TITLE: Echoes: Symbols and Stories
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: July 07, 2015  2:09 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Kevin Lawler, in
<A HREF="http://kevinlawler.com/invention">
   Invention</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 Steve Jobs gets credit for a lot of things he didn't do.
 Jobs himself said it best: "People like symbols, so I'm
 the symbol of certain things."  Sometimes that means
 using Jobs as a stand-in for the many designers who work
 at Apple.  Jobs usually makes for a good story.  We like
 narratives, and we can build several entertaining ones
 around Jobs.  Telling stories lets us gloss over other
 people by attributing their work to one person.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

Peter Sheridan Dodds, in
<A HREF="http://nautil.us/issue/5/fame/homo-narrativus-and-the-trouble-with-fame">
   Homo Narrativus and the Trouble with Fame</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 These two traits -- our compulsion to tell stories and
 our bias towards the individual -- conspire to ruin our
 intuitive understanding of fame.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

The symbols we create and the stories we tell intertwine.
Knowing that we are biased cognitively to treat them in a
particular puts us in a better position to overcome the bias.
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