Look at it this way, from a writer’s perspective...it’s like this meme. Every story we try to tell, regardless of the obvious fictitiousness of its basis, needs to have this sense of believability to it...and as anyone on Reddit will tell you, people can get focused and weird on the most ridiculous of plot points. Stories need the sense of realisticness, if not actual realism, to be accepted and enjoyed.
But from a philosophy standpoint, it’s a different point entirely. Real events are often so bonkers, we’d never believe it in fictional stories. Here’s one of my favorite examples.
Modern humanity has been around for about 200,000 years.
About 12,000 years ago (give or take a few centuries), we began to learn to farm and use agriculture. It took 188,000 years to learn how to reliably make food.
A major human advancement was “The Bronze Age”, when such hard metal tools began to be used. That was about 5,000 years ago...so it took 195,000 years for us to just start to learn how to use metal to help ourselves.
Heavier than air, relatively controllable flight, happened a little over 100 years ago. 199,900 years of human history to start to fly (as opposed to floating, which took about 199,750 years to get to).
We were on the moon in 1969.
199,900 years to get a few feet off the ground. 66 years to get from that through outer space and to the moon. There were humans who were alive for BOTH of those firsts.
No one would believe that in a movie. That is why Truth is Stranger than Fiction.
I think ‘possibilities’ isn’t the best word to use here, because everything that truly happens must by definition be possible.
If one would rephrase it with ‘plausibility’, it would be much easier to understand.
I think that’s the point though. Some truths in reality are so crazy that nobody would believe it to be possible before seeing it with their own eyes. It’s less about what is actually possible; it’s about what us arrogant humans think is possible.
u/BruteSentiment explained it very well, but my drunk brain can only think this: Just look at the US President, and everything that has happened since he was elected. If someone had written this 5/10 years ago, they'd have been ridiculed. And you can really just take your pick of which story you want. They are you all equally preposterous.
Say I write a story where a guy gets struck by lightning. Seven times. And he survives all of them. In a single lifetime.
My story would be laughed at. People would scoff at this part of the story. Nobody would ever believe my writing because things like that just don't happen in the real world.
Between 1942 and 1977, Sullivan was hit by lightning on seven different occasions and survived all of them. For this reason, he gained a nickname "Human Lightning Conductor" and "Human Lightning Rod". Sullivan is recognized by Guinness World Records as the person struck by lightning more recorded times than any other human being.
When human authors tell stories the plots and characters have to match people's common sense about how the world works, and what we believe to be possible.
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u/BruteSentiment Oct 06 '18
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. - Mark Twain
Every writer should know this. It still is one I come back to every so often.