Published on February 2, 2026 9:12 AM GMT

A fun dichotomy to split yourself or your society into is how much of an empiricist or a narrator you are.
An empiricist attempts to find and communicate something that is, roughly, “the truth”, given any scenario. They are not necessarily skilled at this - a common “pitfall” of empiricists tends to be under or over estimating the audience they are talking to - as well as mistaking the degree to which their observations generalise.
A narrator works directly at the level of vibes, emotions, words and consensus. I call this sort of person “narrator” because living life by wielding emotions and consensus is impossible unless you establish some sort of internal and external “cohesion” - the best narrators don’t only do this for their own narrative but also help others sort out their own narratives (often in a way that subtly brings them closer to theirs).
This loosely maps onto wordcel/shape rotator dichotomy.
Empiricism seems to be a “weak” strategy for accomplishing anything with a lot of impact; The real value it provides is through the creation of artifacts that can be passed along to future generations. Empirical alpha requires a mixture of luck, time and je ne sais quoi - However, once discovered, it can be transferred to the next generation.
Narration on the other hand is an incredibly “powerful” strategy for accomplishing impressive things, but narratives are flimsy, they don’t stack well and often fail to survive their creator in the desired shape.

As an example of this consider medical knowledge, one of the hardest areas for empiricists to crack, but very likely something where we can identify slow and steady progress through history.
Everyone knows about “placebo” but when we think about studies looking at placebo we think about someone knowing that they are participating in a study, knowing what placebo is, and given a sugar pill by a random researcher that’s just trying to get his tasks over with.
To imagine the limits of placebo one must imagine that they are suffering from some horrible ailment; pain, misery, compression both physiological and psychological.
In the background they keep hearing the fact that a great miracle worker is in the lands, he claims to be a worthless nobody, everyone else says he’s the son/prophet/manifestation of a powerful and benevolent god.
As rumours intensify this miracle worker comes to town, and you just so happen to be in his path, and you just so happen to lock gazes with him and it seems like he is staring through the mask you put on right into your very soul (and yes, maybe this is a particular trick he’s playing and maybe 100 other people are having that same thought at the same time but it’s the kind of gaze that will simply not allow you to think those thoughts)
And he is surrounded by people, he is dressed in rags and speaks in a voice so soft and kind that it ought only be heard from a mother speaking to her newborn; And in spite of this his voice comes loud and clear and his presence is that of a great ruler, for people bow their heads and prostrate in front of him - and when he speaks a silence hits the crowd.
This person slowly approaches you and asks you your name, and his attention is the attention of thousands of other humans scattered around him who now suddenly manifest reverence for you as though you’ve imbued some of his holiness by proxy.
Looking at him he seems to tower taller than any man and everything about this body seems perfect, he holds himself in a way that lets you know he’d protect you from any harm yet never do you any; And this mighty being calls you by your name and beseeches you to speak of what ails your heart - and you do, and he just listens with an attentiveness that seems inhuman - whenever you are at a loss for words he might throw in a few of his own, and they are the perfect words perfectly spoken and they make all of your suffering seem worthwhile and provide a new meaning to your life.
And then this being places his hands upon you softly yet sternly and they radiate warmth; Even though you forgot about your pains he somehow finds the most tender bits of your body to focus on and you remember your pain but it seems now gone. And he says some magical sounding words and tells you that you are safe and you will now be healed; And the crowd cheers and you feel yourself more alert and sharp and all the pain is gone - it’s the best day of your life.
That is something like the limits of placebo; And it should come as no surprise that there are many stories of great kings and prophets and demigods and such able to cure many ailments in this way - because the human body is a wondrous thing when its intent is correctly mustered. After all, most diseases do tend to be “fixable”, in large part, by a mind over matter approach - even if that “mind” bit involves being “convinced” to switch gears to a state where your immune system can be more active or your bones can heal faster.
Barring a few vaccines and cornerstone drugs like penicillin and insulin, I’m certain that no empiricist has even come close to achieving the same level of “healing” as a good miracle worker. Problem is, the miracle worker’s abilities don’t stack mechanistically and they don’t transmit to the next generation - Whereas penicillin does.

