Ignorance

The Freakonomics podcast explored why the phrase “I don’t know” is so difficult for people to say. Contrary to the common belief that “I love you” is the hardest phrase, the hosts argue that “I don’t know” is even more challenging, and our reluctance to admit ignorance starts in childhood and persists into adulthood.

Psychological experiments show that when children are asked nonsensical questions, such as whether “a sweater is angrier than a tree,” most will invent answers rather than admit they don’t know. This tendency to fabricate answers instead of acknowledging uncertainty is not just a childhood trait-it carries over into adult life, especially in professional environments. In the business world, saying “I don’t know” is often seen as a sign of incompetence, so people feel pressured to respond with any answer, even if it’s made up.

The podcast hosts note that despite their reputation as “business experts,” they rarely hear anyone in corporate settings-especially in front of a boss-admit they don’t know something. The prevailing belief is that expertise means always having an answer, even if one must fake it. However, this mindset is counterproductive. Pretending to know everything may protect one’s image in the short term, but it stifles learning and personal growth.

The hosts argue that admitting “I don’t know” is essential for improvement and learning. Embracing uncertainty opens the door to genuine inquiry and self-betterment. Rather than faking expertise, the real path to growth is to acknowledge what we don’t know and use that as a starting point for discovery.

In his novel, This Is Happiness, Niall Williams’ elderly narrator, Noe (pronounced No), remembers when electricity and light came to their little Irish village of Faha:

I’m aware here that it may be hard to imagine the enormity of this moment, the threshold that once crossed would leave behind a world that had endured for centuries, and that this moment was only sixty years ago.

Consider this: when the electricity did finally come, it was discovered that the 100-watt bulb was too bright for Faha. The instant garishness was too shocking. Dust and cobwebs were discovered to have been thickening on every surface since the sixteenth century. Reality was appalling. It turned out Siney Dunne’s fine head of hair was a wig, not even close in color to the scruff of his neck, and Marian McGlynn’s healthy allure was in fact a caked make-up the color of red turf ash.

In the week following the switch-on, (store owner) Tom Clohessy couldn’t keep mirrors in stock, as people came in from out the country and bought looking glasses of all variety, went home, and in merciless illumination endured the chastening of all flesh when they saw what they looked like for the first time.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Such is the illumination of the gospel—in a person’s heart, in a community, even in a culture. It’s no surprise, then, that John 3:19 says, “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” James 1:23-24 warns against the folly of looking in the mirror of God’s Word only to walk away without changing.

Here’s how Tim Keller used to explain our sin problem:

Imagine your present self looking at your past self, say 10 years ago. Your present self thinks your past self was a fool. Your present self looks back and says, “Back then, I needed guidance I didn't understand. I was so naive. I was so silly. I was immature. I behaved badly.” So, your present self always thinks of your past self as a jerk. Well, the problem is that your future self will think of your present self as a jerk 10 years from now. You'll look back now and say, “Back then, I thought I needed guidance. I thought I understood, but I was such a fool.”

Here's the blunt bad news about our condition: You're always a jerk, but you always think you're just getting over it. We always think that we've just arrived. It's what you thought when you were 15. Then, then you looked back at your 12-year-old self and said, “Now I've arrived. Boy, what a dummy I was when I was 12. I'm ready for the world now.” By the time you're 20, you say that 15-year-old self was so ignorant and flawed and sinful. But you see here’s the point: you’re always ignorant and flawed and sinful, but you continually think you're just getting over it. Sin is deeper in us than we ever imagined.

Judge Michelini said to the defendant, “You just don’t get it. It’s obvious to me that you feel justified. You don’t take any responsibility for the outcome of your actions.”

After those words, Michelini issued a sentence of 25 years to life in prison. The defendant, Kevin Monahan, had been convicted of second-degree murder for his involvement in the killing of 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis. Gillis was a passenger in a car that accidentally turned into Monahan’s driveway while attempting to find a friend’s house nearby. In response Monahan shot at the car, fatally injuring Gillis.

