The Soldiers of Truth

They were the new soldiers of truth - just like priests and philosophers before them, their duty was to shed light on the unknown, explain things behind things, and make sense of this world. They were to succeed where philosophers and priests failed - after all, science was on their side. Thus they could not go wrong, they would fearlessly charter into the unknown to illuminate the ignorant masses and explain everything without any trace of a doubt. In short, they were evolutionary psychologists.

On a cold night, they huddled together to discuss the current events and concerns. Their chief took out a list and began:

"It is gay men again... We had had a hard time explaining why they still existed, since they wasted precious resources on non-reproductive ends. As everyone knows, we make a really big deal out of resource allocation efficiency whenever we please, thus this was a glitch hard to overcome. Those days are behind us, fortunately. Now we have to explain why they are promiscuous, after all, we did say that they were women trapped in male bodies. They should have been COY! The public demands an explanation!"

The crowd was stirred, one of them stood up and said: "How about we hypothesize that one part of their brain is still male and promiscuous, and one part of it still female-like?"

The chief exclaimed, "Wonderful! Now we have a theory!"

A young psychologist in the crowd was not happy. "Why are we concocting a theory to reflect the truth?", he asked, "Should we not instead try to predict the reality according to our theories, to test their validity?"

The crowd burst into laughter. Upon hearing this, however, the chief was neither enlightened nor amused. "You must be new to this group," said the chief in a cold manner. The young man nodded.

The chief continued reading from his list. "Now to a new topic... Young people tend to take more risks than the old, since they try to woo women at their age, correct?"

"Correct", the crowd responded.

"Then, why is there a neurological study linking old people to great risk taking? It seems as they get older, they get accustomed to negative events, being, in turn, more resilient to the bad outcomes of a risky endeavor. Any comments?"

The crowd was stirred once again. They argued for a long time. They were not able to come up with a believable answer. Their chief finally said, "How about we work in two teams? The first team will twist the theory to fit the truth, and the other team will twist the truth to fit the theory. You have 20 minutes. And as always, try not to twist the truth or theory too much, we don't want to break them now, do we?"

"Of course not", the crowd replied. The chief went on, "Let's hurry up, though, we are yet to talk about why people sing when they shower. Also, a double blind study confirming the fact that Coke cans touched by taller men are favored more among women than the ones touched by shorter men; we need to go through that one as well."

Suddenly, one of the psychologists said, "I am so tired of twisting the truth, can we not do this another time? Besides, I need to use the restroom."

Others made similar remarks and gestures. The chief finally gave in and concluded the meeting: "All right then, I guess the truth has to be sought some other time."