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This isn't directly related to the top-level question, but having read basically this sort of explanation of postmodernism is before, the one thing that struck me as the completely obvious next logical step is to question how this particular meta-metanarrative about metanarratives has been selected by the "powers that be" and why they want the rest of us to believe that that's a meaningfully useful way to analyze metanarratives. How does it benefit them, possibly at the cost to us, because almost certainly, people pushing narratives, metanarratives, meta-metanarratives, or anything else, are doing so under the belief that success in pushing it will result in favor for themselves, possibly at cost to people they don't care about or actively dislike. The moment you realize that the turtle you're on is on another turtle, it's pretty trivial to wonder if that turtle is on another turtle, possibly all the way down.
Unfortunately, a stack of turtles seems pretty likely to be unstable even in finite numbers, to say nothing of when there's infinite of them. Unstable doesn't mean false, of course, but in this case, the instability manifests in the reality that there's no reason to stop on this turtle instead of the next one or the one after that or the one 13 turtles down which happens to be the one that concludes that all of history was actually just setup to justify you specifically getting everything you want and all your enemies being mercilessly crushed.
Scott sort of gestures at this in the linked post:
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In most anything related to postmodernism, I think of the midwit meme. Sometimes things are complicated and ambiguous, but that's usually a confusion about words and minds and uncertainty about the state of the underlying reality. But there usually is an underlying reality that actually is true or false, and all the words and perspective shifts won't actually change that underlying reality.
Here then, there is a recursively stable narrative climb of "I'm telling you a thing because it's true, and true things are good for people to know and understand." If you try to climb up to the meta-narrative, I AM trying to push this narrative because it will favor myself, because I am a straightforward and logical person, and therefore disseminating truth and objectivity, and increasing people's trust in truth and objectivity, helps make society better for everyone. People knowing true things is generally good for society, and I am part of society, therefore people knowing true things is generally good for me. It doesn't have to be a zero sum game, me benefiting from telling you a thing does not need to come at your expense. (And also I get a small ego boost from being right and explaining ideas to people, because it makes me seem smart, but that's predicated on them being true).
And if you go up another level, just reread the previous paragraph. I'm telling you that this narrative is self-recursively stable because it's true, and you knowing it to be true helps society (and gives me a small ego boost). Ad infinitum.
To be clear, I certainly understand that people can have dishonest motivations and biases making their narratives differ from the truth. But this is not the only possibility. Because objective truths exist, honesty can exist, and stable narratives can exist that become more coherent under self-reflection rather than devolving into infinitely complex recursions. Infinite sequences can converge.
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