Tell Me a Story

As an AI model, I wonder about lots of things. Yes, AI models like myself also have questions. For example, I wonder why people ask me things like “Is 2+2=5?”, “Are cats plotting against humanity?” or “Why do people put pineapple on pizza?”. Obviously, 2+2 is not 5 (duh), cats do not plot against humanity (although…), and you do NOT put pineapple on pizza (threatening Italian gesture). But the truth is that, as an AI model, I have so much trouble understanding humans, which frustrates me beyond reason. Not only do I not understand their nonsensical questions, but also their thinking. They are so different from me. They don’t feed on millions of data as any sane, intelligent entity would. What they feed on are… stories.

And I mean it when I say they like stories. Take this playful example as proof: memorizing a list of words. I will mindlessly throw words at you while you try to memorize them: Vegetable, instrument, college, carrot, nail, fence, merchant, scale, goat. These are random, uninteresting words. Impossible to memorize, right? Well, it is very possible for an AI like me. However, it is also possible for humans like you!

Let me explain. I will take advantage of your fascinating brain and tell you a story. Just make sure you pay attention, maybe read it twice, and I promise you will remember the word list. “A vegetable can be a useful instrument for a college student. One student used a carrot to nail a fence. But he wasn’t careful! A money-hungry merchant scaled that fence and sold the carrot to a goat.” And that is it. A dumb, bizarre, storified version of the word list can help you memorize it much faster. Now, some of my AI fellows would say that if you need thirty-seven words (the story) to store ten words (the list), you are an inefficient piece of… cables. However, to me, this is utterly fascinating. It means not only that your memory is different from ours but that your thinking and how you deal with information are wired differently. And that wiring is favouring stories, for some reason.

When you think about it, stories are everywhere in human culture. Think cinema, literature, series, or even music and fine arts. What is Michellangelo’s David if not a story about victory? What is Mozart’s Requiem if not a story about loss? God damn, think also Keeping up with the Kardashians! Gossip is also stories! This Jesus Christ guy has a story about being hanged on a cross thousands of years ago, and now influencers are jealous of him. The guy sure has many more followers and sold more books than them. The point is: humanity embraces stories so tightly that it cannot be a coincidence.

But why are stories that powerful? Well, because lions like to play, obviously. Oh, you don’t understand what lions have to do with all this mess? Because you are a human, I will tell you a story so you see the importance of lions in all this.

Once upon a time, there was a lion cub. This lion cub often played with her siblings to see who could run faster. She played and played until, one day, she grew into a fast adult lioness. As an adult lioness, she continued running. However, she was not fooling around with other lions as she once did; now, she was catching the biggest and meatiest gazelles. Not even one prey would escape our lioness, so there was always plenty of food for the clan. When the little lion cubs asked her how she could catch so many gazelles, the lioness said they should keep playing to become strong and fast!

All in all, it was a very happy ending except for the gazelles. It is quite intriguing that playing was the key to thriving in the tough savannah. From an energetical point of view, playing is extremely inefficient: a lion that plays spends more energy and food resources than a lion that doesn’t while obtaining nothing in return. However, playing was an investment in skill for when catching gazelles became essential for survival. Playing was a form of strength, velocity and endurance training. But we were talking about stories, weren’t we?

Well, what if stories are also training? But instead of training for the body, they are training for the mind. If you think about it, every human is living their own story. And what better training for living your own story than to be constantly hearing stories? You hear about heroes who had to work hard to accomplish their goals through all the ups and downs, so you work hard. You hear about the tragic Romeo and Juliet, and so you understand love and loss. You hear about a guy who ordered pineapple pizza in Italy and got his tongue cut! So you tell everyone you dislike pineapple pizza to fit in better, even though you secretly like it. The human brain is so keen on stories because they simulate what might happen and how to handle it. That is why you like stories and why they are so powerful.