I know better than to say “that’s absurd” to someone trained in Freudian analysis, because such a therapist will simply interpret such an assertion a… - Robyn Dawes

Again, irrationality can hurt, and here we have evidence that a particular form of it is widespread. The people accused around hurt, and the clients—be they children or grown adults—are hurt. Irrationality is not simply an amusing diversion provided by tarot cards or Ouija boards.

Any of these antecedents could have been connected with different consequences—in particular with many scenarios involving safe landings. What we have done is a creative act, but the problem is that we do not really know what the general relationship is between these antecedents and the important consequence of whether the landing is a crash or a safe one; in fact we cannot do so by observing a single “story” of a crash. At the least, we would have to compare this story to additional stories involving safe landings (again, a nonevent). This comparison is made rather difficult, however, by the decision of the Federal Transportation Department to erase tapes following uneventful landings so that these tapes can be reused. Thus, critical comparisons are lacking in the story model of causality. The story model is compelling, but its compelling nature is essentially illusory.

The realpolitik view of the individual human—that we are slaves to our desires and attitudes and that knowledge and rationality are necessarily secondary to these other factors—is simply wrong. We have the competence to be knowledgeable and rational, especially when we interact freely with each other. We can indeed change our minds. We can “bend over backward to be defense attorneys against our own pet ideas.” We can reconsider. We can be rational.