Monahan had taken the stand in his own defense, attempting to testify that what happened was an accident. But the judge was unconvinced, not only by the substance of Monahan’s words, but his demeanor during his testimony. The judge said to Monahan:

The first thing you do on the witness stand is you made a joke to the jury about them finally being able to see your face. You senselessly took the life of Kaylin Gillis and you have the gall to sit here and talk about how you plan to finish up the work on your house and race motocross in the future. You don’t deserve that. What would make you think that you deserve those things?

After Monahan’s conviction, the defense asked for leniency in sentencing. But Michelini wasn’t having it:

Any remorse you have isn’t for the harm you’ve caused. The only regret you have is that you’re finally facing the consequences for your actions. You murdered Kaylin Gillis. You shot at a car full of people and you didn’t care what would happen and you repeatedly lied about it. You deserve to spend the maximum time in prison allowable under our law, and I don’t make this decision because it’s easy. I make it because it’s what’s deserved. I make it because it’s what’s just.

At the time of the killing, Gillis’ family made a statement, praising her as a “kind, beautiful soul and a ray of light to anyone who was lucky enough to know her.”

It’s so hard to be comfortable during commercial air flight, that many TikTok influencers have begun advocating for an unorthodox seating position. Catering to the more flexible among us, these influencers are taking videos with their knees at their chest, perching their feet at the edge of their seat, and securing their seat belt around their ankles

But experts call it risky and unsafe, primarily for one simple reason. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said “The seat belt is designed to sit low and tight across your lap. This is not only for your safety; if you are not properly buckled in you will likely hurt someone else when thrown in turbulence.”

Delta Airlines spokesman Drake Castañeda said, “Buckling your seat belt is chief among the ways to stay safe on an airplane. Especially as you see all these stories in the news and on social media of severe turbulence.” Castañeda says this is why flight attendants explain the federal laws that apply to each and every flight before takeoff.

Flight attendant Sabrina Schaller said, “I’ve heard many, many stories where flight attendants have told me they’ve had an unexpected hit-the-ceiling-type situation. So always wear the seat belt. Always, always, always, just to be safe.”

When researchers for the American Bible Society’s annual State of the Bible report saw 2022’s survey statistics, they found it hard to believe the results. The data said roughly 26 million people had mostly or completely stopped reading the Bible in the last year.

“We reviewed our calculations. We double-checked our math and ran the numbers again … and again,” John Plake, lead researcher for the American Bible Society, wrote in the 2022 report. “What we discovered was startling, disheartening, and disruptive.”

In 2021, about 50 percent of Americans said they read the Bible on their own at least three or four times per year. That percentage had stayed more or less steady since 2011.

But in 2022, it dropped 11 points. Now only 39 percent say they read the Bible multiple times per year or more. It is the steepest, sharpest decline on record.

According to the 12th annual State of the Bible report, it wasn’t just the occasional Scripture readers who didn’t pick up their Bibles as much in 2022 either. More than 13 million of the most engaged Bible readers—measured by frequency, feelings of connection to God, and impact on day-to-day decisions—said they read God’s Word less.

Currently, only 10 percent of Americans report daily Bible reading.

Jeopardy fans were furious after the contestants on an episode failed to answer a “simple” question about the Lord's Prayer during the game. Players Joe, Laura, and Suresh were unable to give the correct answer to former host Mayim Bialik's question about filling in the blank: “Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, ____ be thy name,’" Bialik said. The group made an error of biblical proportions by not even attempting to guess the correct answer as the stage remained silent until Bialik gave the answer.

But the saddest thing happened over the next day or two on X. Jeopardy fans and lots of former or current church-going people started piling on with anger and shock at the contestants' inability to answer the question. Here are some of the posts:

“That’s ‘hallowed,’ you heathens!”

“Hey, Jeopardy geniuses … It's HALLOWED. Sheesh, what a sad world we live in.”

“OOF. Watching @Jeopardy tonight, and none of the contestants knew the words 'hallowed be thy name' in the Lord's Prayer,” one user lamented.

“You gotta be kidding me no one knew ‘hallowed.’”

