Why Fiction Beats Truth

Yet when it came time to design gas chambers and prepare timetables for the Auschwitz trains, Nazi rationality emerged from its hiding place intact. And yet the Scientific Revolution began in London and Paris rather than in Cairo or Istanbul. Even if we need to pay some price for deactivating our rational faculties, the advantages of increased social cohesion are often so big that fictional stories routinely triumph over the truth in human history.

Source: www.nytimes.com