The power of ignorance
I recently read of a man who was released from prison after being incarcerated for 37 years. DNA tests showed that he was innocent of the crime for which he had been imprisoned for his entire adult life. It seems the police wanted to close the case; they found a likely suspect and stopped looking. A nightmarish as this is, we are all guilty of the same error; once we think that we know or understand something, we cling to a certainty and stop looking. Worse still, we stop seeing! Like the policemen who imprisoned the wrong man, we will massage the facts so that they support our belief. Our…
