Narrative fallacy

Biological Parallel

We explain the giraffe's long neck as an adaptation for reaching high branches—a tidy narrative. But fossils reveal extinct giraffids with short necks, medium necks, and bizarre ossicone arrangements, all successful for millions of years until they weren't. The coherent story ('necks for trees') erases the randomness, contingency, and multiple failed experiments. Evolution has no plot arc, no protagonist overcoming obstacles—just differential survival under shifting constraints. The narrative we construct is a human overlay on a fundamentally non-narrative process.