> But many readers in Pakistan have come to me and asked how I uncovered it all. It’s almost frightening to think that people read a work of fiction full of fan

> But many readers in Pakistan have come to me and asked how I uncovered it all. It’s almost frightening to think that people read a work of fiction full of fantastical happenings as a piece of history. A retired spy chief once cornered me at a party and said, “Son, you have written a brilliant book, but who were your sources?” This dynamic should be familiar to anyone who works at the art of telling stories. People want pretty-sounding stories to be true and will believe in them regardless of any evidence to the contrary. Even if important aspects of the story are demonstrably, verifiably false, they'll seize on some other aspect of the made-up story to believe in the truth of it. I think this is the underlying dynamic behind the motte-and-bailey rhetorical tactic: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bri... Once every three weeks or so, my father catches me up on the latest in the alt-right scroogery. There's always some grand reveal just over the horizon, and the time shifts from 'real soon now' to 'in a few years', to mine and draw out that human feeling of being in on the conspiracy as much as possible. That's the real feeling being sold here. Certainty in a realm in which there can be none. They're willing to overlook countless bits of evidence that there can't be any certainty here either, just to keep the magic of the feeling of seeing things from a higher perspective alive. On a lighter note, a friend and I often refer to the concept of the mondegreen, misheard lyrics or dialogue that winds up being more iconic than the original. One audience member for the play on which the term originated, upon learning the original reading, refused to accept that it was ever different from how she heard it. It's a form of audience participation in storytelling and is probably older than civilization itself.