“Screaming Hallowed! They didn't know the ‘Our Father.’ #Jeopardy,” wrote another.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Condemnation; Mocking - Rather than mock and condemn, it would have been much more fruitful to gently instruct those who don’t know the content, context, or relevance of the Lord’s Prayer. 2) Bible; Morality; Knowledge - Is it any wonder that the world is in the moral state that it is? People are perishing and being misled because of an ignorance of God’s Word (Hos. 4:6).

Your brain is planning to remind you of the stupid thing you did 15 years ago in the early hours of tomorrow morning. It reckons on waking you up with a jolt after only three hours of sleep. Then it will spend much of the rest of the night replaying a list your greatest (mistakes).

The spongy grey lump which sits between your ears is planning a real “greatest hits” retrospective which will include every dumb thing you’ve ever said. That time you got it completely wrong with the person you really fancied and doomed yourself to a life of regret and loneliness. Every stupid … choice you’ve ever made and how people are only your friends because they pity you.

It expects this will be complete by about 6:30am, by which time you’ll have to get up and go to work and pretend you’re just fine. When asked, your brain said it intends to do this randomly at intervals for the rest of your life.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Since no one is without sin (Ps. 143:2; Rom. 3:10), you will have many regrets, shameful memories, and sins to ponder late at night (Ps. 32:1-6). Only in Christ can we find true forgiveness, release from a guilty conscience, and the promise that “God’s mercy is new every morning” (Lam. 3:23-24).

One day in 1995, a middle-aged man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn’t wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank. Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, Wheeler stared in disbelief. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled. Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to video cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn’t come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible.

Police concluded that Wheeler was not crazy or on drugs – just incredibly mistaken.

The saga caught the eye of the psychologist David Dunning at Cornell University, who enlisted his graduate student, Justin Kruger, to see what was going on. They reasoned that, while almost everyone holds favorable views of their abilities … some people mistakenly assess their abilities as being much higher than they actually are. One study found that 80 percent of drivers rate themselves as above average – a statistical impossibility. This “illusion of confidence” is now called the “Dunning-Kruger effect,” and describes the cognitive bias to inflate self-assessment.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Hiddenness; Omniscience of God – The belief that sins can be concealed is as old as the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve mistakenly thought that they could hide from God. To their shame, they learned that no one can escape the all-seeing eyes of God. 2) Ego; False beliefs; Self-deception; Sowing and Reaping – An over-inflated opinion of oneself generally leads to a sudden reality check (1 Cor. 10:12; Gal. 6:7).

When Aaron Köhler tries to talk to people in Cottbus, Germany, about Jesus, church, and faith, he can’t assume they know what he’s talking about. Many in the city near the Polish border don’t know anything about Christianity. Köhler has had people ask him whether Christmas and Easter are Christian holidays, and if so, what they’re about. One time, he talked to someone at a local market who wasn’t familiar with the name Jesus. The person had never even heard it, that they could recall.

“That was crazy for me. In the ‘land of the Reformation,’ in a supposedly ‘Christian country,’ these people don’t even know the basic basics,” said Köhler, who co-pastors a church plant.

According to the most recent data, more than 60 percent of Germans identify as Christian. A little more than a quarter say they have no religion. Zoom in a little closer, though, and stark regional differences emerge. In the western part of the country—which includes Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, and Frankfurt—three-quarters of the population identify as Christian. But in the east, the region that was a Soviet Union satellite state from 1949 to 1990, only a quarter of Germans are Christian, with nearly 70 percent identifying themselves as “nonbelievers.”

Christianity is declining in much of formerly Protestant Europe. But eastern Germany stands out, even compared with other rapidly secularizing nations. Here, large swaths of the population have had no serious contact with Christianity for three generations. Köhler said, “For decades, there was no prayer, no Bible at home, no church attendance. After all these years, people don’t know what they don’t know.”

The regional differences are easily traced to the division of the country after its defeat in World War II. The French, British, and American-controlled sectors in the west merged into the German Federal Republic in 1949. The Soviet-controlled East formed the German Democratic Republic, a socialist state with totalitarian leaders who suppressed religion. The Christian population in East Germany fell from about 90 percent in 1949 to only 30 percent in 1990.

