benefit of Google, we mostly talk around each other without getting into the meat of anything. Which is fine for my purposes.
I try to walk the fine line between humoring and encouraging him, balancing my need for real intellectual stimulation with accommodating his emotional ones.
Priority #1 after getting power is keeping it. With power come billions of dollars in bribes, stay-out-of-jail-cards, favors and jobs to maybe millions of people.
You think that these guys are willing to risk all that because you say you have freedom of speech? Nice try.
If you're interested in learning more about Pakistani Intelligence, I can highly recommend Steve Coll's Directorate S. It's the sequel to the pulitzer-prize winning Ghost Wars, but it can be read on its own.
> "In a press conference last December, he issued a heartfelt plea: if journalists filed positive stories for just six months, [...] would become a great nation. Mostly, [...] journalists obliged."
Hmm.
The story of a novelist being detained by customs and subject to political interrogation to see if the novel is sufficiently patriotic is not unique to Pakistan, either. Even in countries which pride themselves on free speech.
Not quite the same, but the FBI has a history of this:
>The Federal Bureau of Investigation had great influence over the production, with J. Edgar Hoover acting as a co-producer of sorts. Hoover even forced LeRoy to re-shoot several scenes he didn't think portrayed the FBI in an appropriate light, and played a pivotal role in the casting for the film. Hoover and LeRoy were personal friends, but Hoover only approved the film after he had a file of "dirt" created on LeRoy.[11][12] Hoover had to approve every frame of the film and also had two special agents with LeRoy for the duration of filming
You have to understand something about a subset of 'elite' Pakistanis. This subset cherishes creating controversies as it generates the most attention in Pakistan and puts them on global platform as 'expert' on Pakistan issues.
Pakistanis are addicted to 'conspiracy' theories and he who can garner most attention in this circle will ultimately get most media limelight within Pakistan and hence most money.
Pakistan is a simpleton Country and Society in many respects and it is quiet easy to herd the masses and profit out of it. And with certain Countries always looking to drag Pakistan's name and reputation into mud, these people's outlandish claims will go unchallenged and will be etched into global media's output.
This is not to say there aren't any problems with Pakistan -- there are some very serious problems and media and authors and journalists do a great job highlighting them. But unfortunately, certain class of 'elite' Pakistanis tend to view themselves as universe revolving around them.
And icing on cake is that these are same Pakistanis who typically hold dual nationalities and foreign visas and on slightest signs of trouble, quickly take next flight out of Pakistan in order to evade authorities in Pakistan. They from outside of Pakistan, they continue to preach against Pakistan.
I think you're getting downvoted because you're not really linking the content of your comment to this submission. I assume you are referring to the author as the elite? It sounds like you are criticizing the piece (or him?), but I have no idea what that criticism is.
>These people's outlandish claims will go unchallenged and will be etched into global media's output.
Can you tell me which claim is outlandish in this story? The appeal for positive news? The killing of the journalist?
Getting to your comment:
>Pakistanis are addicted to 'conspiracy' theories and he who can garner most attention in this circle will ultimately get most media limelight within Pakistan and hence most money.
I'm not sure the conspiracy theories about the US and/or the Jews gets people much money. In my experience, those who most vociferously push them in Pakistan are usually those with the least money.
>Pakistan is a simpleton Country and Society in many respects and it is quiet easy to herd the masses and profit out of it.
They've had far too many people killed by mob violence. Someone I personally know was severely beaten by a mob on the basis of a rumor (thankfully not killed). Yes, if by profit you mean gain the upper hand in a personal vendetta by the one spreading the rumor, I can see your point.
Don’t see this as a Pakistan-specific problem. Driven by the law of large numbers and regression to the mean, the intelligence of an average member of society is expected to be roughly constant across all countries i.e. the average person in Pakistan is about as intelligent as the average person in the United States or elsewhere.
Controversies and conspiracies go viral because they capture the human imagination. They appeal to an innate tendency in us to trust a more detailed version of the event with embroidered descriptions over a simpler version where incompetence, coincidence and happenstance determine what truly happened. If there are signs of a grand master plan linking the reported event to other significant events, then all the better. It requires the capability to apply sober second thought to deconstruct such narratives and dissuade oneself, which most people lack either by virtue of talent or training.
There are those who would take advantage of this gullibility to spin narratives completely devoid of reality, these elites that you refer to. And as long as their mission is to enrich themselves at the expense of others, they will continue to do so, and society will suffer as a result.
I believe having dual nationality gives them the courage to cover what locals may not be able to cover because they can flee in case of the prosecution from the government. However, I wouldn't call this a Pakistani specific problem, it happens the world over. If you see someone promoting communism or any ideology that the govt is against in the US, I bet the intelligence agencies will interrogate or in extreme cases just vanish that person. There are also many cases in the US where there is a huge amount of cover-up. So I wouldn't call this a Pakistani problem alone. What the author is reporting happens everywhere, West or East.
Pakistani novelist visits Bangladesh. Shortly after his return, he is subject to a visit and interrogation by Pakistani security services. They demand a detailed explanation of the plot, which he embellishes to make as patriotic as possible and hide the subplot about disappeared activists in Pakistan. He talks about his other, first novel:
> My first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, grew out of my frustrated attempts to investigate the plane crash that killed General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan’s military dictator, and half a dozen top generals, along with the US ambassador to Pakistan.
> A Case of Exploding Mangoes had to be printed in India; the publishers in Pakistan found it a bit over the top and disrespectful to the establishment. To the surprise of everyone, nothing bad happened to me when it came out: no lawsuits, no ban.
>> A Case of Exploding Mangoes had to be printed in India; the publishers in Pakistan found it a bit over the top and disrespectful to the establishment. To the surprise of everyone, nothing bad happened to me when it came out: no lawsuits, no ban.
I'm reminded of Bill Gates' appearance in Pirates in Silicon Valley, which was generally not flattering, which he described as "reasonably accurate".
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
People here love to quote that, but they rarely mention the very next sentence:
“Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.”
Left to their own devices, people tend to devolve to the lowest common denominator-type news. I wish the moderators here (since we have them) would do a better job of keeping such “Off-Topic” stuff off the front page.
There's some subtlety to the arrangement of the words. "off-topic, but interesting" has the implication that 'interesting' is preferred. "interesting, but off-topic" implies that as interesting as something might be, it is still off-topic and therefore might not be permitted.
I did think about it. Before I posted I spent more than just a small bit of effort. I still don't see what the difference actually is though. Yes I know what "but" means. I know all those words... but...
I do not see any actual difference. Anything you apply those two descriptions to are both "off-topic" as well as "interesting", according to those descriptions. The "but" does not make any difference at all as far as I can see. The other replies say there is a preference implied (I already knew that that was the intention), but as I just wrote, however you parse it, you end up with both attributes and I don't see any preference actually being applied. I see the attempt, yes, but I don't see that there is any effect.
A story takes more effort to explain than it does to simply read and experience it. The author's efforts to explain the story to the intelligence officials quickly turned into a re-narration of the story. At some point they weren't dealing with the original but rather a new story tailored to the need to give the intelligence officials something they could understand, because they certainly didn't have the training / education / smarts to connect the dots at the speed needed.
Any effort to explain a story that's not proper analysis invariably produces a new story. And to properly analyze a story you need a lot more in the way of training or prior experience than you do to just read or experience it.
The underlying mental model I'm using here is to see narrative as a kind of analytical tool in and of itself as a compressive technique for masses of information. The mind doesn't want to deal with complex things all at once. A story is a form of information that is uniquely capable of providing not just 'idea units', but also examples of that information being used, and also why anyone would care.