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One of the core faults of the empiricist is trying to ply their craft in areas that are inherently narrative dominated, and then wondering why no results or recognition comes of this.
Psychology, sociology, economics and politics are all in the realm of narrative - they must be, for their only subjects are humans - to try to apply empiricism in these areas is borderline silly; Empiricism is only valuable when the thing it’s studying is solid and unmovable, otherwise all you are left with are weak findings that a good narrator can prove or disprove with ease - since they understand what the real levers are.
This isn’t new, I think there’s a narrative (heh) that we’ve come to appreciate empiricism in the last few centuries, but I don’t believe this to be so, I think we’ve always had an implicit understanding that narrative suffers from a tragedy of the commons issue - it’s a skillset that has a ceiling of usefulness that cannot be surpassed.
There are tropes older than time of practical craftsman and useless sophist embodying the good-evil archetypes. At some level people “understand” that narrators aren’t <actually doing anything>; A particularly powerful narrator can get above this issue, but a particularly powerful narrator will be so skilled as to not even be considered human by those around him.
A more recent development is skilled narrators learning how to portray themselves as empiricists, getting empiricist-specific symbols and learning empiricist-specific language. That’s why the lords of the past have been replaced by people like Edison and Musk … not the greatest of scientists or engineers, but capable enough to not immediately trigger the “phoney radar” and using this to build the narrative of a multi-disciplinary empirical genius (a rather powerful narrative for attracting good empiricists to work with you)

I might seem a bit harsh on the narrators, but that doesn’t reflect my beliefs. I think there are significantly fewer evil narrators than there are evil empiricists, if for no other reason, because empiricism is inherently value-neutral and narrative is value-laden, and it’s hard to concoct a good narrative with you as the bad guy.
The problem with narrators is that they can’t tell that they are lying; Or, at any rate, the good ones can’t. It’s quite impossible to fool other people if you can’t fool yourself. Therefore good narrators walk around being more or less convinced by their own narratives - incapable of applying an empirical filter to what they’re actually doing.
This becomes particularly horrible when a narrator is telling themselves a story about understanding the world or understanding oneself - whereby the narrative ends up capturing the very mechanisms and skillsets that would allow them to figure out flaws and improve their technique.
That’s not to say a good narrator doesn’t learn or change, but the communicated learning is for the plot, and the implicit learning is understanding what kind of “learning” was necessary to make the plot work.
Without pointing any fingers at any groups or individuals - There are huge communities which seem built on top of strong narratives of empiricism, while lacking any actual applications thereof. These tend to yield surprisingly good results, though I would speculate these results hit the exact same barrier an LLM would - narratives are simply bad at mapping out reality that is not already perfectly captured by other truthful narratives or compressed into artifacts.

Most of us will choose to communicate as narrators most of the time, even if we are bad at it. Communicating as empiricists tends to be reserved for select people that have signalled an interest in similar empirical findings.
This results in what I’ve come to believe are independent branches of certain proto-fields, unable to see the light of day since participation requires secret handshakes and spread would require a better narrative (which might well destroy the entire endeavour).
The most delightful things in life is figuring out the “passwords” that will switch people up from giving me narratives into providing me with factual statements about the reality they inhabit. Had I ever met the Buddha on the road I’d desire nothing less but to know how he goes about cooking his meals, what sort of toothbrush he uses and any mechanistic insights he’s had into the movement of water.
Whether or not we’ve acted as narrators or empiricists is ultimately proven only by the artifacts we’ve left behind, and by how long those artifacts survive and how much of the world they start wrapping - proving themselves to touch at “foundational” bits of reality that exist independently of any given narrative humans or societies can concoct.
It certainly is the case that irrigation techniques, bridges and aqueducts have proven themselves to be the work of great empiricism - converged upon separately and lasting, both as concepts and as individuated physical artifacts, way beyond the religions, cultural norms and stories of their times.
Such a thing, I believe, cannot be said about many of the fruits of science - which are still in their infancy and may well prove to be no “truer” than many other things we see as fictitious which could well outlive them.
One can imagine a future where, due to this or that war or disaster, we lose access to most of the inventions granted to us by physics and the science of materials - and slowly humanity devolves into tribes deriving from this or that social tradition and holding this or that set of religious beliefs - at which point we may indeed. Inshallah this time will have proved to all how fragile of a narrative items like cars or computers were, nothing but a frail shared hallucination which did not manage to surpass or outlast the gods and their customs.
Now, of course, you may protest that it is “obvious and reasonable” that cars are necessarily more real than, say, the god of the Amish. To argue that the Amish god is a shared delusion is within the realm of possibility, but to argue that the huge networks of roads and fast moving vehicles upon them are nothing but a collective hallucination begets all reason. Yet, from an empirical perspective, there are few “common sense” definitions of what is “more real” than that which is able to spread and persist.
In so far as we wish to grant a property of “realness” to a car or to mathematics or to physics; Such that it is greater than that of the importance of a ceremonial dance or a certain ritual meant to purify the town’s cats; We must do so from inside a rather complex and altogether incomplete narrative by which certain complicated metaphysics and epistemics are derived.

 At any rate, to delve too much on a dichotomy is unhealthy, but I find it equally harmful to stumble upon one which brings me so much joy and not try to share it. So here’s hoping that this arbitrary way of cleaving the world has provided you with some insight - for I certainly had a lot of fun writing this narrative.