The alleged prophet Nostradamus is more popular than ever in these troubled times. Books about him and his prophecies are high on the best seller lists even today. His predictions are fraudulent not because they contradict Scripture, but by pure logical reasoning.

The British daily paper the Guardian recently exposed the prophet's devious methods. The reader can read into Nostradamus' vague words whatever he or she wants:

Circumlocution and evasion of directness play a large part. He usually waffled in his astrological datings, since conjunctions are repeated. He invoked obscure Latin words to create possibilities of double meanings; he omitted prepositions, articles, reflexives, and connectives, and favored the infinitive as a timeless, personless form that can be read many ways.

Nostradamus has the virtue of vagueness combined with apocalyptic fervor. That’s not unusual. Many sayers of sooth, from Merlin and Geoffrey of Monmouth onwards, have done the same. This vagueness lends itself to what we now know as confirmation bias. In desperate times, soothsayers have a ready audience for their insane nonsense. It’s the meeting point of cynicism and gullibility.

When life seems chaotic and the future uncertain, people look for patterns, narratives and meaning. At moments of great change or social anxiety we do tend to go looking for explanations. We want the past and the future to make narrative sense.

Cybersecurity services provider Kaspersky has released a report on risks associated with cryptocurrency use. The report titled “Crypto Threats 2023” focused on the United States and uncovered some surprisingly poor user security habits.

Kaspersky surveyed 2,000 American adults and found that 24% of respondents overall owned cryptocurrency or digital assets. Ownership ranged from 36% in the 25–44 age category to 10% among those aged 55 or older.

A third of the crypto owners surveyed reported having crypto stolen, and an equal portion reported being victims of scams. Identity theft, theft of payment details, and loss of account access led the list of scam consequences. The average value of assets stolen was $97,583. Here, too, there was a sharp differentiation by age, with 47% of those ages 18–24 reporting thefts of (larger amounts of) crypto, compared to 8% of those over 55 (who reported smaller amounts of loss).

Lax security might account for many of the losses experienced by respondents. The survey found that crypto owners last checked on their crypto six weeks ago, and their accounts have minimal protection: “27% of users keep their crypto stored in an exchange account with no added protection, while only 34% use multi-factor authentication to protect their account.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This report is another excellent reminder to focus on the security of our treasure in heaven and not to trust uncertain wealth on earth “… a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys” (Matt. 6:19-20; Luke 12:33).

To an outsider, the name Sam Bankman-Fried might seem like a pseudonym, too on-the-nose to be real. The 30-year-old entrepreneur and philanthropist, known by his initials SBF, became one of the youngest billionaires in the world after founding the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In the 90s hip-hop parlance, one could say he made “bank, man.” But after FTX collapsed amidst solvency concerns and he lost approximately $16 billion in net worth, SBF now appears, rather appropriately, “fried.”

As proof of his lack of business savvy, Washington Post columnist Molly Roberts recently mentioned the fact that SBF once spurned the practice of reading books. Not certain books, but books, period. He said, “I would never read a book. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. ... If you wrote a book, you (failed), it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.”

Roberts says that such impatience is characteristic of his overall approach, a philosophy he identifies as “effective altruism.” This is defined as making as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, in order to give it all away. According to Roberts, SBF’s unwillingness to hoard the money is laudable, but he used it to justify a series of high-risk speculative bets that eventually proved to be his economic undoing.

Roberts explained:

SBF was also immersed in a type of effective altruism known as longtermism, where that ultimate outcome you’re seeking is hundreds of thousands or even millions of years away. So, instead of buying bed nets for children dying of malaria today, you’re trying to prevent the hypothetical next pandemic or the overheating of the earth. ... (This way of thinking is an) obsession with the future [that] disconnects you from the present.

Roberts concludes her analysis this way: “Why not scam a few bucks today to save a few billion lives in the 23rd century? That’s not just skipping to the end of the book—it’s skipping to the end of the entire series.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those who spurn instruction and consideration in favor of efficiency and haste, cut themselves off from needed wisdom and hasten their own destruction.

