The Danger of Certainty

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Mark Twain

It’s hard to change somebody’s mind. It’s even harder to change our own. We are constantly bombarded by information, which morphs and shifts, adding and losing convenient and inconvenient details according to the storyteller’s perspective. Truth is lost when it’s perceived as lies, and fiction is accepted at face value with little or no scrutiny, if it aligns with the listeners preconceived point of view.

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him. ”

Tolstoy

I would hope that every person…