I am reminded of that wonderful epic about a short kid riding across America on the back seat of a motorcycle – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – written from the perspective of the front seat driver.

The ability to recognize false arguments, and to refute them, is severely lacking in most college studies today. I except the hard sciences, where the main point is that a hypothesis is testable and if true will produce the same result upon testing regardless of the one doing the testing.

Perspective matters, but mostly to the individual doing the looking. Just ask the short kid sitting behind his dad for almost the entire ride, unable to see anything but his dad’s jacket.

Reality is what will bite your ass whether you’re looking out for it or not. I once interrupted a Nobel winner during his lecture to ask him to stop blocking the overhead projector, as we could not see what he was talking about. It did no good, he soon shifted back to standing in the way of his own words. Nobody else bothered to stop him again.

And a logical objective argument using facts and leading to a rational conclusion won’t always win against a good zinger from the authoritarian at the head of the lecture hall.