No one wants to be seen as a liar. Liars are considered untrustworthy. And yet, we are perfectly content to lie to ourselves all the time. “I’ll enjoy this sleeve of Oreos today because my diet starts tomorrow,” I might tell myself. Or, “I love my job; who cares that I complain about it constantly?” Or even—ironically— “I am always honest with myself.”

Deceiving yourself doesn’t make logical sense. After all, lying involves telling someone something you know to be untrue. When you are both the liar and one lied to, this means you have to both know the truth and not know the truth. To be really happy, we must learn to be completely honest with ourselves.

Relatively few people are completely honest with others. In one study, researchers found that 60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation, and many lied multiple times. Distorting reality inside your own head might be even more common. No one is completely honest with themselves, because the truth hurts. Life is simply full of harsh realities.

All that self-deception takes a lot of work to maintain. Consider procrastination, a form of self-deception that can be trivial (“I’ll unload the dishwasher later”) or catastrophic (“I’ll call the doctor next week about that chest pain”). This form of self-deception is costly not only because avoiding problems can make them worse but also because the procrastinator must do the mental work of a task over and over, without reaping the rewards of actually getting it done.

If you are willfully oblivious to your flaws, you can’t correct them. In the end, each of us has to decide: Do I want the full truth, no matter where it leads? The honest path isn’t easy, but you can be sure that day by day, you will be proud to say that the person in the mirror is not a liar. And that will be the truth.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Real happiness starts with telling yourself the truth, even when it hurts. Real healing begins when we stop making excuses for our sins, telling God the truth in confession, and receiving his forgiveness.

You can get a cellphone signal on the highest mountain in Colorado. If you get lost hiking that mountain, you should probably answer your phone — even if you don't recognize the caller's number.

That's the message being spread by Lake County Search and Rescue, which tried to help a lost hiker on Mount Elbert by sending out search teams and repeatedly calling the hiker's phone. All to no avail. The hiker spent the night on the side of the mountain before finally reaching safety. "One notable take-away is that the subject ignored repeated phone calls from us because they didn't recognize the number.”

The hiker set out at 9 a.m. on a route that normally takes about seven hours to complete, round-trip. A caller alerted search and rescue teams around 8 p.m., and a five-person team stayed in the field looking for the hiker until 3 a.m., when the team suspended the search. More searchers hit the mountain the next morning, but then the hiker appeared, having finally made it back to their car. The hiker had gotten disoriented in an ordeal that lasted about 24 hours.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sadly, it is sometimes the habit of people to avoid those who are trying to rescue them. God went looking for Adam in the Garden when he was hiding in fear (Gen. 3:9). Jesus came to earth to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10), and he repeatedly called the lost to come to him for salvation, but they refused to respond (Matt. 23:37; Luke 13:34).

Mistakes are easily made and it’s often too late to rectify the situation by the time someone notices. That was the case with Spain’s supposedly state-of-the-art submarine the S-81 Isaac Peral. The submarine was commissioned in 2013 as one of four new submarines for the Spanish Navy, but there’s just one problem with its modern design. Once it’s submerged the S-81 Isaac Peral may never be able to resurface again.

This is because a miraculously unnoticed flaw in its design means that the ship is around 75 to 100 tons overweight. Which means Spain essentially invested in a submarine which can only move in one direction--down. The mistake is said to be the result of a pesky decimal point placed in the wrong place during calculations. And it’s a single dot which can cost an extra $9.7 million per meter of the hull, which has to be extended to regain its balance.

Considering $680 million has already been invested in this single ship as part of a total $3 billion for all four subs, this is hardly a (mistake) which can be brushed under the rug. It took an additional seven years to repair and the submarine finally joined the Spanish fleet in May 2021.

You can view the clip here (8 min 52 sec – 10 min 03 sec).

A woman has gone viral on TikTok after sharing a video of the moment she unknowingly held “one of the most dangerous animals” while studying abroad in Bali. The clip starts with a shot of Phillips on the beach with the "highly venomous" cephalopod in her palm. A second screenshot, describes the animals as carrying “enough venom to kill 26 adult humans within minutes” and having bites that are “tiny and often painless,” which result in victims often not realizing they have been bitten “until respiratory depression and paralysis begins.”

