Plausible fiction
Introduction
Each of us can see problems in the world, cases where something we care about is in need of attention. On the global scale, I am deeply concerned about rampant pollution, countries engaged in hostile acts of aggression, political corruption, cultural fragmentation, the effects of modern technology on human lives and livelihoods, and more. To myself and I believe many other people, the world seems to be cracking under some sort of immense pressure, with “no one at the wheel” to steer the ship.
At the same time, we humans are imaginative. According to historian Yuval Harari, our superpower lies in creating fictions that can become real through our collective belief and action. This manifests in several ways:
- Social constructs: The value of money is a fiction that becomes real because we collectively believe in and act on it.
- Technological innovation: Many ideas from science fiction, such as mobile phones or virtual reality, have eventually been realized.
- Institutional change: New laws or social movements often start as ideas, and gain traction until they are eventually part of the social fabric.
These examples show how our “fictions” can shape the flow of events.
Rather than waiting for someone else to steer our ship, perhaps we can harness this imaginative power to solve our problems. In this post, I’ll begin by considering how it is that what we propose in language can become reality. Then I’ll propose an idea I’m calling plausible fiction, based on this consideration, and how implementing this idea could lead to a good future for humanity.
As we’ll see, plausible fiction is a lightly-structured approach to imagining and implementing viable solutions to real-world problems. It works by encouraging people to outline a path from our current reality to a desired future, and inviting collective effort to fill in the gaps along the way. This collaborative gap-filling process refines and realizes ideas that would otherwise remain abstract or incomplete, and in so doing move them from fiction to reality. I believe that this approach could be applied to a wide range of issues, at a wide range of scales, and potentially lead to a more participatory world.
When are proposals enacted?
Language clearly has the power to shape the dynamics of reality. Indeed, if I say “pass the salt,” it is empirically the case that with high confidence I can expect that some 10^25 atoms of salt-in-shaker will move through space and that subsequently a few grains of salt will land on my soup. At another scale, the symbolic language of DNA nucleotides codes for complexly-orchestrated chemical processes, whereby proteins are made and bodies are formed. It’s clear that language works; if it didn’t do anything in material reality, no one would use it.
So why not solve our problems by saying “abracadabra, microplastics be gone!”? Obviously, not just any linguistic utterance will result in the reality we want. In order to “come true” or obtain, the utterance needs to be part of a process that starts now, proceeds through the outcome, and obeys the laws of nature throughout.
If someone were to say “pass the salt” in an empty room, or with only their cat to hear them, would it work? Maybe the cat knows English and can decode what the person meant, decides to help out, and gets off the comfy couch to slide the salt shaker over with her paw. Yes, maybe, but it doesn’t sound plausible to me. Similarly, when you think someone is very angry at you, you might be less likely to ask them to pass the salt, because you’re less sure they’ll do it.
The better we understand reality as it is, the more we can live in accordance with it. Some might say we “shape it”, but I think it’s important to see that our understanding of “reality” means that something has already shaped us, e.g. how our brains encode our relationship to it. If we understand quantum mechanics well enough, we can invent a laser; otherwise, we simply can’t. Our stories about Edison developing the practical light bulb involve him making hundreds of attempts: only when he sufficiently understood both the material world and the social world did his proposal catch on. Thus “connecting the dots” between what was wanted by society and what was possible with available resources, the lightbulb and the laser could be reified. This ability to connect the dots between have and want arises from the work of attentive proposing and listening, but the connection itself can stand as a path of low resistance for achieving the result.
What I’m suggesting may be reminiscent of “following the Tao,” or listening to the way of things, but it is not meant to be mysterious at all. The nonaction spoken of as “Wu Wei” is probably the noticing of the low resistance that comes from proposing something that is in accordance with how things work naturally. Common law—the codification of what already exists as customary norms—is the easiest for a government to enforce, a friend proposing an activity they know the group enjoys is the easiest way to get its buy-in, and a hypnotist acting with, not against, their subject is the best way to get results. That is, when we act so as to usher in something that is already supposed to happen, by which I mean already poised or potentiated to happen, it is easier to be successful.
This is also reminiscent of active inference or predictive processing. A successful proposal should be pretty close to a prediction. My outsider understanding of active inference is that we can replace “I want X to happen” with something like “given that I exist and have the needs and abilities that I do, and given that the world is the way that it is, I predict that X will happen”. Wanting and guessing come together in a story.
The last image I’ll give is of lightning. Suppose there is a difference of electrical potential between the ground and the sky. Then nature “wants” to—is drawn to—equalize the two sides by making a spark between them. And if we put up a lightning rod, we propose a path of lower resistance, which tends to attracts such sparks to pass through it.
