2018 Mar 20: 15 minutes

It was where belief caused reality. It was the planet of dreams.

If you believed there should be gravity, then gravity held you down. If you assumed there would be oxygen, then you would not suffocate.

If you believed a monster was stalking you, then soon you would hear its footsteps behind you.

Where observations of reality normally determined our beliefs, here the roles had reversed. I didn't believe I could fly, and so I couldn't. I didn't believe in the inherent goodness of man, and so there wasn't. I didn't believe our species could ever stop their wars, and so we couldn't.

I believed everything was corrupt, and the more I looked, the more corruption I found, reinforcing my faith in the evil of the system.

The world became increasingly nightmarish. There were voices trying to convince me that nuclear war was imminent. That was something I definitely did *not* want to believe, but was afraid I might start believing anyway.

I believed that cancer caused death, and it did. I believed in the effectiveness of the placebo effect, and it worked.

I believed my life would be stuck in boring stretches of nothingness, and it was. I didn't really believe Utopia was possible, and we never got it. I believed that happiness could only be achieved through great effort, and I was still working hard at it. I suspected my friends and family wouldn't like my life choices, and my suspicions became true.

Scientists were forced to use double-blind tests in their experiments, or else the reverse causality of belief would ruin their interventions.

Whenever we believed in science, then science ruled the day. Whenever we lost faith in science, then science would fail us. Some people believed in miracles. Did miracles happen for them only because they were true believers?

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