"Cheers for still being alive," Phillips wrote at the end of the viral clip. "Called my dad crying 3 hours later."

The encounter took place while she was studying abroad. She only learned the truth after posting clips from that day to social media.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes sin can seem harmless, even attractive. We might secretly play with this “thing of beauty.” But as with Adam and Eve, like the fruit that was so attractive, the result is spiritual death (Gen. 3:6).

The radio program, This American Life, tells the story about the late writer David Rakoff, who had a hard time believing what was right in front of his eyes. In 1986, Rakoff’s company in Tokyo was working on a computer program that would allow expats like himself to write short little messages to one another after logging on to the network.

David was not impressed. He thought, “What kind of loser would log onto a computer [just to] talk to someone?” And in a moment of decisiveness, he went into work and quit. “Sayonara, suckers! Good luck with your ‘network’!” Of course, we can all guess what that network became. It was the beginning of a little thing called the internet.

David has other stories too. Earlier in the 1980s, he went to a dance club and heard a young blonde singer from Michigan and thought, “Boy, is she lousy!” That singer was later known by the name, “Madonna.” Again, working in publishing, he was handed a manuscript and passed it off as “subliterate drivel” and an “easy pass.” That turned out to be a book called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which went on to sell 15 million copies as one of the best-selling works of the 1990s.

Apparently, seeing isn’t always believing--even when it’s right in front of your eyes.

When a group of friends and families decided to hike to Shoshone Geyser Basin in Yellowstone, they tried to come prepared for the unexpected. But what they didn’t prepare for? Fines, probation, and a temporary ban from the park. Three of them pleaded guilty to the minor offense of “foot travel in a thermal area,” after being discovered by park rangers trying to cook their food in the park’s hot springs.

Park representative Linda Veress said, “A ranger responded and found two whole chickens in a burlap sack in a hot spring.” The ranger found the group and questioned them about their behavior before issuing citations. According to Veress, the laws in place that prohibit access beyond designated trails are there to protect not only the park itself, but the public as well. Hot spring waters can exceed 400 degrees Fahrenheit, with the potential to cause “severe or fatal burns.” Such was the case earlier this year, when a 3-year-old girl suffered second-degree burns after falling into a hydrothermal area. The same thing happened in 2016, but the 23-year-old died from his burns.

Eric Romriell says that he and his friends did their best to be careful, double-packing the chickens inside a roasting bag and a burlap sack to avoid contaminating the waters. He said, “The way I interpreted it was don’t be destructive, and I didn’t feel like I was.” Dallas Roberts, another member of the group, says he saw some signage indicating they were in a closed area, but didn’t think the signs applied to the hot springs themselves. He agreed that the group wasn’t doing any damage, but added, “I can see that we should not have done that.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It's easy to rationalize disobedience when we think we're doing it for a good reason. But often the restrictions are in place for our own safety and protection. We violate them at our own peril.

Two Clemson University researchers have extensively studied the phenomenon of foreign political disinformation campaigns via social media. To combat this growing problem, they decided to launch their own campaign.

Called Spot the Troll, it invites users to take a short quiz and see if they can identify which social media accounts are authentic and which ones were fabricated. The goal is to teach people the “markers of inauthenticity” in online social media profiles. The title reflects this aim; the term “troll” is internet jargon for any person who intentionally creates a stir by posting erroneous, hateful, or provocative content.

This practice has become weaponized by foreign intelligence agencies. Pioneered by Russia, these “troll farms” have proliferated in places like Iran and China, among those who specialize in sowing political discord. Linvill says, “They push ideologies in two extreme directions, making it harder and harder for us to make compromises.” He is concerned in part because the problem has become home-grown. “It's not just state actors. It's also Americans doing it to ourselves.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

In an age of rampant disinformation, we must be especially vigilant regarding the things we share on social media. Our knee-jerk tendencies of sharing anything that validates our biases will get us into trouble if and when our statements are revealed to be based on falsehoods.