In a column for the Argentine daily Infobae, written in Spanish, Oscar Liberman borrows Coleridge's idea of the 'willing suspension of disbelief' from 1817. A theatre audience suspends disbelief for an evening and then goes home. Liberman argues that many people now do something less innocent: they decide first and recruit reasons afterwards. They demand strict proof from opponents but swallow rumours that favour their own side, because an unwelcome conclusion threatens their group. Politicians feed this with stories that always blame someone else, and social media and AI make confirmation endless.

His examples are Argentine and economic, but the mechanism is the one freethinkers meet in every debate about belief. His remedy is modest and hard: judge ideas by their results and accept that your own might be wrong.

Source: Oscar Liberman, Infobae (Spanish) (2026-11-01)

Summarised by the FTI newsdesk.