CERTAIN events are impossible to understand the first time they are explained. Sometimes this is because the information is too complex to comprehend. But just as often, they’re impossible to understand because the information, despite being basic and unambiguous, does not cohere into a circumstance that’s rational enough to accept. The cognitive tendency is to reject the information and ask for clarification, even if the original anecdote was as straightforward as any anecdote can be. That tendency is why every person informed about what happened in the 1997 boxing rematch between Mike Tyson
...more
