Tell me, Tom, if you were driving down a one-way street, and everyone else was driving in the opposite direction to you, would you not think you had most likely made a mistake?
that's a good analogy. of course, it doesn't necessarily mean you
aren't right and everyone else wrong, and that you should not stand your ground. (for a moment let's dismiss where the metaphor would break down: in that even being right, you'll still get run over. that isn't applicable to primarily intellectual disagreements.)
but, it does suggest that the odds are, you are wrong, and you'll need to present a pretty damn good argument if you want to convince anyone, especially when the most obvious evidence (street signs and stop lights) suggest you couldn't be more wrong.
as a kid and all the way up until several years ago, i used to love zombie movies. but something always troubled me: if, in real life, i found myself the last man alive and everyone else were zombies (yes i did see 'i am legend' and its predecessors), could i be absolutely, completely sure that i wasn't just insane and a deadly threat to everyone else - very much not undead and quite sane? which would better explain the evidence? i'm not entirely sure i, or anyone honest enough to actually face such an unlikely question, could be sure. i might just have to try evasion only, without the use of deadly force, even if it killed me. because: even if i concluded that the odds of me being insane were fantastically low, the consequences of me being wrong would be absolutely, catastrophically unacceptable. the overall calculated risk [odds * cost], then, might not even be worth my own life. run, but don't shoot.
which just goes to show: you
must have a zombie evasion plan in place. just pretending it will never happen is not going to save you from going insane anyway. or something like that.
wait. i mean, everyone must have an
insanity plan. where you spell out to yourself, how you will deal with the possibility that you have in fact gone insane, and what clues might exist to suggest it. (such as fervently and dogmatically believing an idiotic idea in a profound spiritual manner, something that almost
everyone else, including leaders of science (whom you believe are a conspiracy - a key ingredient of schizophrenia), are pretty sure is false. sure, there are low odds you are actually not crazy, everyone else is crazy, and you are in fact right. many a hero of history has proven that. even very paranoid ones. but the odds are far, far, *far* higher that you are just fucking nuts. and history tends not to record the exponential orders of magnitude more cases of that.