Reality Bites
All of us know of people who can’t seem to accept reality. People who deny the facts. People who cling on to their delusions despite all the evidence. Usually when we think of such people, we mean the kind of people who still believe in creationism. But denial is not always that simple: it’s not always because people are dumb or crazy or religious. Sure, that’s mostly the reason but sometimes, just sometimes, it’s because the alternative is very scary. Even a vacuum at times. Or we feel the alternative puts us on a slippery slope to everything that we detest. These lines from Grey’s Anatomy give one such example from the world of surgeons: “Disappearances happen in science. Disease can suddenly fade away. Tumors go missing. We open someone up to discover the cancer is gone. It’s unexplained, it’s rare, but it happens. We call it misdiagnosis, say we never saw it in the first place, any explanation but the truth.” Of course, the smarter you are and the less yo...