While a lightning rod can be seen as a kind of proposal, the proposals I mostly want to consider here are spoken or written using language. I believe that language attracts activity too, in some ways just like a lightning rod does. Saying “pass the salt” calls up all sorts of neural and then motor activity within my friend. Inventors use notebooks filled with symbols to attract their own attention to useful way points, and they use other semiotic schemas to attract certain behavior by the factory that makes the product, i.e. they lead the factory to successfully follow their design. Computer programs, written in highly-controlled languages, attract the voltage changes that cause all our applications to run.
And mathematics, from which computer science emerged, has for millenia been in the business of creating high-fidelity language for engineering and navigating—attracting outcomes in—our world. It compresses our ideas and makes them legible and unambiguous, and hence attractive to people. As Barry Mazur said in 2009,
Imagination needs something [in order] to apply itself directly to the largest realm it can possibly apply itself, and for that it needs conveyances, like bridges. And perhaps mathematics is that from my point of view: it’s a way of conveying the imagination to its broadest reach.
(Thanks to TJ for directing me to the Mathematics and Beauty roundtable, and for other advice throughout the article, including suggesting relevance with the work of the Frankfurt critical theory and separately of Michael Bratman.)
By naming an idea concisely and then showing how it unpacks, we can attract broader attention to it, enabling coordination among those who think it is worth implementing.
Plausible fiction
Plausible fiction, as I can define it here, is a story that attempts to satisfy the following criteria:
- It begins with the world as it is now, including all relevant details and without distortion;
- It ends with a future that the author desires;
- It follows a trajectory that obeys natural laws and social dynamics; and
- It is memetically fit, i.e. it invites participation by those who read it.
While it may seem paradoxical to call these narratives “fiction” when our aim for them is to manifest in reality, using the term “fiction” lightens the burden on the author and reminds us that this is an imaginative process of envisioning a future that hasn’t yet materialized. “Pass the salt” exists in our minds as something like “my friend will pass the salt,” and this story still exists in our own imagination—even if it is quite plausible—until it is reified.
Telling plausible fiction is supposed to be a fun and social activity, but with a functional purpose. The way it works is that one crafts a proposal that aims to influence events by supplying a path of low resistance from the present moment to a preferred future.
But what makes a proposal more likely to work is the process of gap-filling. Every plausible fiction has gaps in its narrative, and each gap is either plausibly fillable, or implausible. Once we find an implausible gap, the fiction becomes implausible and we stop working on it. But when the fiction is actually plausible and compelling, the work to making it real is simply to fill in each of its gaps with more plausible fiction: start where the story leaves off, end where the story picks up, and follow a plausible trajectory throughout. The gap-filling process is recursive, like zooming into a fractal, because even a filled gap leaves smaller gaps—more detail—to be filled in. But as smaller and smaller gaps are filled in, real material conditions will start to move. As my brain fills in the fact that you want me to pass the salt, and then fills in how I’m going to maneuver to do it, and then what it’s going to feel like to grab the salt shaker, my muscle cells actually become activated and the salt actually gets passed.
In other words, I’m making the following conjecture:
The only thing it takes to enact plausible fictions is to recursively and plausibly fill the gaps.
Imagine that one person proposes a difficult but plausibly-true math theorem, but that they don’t know a proof. If a few other people suggest plausible results that would combine to prove the theorem, this would be what I’m calling filling the gaps. The biggest gaps get filled first; if people start to think that filling them is implausible, the proposal is dismissed. But as gaps get filled, the theorem slowly becomes proved.
Similarly, imagine that a restaurant chef suggests a meal to be made. Then the sous chefs fill in the details. No one needs to explicitly tell the sous chef “to cut the carrot, move your arm like this”; but their brain does need to fill in that gap. Eventually the gap-filling descends beyond the level humans need to think about, but I claim that creating the meal is gap-filling all the way down.
Very loosely, the mathematical infrastructure I’m imagining to help manage all this collective gap filling is based on applied category theory. Category theory provides a language for describing and connecting diverse mathematical structures, so we may be able to use it to create a formal system for relating and composing different plausible fictions. Exactly how this might work is a gap which remains to be filled within my own fiction here, but luckily creating formal systems to relate and compose things is precisely the kind of problem we try to solve at Topos Institute, so it’s not implausible to me. If a reader has ideas, please let me know!
But supposing we had mathematical infrastructure to facilitate collective gap-filling, then all we’d need are the plausible fiction writers. As long as our vision starts from the present, is compelling as a possibility, and doesn’t require any magical thinking, I believe people will be motivated to fill in the gaps.
A collaborative process of imagining and refining plausible futures, especially one that seeks varied perspectives, could lead to a more participatory world, where more people become inventors of reality. Much like how Edison’s understanding of both material possibilities and social needs allowed him to develop a commercially viable light bulb, plausible fiction aims to bridge our current reality to a desired future. The more people consider and work out what process would actually bring about a good future, the more likely we are to get there. This approach has the potential to democratize the shaping of our collective future, enabling more people to contribute meaningfully to solving global challenges.
