Why False Beliefs Feel True
Image courtesy A middle-aged gentleman in rural Spain of the early seventeenth century spends so many nights reading tales of brave knights, enchanted castles, and noble quests that the boundary between fiction and reality begins to dissolve. One morning, he straps on a suit of rusty armour, mounts his old horse, renames himself Don Quixote de la Mancha, and rides out into the world determined to revive the age of chivalry. Quixote is convinced that he is a knight-errant on a messianic mission. His belief is unwavering, solid. That belief transmutes him into a different personality altogether. He mistakes ordinary inns for magnificent castles, humble peasant girls for elegant princesses, and, most famously, towering windmills for terrifying giants. His belief makes him charge at the windmills, convinced that he is fighting monsters. He is thrown to the ground, bruised and defeated. Even then he does not abandon his belief. The giants, he insists, have been transformed into ...
