ABSTRACT
Across the globe, billions of human beings engage in activities that are almost supernatural. Using no more than a few sounds, or perhaps a few squiggles on a piece of paper, a woman sends her husband to the supermarket, and he returns with precisely the items she intended him to purchase. Aristotle notwithstanding, human beings are more creatures of faith than of reason. Rather than think things through, analysts' cleave to what they already believe with a dangerous tenacity—a tenacity that is loss producing. Religious faith is probably the most obvious form of faith. People join churches with worldviews to which they are expected to subscribe. With cognitive communities as vulnerable to distortion as they are, science would seem to be a haven of relative rationality. The realm of well-educated people dispassionately dedicated to unearthing the truth, it should be immune to the forces that generate falsehoods.
