But What If We're Wrong? (30 page)

54
This, somewhat obviously, requires the mental evasion of certain critical details—the ancient Egyptians didn't have electricity, they didn't invent the camera, and it would still be at least 5,200 years before the birth of Shonda Rhimes. But don't worry about the technical issues. Just assume the TVs ran on solar power and involved the condensation of river water and were sanctioned by Ra.

55
I should note again that there's also a popular line of thinking that argues against this type of realism. Some screenwriters feel that directly using an explicit example of any non-essential object dates the material and amplifies the significance of something that doesn't really matter to the story; in other words, having a character ask for a specific brand name like “Heineken” (instead of the generic “beer”) forces the audience to
notice
the beverage a little too much, which might prompt them to read something into that transaction that detracts from the story. It imposes a meaning onto Heineken as a brand. But remember: If we're looking backward from a distant future, we don't care about the story, anyway. We
want
the scene to be dated.

56
When a record producer on
Nashville
(“Liam McGuinnis”) was introduced into the story line, he appeared to be directly modeled after musician (and current Nashville resident) Jack White. I now see “Jack White” in every scene involving this character, which is unintentionally hilarious, especially since he constantly does things Jack White would never do, such as have sex with Connie Britton (a.k.a. “Rayna James,” who is 60 percent Reba McEntire, 25 percent Sara Evans, and 15 percent Faith Hill).

57
As I note these characters, I find myself wondering how confusing it must be for readers born in (say) 1995 to contextualize the meaning of TV personalities from TV programs they've never even heard of. But something I've learned from lecturing at colleges is that young people read nonfiction books very differently from the way I once did; they instantaneously Google any cultural reference they don't immediately comprehend. Learning about the life of Ann Romano is no different from learning about the life of Abe Lincoln. Due to Wikipedia, they're both historical figures.

58
Gladwell went to college in Toronto. People from Toronto view the Bills as their local franchise.

59
What she actually said was: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.”

60
I should note that I was involved with this episode. But my involvement was negligible.

61
1332 Weathervane Lane, just in case somebody out there is writing my unauthorized biography and is using this book as source material.

62
She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance in the John Cassavetes film
Faces.

63
“I think the human as a storytelling animal, as some people put it, is because this [left hemisphere] system is continually trying to keep the story coherent, even though these actions may be coming outside of conscious awareness,” University of California psychology professor Michael Gazzaniga said in a 2011 interview with Jason Gots. “Why does the human always seem to like fiction? Could it be that it prepares us for unexpected things that happen in our life, because we've already thought about them in our fantasy world?”

64
By comparison, Lyndon Johnson left office with an approval rating of just 49 percent (according to the University of California's American Presidency Project). Reagan's approval rating of 63 percent is especially remarkable when you consider that only 32 percent of Americans polled by Gallup in 1988 classified themselves as Republicans.

65
Which is obviously true.

66
Which is obviously true.

67
The
Chicago Daily Tribune
was not able to republish its most famous headline as “
D
ewey Defeats Truman
.” They just had to live with it.

68
Part of what I like about Barry's description of Civil War revisionism is how it accidentally mirrors the elliptical path of his own career. When he was a working newspaper columnist at
The Miami Herald
in the 1980s, Barry was considered a comedic genius. He won a Pulitzer Prize. But soon after winning that award, he was viewed as considerably less funny. When CBS made a TV show about his life in the mid-nineties, his writing started to seem forced and unoriginal. His literary style is now marginalized as the problematic template for all derivative newspaper columnists who aspire to be wacky and deep at the same time. Yet when Barry dies, he will be universally (and justifiably) remembered as a comedic genius, just as he was when he started.

69
This was validated by several people who read an early draft of this book and advised me to cut the section on climate change entirely, contradicting the advice of my editor (who wanted me to retain it and write even more about the psychology behind people's need to feel right about this particular issue). I ultimately ignored everyone.

70
Are
these particular pundits
the best sources, or do these pundits
know
the best sources? This has never been explained and probably should have been fixed the week after the show first debuted, but they've elected to just stick with the ambiguity for thirty-four years.

71
I insert the word “almost” because there's at least one thing analytics always get wrong: They refuse to acknowledge the existence of “clutch shooting” or “clutch hitting.” Math tells us that being “clutch” is a myth, and that the performance of athletes placed in identical “clutch” scenarios will roughly equate with however they'd perform in any normal scenario. This is wrong. For one thing, every “clutch” situation is unique and distinct, so there's no way to compare any two real-life scenarios, even if all the technical details are identical. But the larger reason is that
absolutely everyone
who has played sports
at any level
knows that clutchness is real, to a depth that would make it
become
real (even if it wasn't) for purely psychological reasons. I am not the type who would ever argue that you can't understand pro basketball if you haven't played pro basketball. That argument is dumb. But you probably do need to have competed in a physical sport somewhere, at some level (even if it was just an especially serious summer of Little League). The recognition that certain people respond better under pressure will happen instantly, and you'll never try to convince yourself otherwise.

72
A follow-up story on the website Evolution News clarified the rumor with the story “The Octopus Genome: Not ‘Alien,' but Still a Big Problem for Darwinism.”

73
I am, to a degree, reducing (and extrapolating) the complexity and nuance of Nagel's concept. In a note, he writes: “My point, however, is not that we cannot
know
what it is like to be a bat. I am not raising that epistemological problem. My point is rather that even to form a
conception
of what it is like to be a bat, one must take up the bat's point of view. If one can take it up roughly, or partially, then one's conception will also be rough or partial.”

74
I suppose some might argue this is already true.

75
If there's a 10 percent chance an event that might kill 13,000 people will occur in a region with a population of 8 million residents, am I really in that much danger? Is anyone? Are those odds better or worse than the possibility that I'll have a heart attack?

76
I have no idea where that specific figure comes from, or what constitutes a “correct” weather prediction. Based on my own unscientific sense of the world, I feel like weather forecasters are roughly correct a little more often, even in Ohio. But remember, this is allegedly a joke. Do not cite this in your term paper.

Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!