There are a couple of personnas mixing here: “believers” and “fact finders.”
When you immerse yourself in something, you “believe.” It’s irrational, it’s life generating and fulfilling. It’s everything. Sometimes, we do it in a good cause: storm a beach in DDay…. Sometimes we fake a hockey stick because we believe the world may be at risk.
The good, the bad, the ugly…?
Most of you are “fact finders,” uncommitted to “belief,” hunting, like Feynman, to expose the “cargo cult (silly) science. You are the right ones.
But, not to understand the blinders, the blindfolds, the overwhelming “belief” of those who toss virgins into volcanoes is to miss a big part of the problem.
They are not lying, able to see: they believe. You show up with your Sgt Friday notebook and want, “Just the facts, Ma’am” and the “fact” that the elephant swung through the window and ate the homework is: simply the fact, belief. True, heartfelt. Nothing to do with reality.
….Lady in Red