Earlier this summer, I was on a hike with a friend and mentioned that while we’d started at about 9,000 feet, we’d reach an elevation of 12,000 feet by the end of the trail. My friend replied, “That’s a fact I just don’t believe.”
Yes, it sounds silly, and of course, we laughed about it. Maybe it was the thin air going to his head, or his good lungs that didn’t cause him to realize how high we had hiked.
But the conversation stuck with me. What is a fact, anyway? Merriam-Webster defines it as “a true piece of information,” and we tend to think of facts as things we can prove through direct observation or scientific experimentation.
Read the rest of the article on The New York Times.