Fiction-Reality Audit
Separate shared stories from reality before a tool starts controlling you
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 93%
Harari argues that humans cooperate at scale by creating and believing shared stories, including nations, corporations, religions, and money. The audit begins by naming the story that coordinates behaviour and identifying the practical cooperation it makes possible. It then separates the convention from physical reality: a corporation may be a legal fiction, while the people, resources, and consequences around it are real. Next, examine whether people still use the story as a tool or have begun serving it as though it were beyond revision. Finally, preserve, reform, or replace the story according to whether it helps people cooperate and address real needs. The model does not say stories are bad; it explains both their power and their capacity to manipulate.
Origin
Harari develops the model from his historical account of shared fictions as the basis of large-scale human cooperation. Extracted from The Diary of a CEO.
Core principles
- 01Shared stories enable large-scale cooperation
- 02A useful fiction is a tool rather than an objective fact
- 03Tools become dangerous when people forget they created them
- 04Reality checks should precede obedience to a story
How to run it
- 1
Name the governing story
State the belief, identity, institution, or convention that is coordinating people's behaviour.
Pro tip Look beyond religious examples to money, corporations, nations, and workplace rules.
- 2
Map its cooperative function
Identify what the story enables people, especially strangers, to do together.
Watch out Do not assume that calling something a fiction makes it worthless.
- 3
Separate convention from reality
Distinguish the human-created rules and meanings from the material people, needs, harms, and constraints involved.
Pro tip Ask which parts would remain if people stopped believing the story.
- 4
Test who serves whom
Check whether the story remains a tool for people or whether people are sacrificing real welfare to preserve it unquestioned.
Watch out A compelling story can conceal its human costs.
- 5
Keep or revise the tool
Retain the story when it supports useful cooperation; reform or replace it when it blocks agreement on real needs.
In the wild
Harari describes money as a shared fiction that allows strangers across the world to trade and cooperate. The useful reality check is not to abolish money, but to remember that people created it to serve human purposes rather than treating accumulation as life's unquestionable purpose.
→ The convention remains useful while its role as a human-made tool stays visible.
Harari argues that many wars are driven less by a literal shortage of food or land than by incompatible collective stories. Applying the audit directs attention to shared material needs and to whether a common story can support cooperation.
→ The analysis separates disputed narratives from the practical conditions people need to live.
Common mistakes
Treating fiction as a synonym for lie
Harari's category includes useful shared conventions; the test concerns their function and consequences, not whether they are simply deceptive.
Ignoring material consequences
A story may be invented while the suffering, resources, and power organised around it remain real.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for analysing institutions, money, organisational norms, political narratives, and conflicts shaped by competing stories.
Not ideal for
It is not a licence to dismiss physical evidence, legal obligations, or every shared convention as unreal or useless.
From the transcript
“stories are not not bad. They are tools.”
“being able to tell the difference between what is a fiction in our own mind and what is the reality”
From the episode
Yuval Noah Harari: The Urgent Warning They Hope You Ignore, “More War Is Coming”, Yuval’s Chilling Future Predictions!