One nice thing about working with a piece of machinery: you don’t waste time trying to justify your actions. - Keith Laumer

I’m arguing with myself and I can’t tell who’s winning.

Man clings to his self-orientation at the psychological center of the Universe. You can face any challenge within that framework, suffer any loss, endure any hardship—so long as the structure remains intact.

It's a failing of your culture, Foster said, that hypothesis becomes dogma almost overnight. You're too close to your Neolithic, when the blind acceptance of tribal lore had survival value. Having learned to evoke the fire god from sticks, by rote, you tend to extend the principal to all 'established facts.'