We humans like to imagine ourselves as rational creatures. Masters of logic. Champions of reason. Alpha apes with spectacularly big brains, effortlessly slicing through life with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Then someone points out we’ve been confidently spouting utter nonsense for the past ten years and what happens? The calm, intelligent façade falls away and the panic sets in.
No one wants to admit they’ve made a colossal cock-up. The ego rallies its defences like a wounded general in a bunker, screaming “Hold the line,” while the truth strolls in waving receipts.
Take Brexit, climate change, or that “slimming tea” your mate swore by. Facts pile up like abandoned shopping trolleys in a canal, but admitting error would be far too traumatic. So we double down. “It hasn’t been done properly.” “Scientists are in on it.” “I lost weight in my dreams, so it counts.” Anything to avoid muttering the terrifying words: “I might have been wrong.”
The human brain does backflips to protect its dignity. We’re capable of landing robots on Mars, yet the simple act of saying “fair point” makes us seize up like a 1970s Austin Allegro attempting to start on a frosty morning.
The irony is that updating your beliefs is the most intelligent thing you can do. Instead, we defend a mistake as though it’s a family heirloom. We polish it, display it proudly, maybe write an angry Facebook post or three, and shout at anyone who suggests throwing it in the bin where it belongs.
So yes, we’re absurd. Gloriously so. The species that can split the atom and also say, with a dead straight face: “I haven’t changed my mind and I never will, because that would mean my brain has worked.”
If aliens ever land, they will observe our behaviour carefully and reach the only sensible conclusion: clever technology, shame about the software.
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