Of course, not all proposed futures will be deemed plausible or beneficial, and so we need a process by which people can examine narratives for viability and desirability. In order to steer away from a plausible fiction you don’t like, try to identify a gap you deem either unfillable or for which you can provide a plausible gap-filling story that contains a negative arc. As such a “defeater” fiction gains traction, the original story may become dormant, with fewer people engaging with or developing it, or it could even become a center around which there is active work to counter it.
What I’m proposing is not very different from the situation we have now. We already tell each other plausible fictions in a dialectic of proposing and critiquing that helps refine our collective vision. But I think we can do this more deliberately and effectively. And like our current system, if this system were effective, it would involve risk. As my wife points out, risk is a tenet of life: one cannot truly live without risk. Nevertheless, I believe that clarifying a structure for this ongoing dialogue and refinement of ideas is crucial for the development of robust, well-considered futures.
I imagine a future where humans do labor that is less stressful because it’s closer to the work they want to be doing, and that a good plausible fiction platform might help us get there. In fact, this vision serves as an example of plausible fiction: it starts with our current reality, where work is often stressful, ends with a desirable future where work is more fulfilling, and suggests that a plausible fiction platform makes that trajectory plausible. But there is a big gap, already identified before: realizing this future depends on developing effective mechanisms for collectively sharing and refining such plausible fictions.
So what exactly is a positive future? I’d love to hear your responses and ideas. For example, here are some ways to engage:
- Share a plausible fiction of your own in the comments, starting with a current challenge and ending with a positive future.
- Find gaps in the plausible fictions I’ve presented here, or those in the comments, and possibly propose ways to fill them.
- Offer technical suggestions for how we might formalize the process of connecting and composing plausible fictions.
By collaborating on these plausible fictions, we can cultivate a better future. My proposal is that plausible fiction may offer a functional, memetically-fit system to bring about what I consider a good future.
Epilogue
David: Hi Claude. Please read the above and identify 3 gaps. Then choose one of them and try to fill it with plausible fiction of your own.
Claude: I’ve read the document about plausible fiction by David Spivak. Here are three gaps I’ve identified in the proposal:
- The specific mathematical infrastructure based on applied category theory that would help manage collective gap-filling.
- The mechanism for determining which plausible fictions are most beneficial or desirable to pursue.
- How to incentivize and facilitate widespread participation in creating and refining plausible fictions.
I’ll attempt to fill the third gap with some plausible fiction of my own:
Incentivizing Widespread Participation in Plausible Fiction
In 2025, a group of tech entrepreneurs, social scientists, and game designers collaborate to create “FutureForge,” a gamified platform for developing and refining plausible fictions. The platform combines elements of social media, collaborative writing tools, and prediction markets to engage a wide audience in the process of imagining and shaping potential futures.
Key Features of FutureForge:
Intuitive Interface: Users can easily create, view, and contribute to plausible fictions through a user-friendly web and mobile app.
Reputation System: Contributors earn “Foresight Points” based on the quality and impact of their contributions, as rated by peers and expert reviewers.
Collaborative Editing: Wiki-style tools allow for seamless collaboration and version control of plausible fictions.
Visualization Tools: AI-powered visualization tools help users create compelling infographics and animations to illustrate their ideas.
Integration with Education: Schools and universities incorporate FutureForge into their curricula, teaching students to think critically about the future and contribute to solutions.
Corporate Challenges: Companies and organizations sponsor challenges on the platform, offering rewards for the most promising solutions to specific problems.
Prediction Market: Users can invest virtual currency in the likelihood of various plausible fictions coming true, adding a layer of crowd-wisdom to the process.
Real-World Impact Tracking: The platform monitors and highlights real-world developments that align with or stem from plausible fictions created on the site.
As FutureForge gains traction, it becomes a go-to platform for policymakers, innovators, and citizens looking to shape the future. By 2030, millions of users worldwide regularly contribute to and discuss plausible fictions, leading to accelerated problem-solving and more participatory governance at local, national, and global levels.
The success of FutureForge inspires similar platforms and methodologies, creating a cultural shift towards more proactive and collaborative approaches to addressing societal challenges. This widespread engagement with plausible fiction helps to bridge ideological divides, as people from diverse backgrounds work together to imagine and create better futures.
This plausible fiction attempts to address the gap of incentivizing and facilitating widespread participation by proposing a gamified platform that makes contributing to plausible fictions engaging, rewarding, and impactful. It starts with our current technological capabilities and social media engagement, and progresses towards a future where collaborative future-thinking becomes a widespread and influential practice.
The fiction aims to be plausible by building on existing technologies and social trends, such as gamification, collaborative platforms, and the increasing integration of technology in education and policy-making. It also addresses potential challenges, such as maintaining quality contributions and ensuring real-world impact.
Would you like me to elaborate on any part of this plausible fiction or discuss how it might be further refined?
This work was funded by AFOSR grant FA9550-23-1-0376, “Structure and dynamics of working language” and a grant from the Mathematics and Metaphysics Institute, “Accountable metaphysics”.
Thumbnail by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash