1 is stories. Consider the “flat-earther” who constructs elaborate chains of causation and meaning from facts that have little to do with each other. Consider bigotry, which does the same—and yet we h

is stories.

Consider the "flat-earther" who constructs elaborate chains of causation and meaning from facts that have little to do with each other. Consider bigotry, which does the same—and yet we have built entire school curricula, legal systems, infrastructure and industries around such ideas as "women can't handle pressure" and "poor people are lazy." Why do we believe one set of paranoid, questionable hypotheses and not another? Why do we designate some people as "heroes" and others as "villains," and why are we so loath to change those designations when the people in question turn out to be just… people? How is it that we lately seem to have become a society that cares more about compelling nonsense than about boring rationality? Or were we always that kind of society, and we just care more now because the nonsense is hurting a broader swath