{"id":6417,"date":"2026-06-07T23:55:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T23:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/?p=6417"},"modified":"2026-06-11T21:50:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T21:50:17","slug":"finding-truth-in-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/finding-truth-in-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding truth in stories"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\n  The grifters and the hucksters and the influencers selling impossible things succeed because audiences reward certainty and punish doubt. They honor confidence and resist complication. A clean story about a genius who will fix everything travels faster than a difficult story about tradeoffs. The Field of Miracles stays open because people keep wanting to bury their coins there. &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/om.co\/2026\/05\/25\/we-are-living-in-pinocchios-world\/\">Om Malik<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Related to themes I&#8217;m currently reading in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hachettebookgroup.com\/titles\/adam-becker\/more-everything-forever\/9781541619593\/\">More, Everything, Forever<\/a>, by <a href=\"https:\/\/freelanceastrophysicist.com\/\">Adam Becker<\/a>. Stories are powerful, and we are often all too willing to let them mislead us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The grifters and the hucksters and the influencers selling impossible things succeed because audiences reward certainty and punish doubt. They honor confidence and resist complication. A clean story about a genius who will fix everything travels faster than a difficult story about tradeoffs. The Field of Miracles stays open because people keep wanting to bury&#8230;<a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/finding-truth-in-stories\/\">more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374,378,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mindfulness","category-psychology-2","category-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wjHJ-1Fv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6417"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6421,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6417\/revisions\/6421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bob.ryskamp.org\/brain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}