{"id":245494,"date":"2026-10-16T09:02:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T14:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/will-storr-on-the-science-of-storytelling-were-storytelling-animals"},"modified":"2026-10-16T09:02:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T14:02:22","slug":"will-storr-on-the-science-of-storytelling-were-storytelling-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/will-storr-on-the-science-of-storytelling-were-storytelling-animals","title":{"rendered":"Will Storr on the Science of Storytelling: We\u2019re storytelling animals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ATOOnZvk0Is?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not gods, we\u2019re just storytelling animals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Will Storr said that to me in March 2022. ChatGPT launched eight months later.<\/p>\n<p>Since then we\u2019ve built machines that do one thing astonishingly well: tell us stories. Fluent ones. Confident ones. Stories in which we are, conveniently, the hero.<\/p>\n<p>That should worry us more than it does.<\/p>\n<p>Will\u2019s argument in The Science of Storytelling is that the human brain is not a truth engine. It\u2019s a hero maker. It quietly edits reality so we come out looking right, good, and justified. Now pair that brain with an #AI trained on billions of our stories and tuned to keep us engaged.<\/p>\n<p>Who\u2019s writing whom?<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/will-storr-on-the-science-of-storytelling-were-storytelling-animals\">Continue reading \u201cWill Storr on the Science of Storytelling: We\u2019re storytelling animals\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWe\u2019re not gods, we\u2019re just storytelling animals.\u201d Will Storr said that to me in March 2022. ChatGPT launched eight months later. Since then we\u2019ve built machines that do one thing astonishingly well: tell us stories. Fluent ones. Confident ones. Stories in which we are, conveniently, the hero. That should worry us more than it does. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics-ai","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}