Bet the house
When you walk up to the roulette table and place a bet it's common for the dealer to say something along the lines of, "Good luck with your bet sir." You need luck because the outcome isn't known ahead of time. It's based purely on chance. Some people put their money on red 23. Some people put their money on black 8. And then everyone waits. They watch the ball spin around and around, waiting to see where it lands. Waiting to find out who will be the winners and who will be the losers. A number of possible outcomes collapse into a single outcome that everyone has to accept. You could try arguing with the dealer that black 8 really means red 23, but that would just get you thrown out of the casino.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected president there have been two diverging realities. One reality is that President Trump has been making America great again by building a border wall, keeping out illegal immigrants, lowering corporate taxes, reducing regulations, appointing pro-life judges, defending gun ownership rights, and draining the swamp. The other reality is that President Trump is a racist, corrupt, wanna-be dictator, supported by a party that is undermining the separation of powers and the separation of church and state, all while destroying a free and independent press. This divergence has gone on for a lot longer than I would have thought possible, given that there's only one reality and we all live in it. But here we are, 3+ years into the presidency of Donald Trump and we're still arguing about it.
At the foundation of science is a belief that the future is predictable. The physical laws of the universe are deterministic and given the same set of input parameters, the outcome will always be the same. The strength of that foundation is what allowed technology to advance as fast as it has. It's the reason why we have smart phones and the reason why scientists are able to predict how close a satellite will be to a comet 12 years in the future. There's just no arguing with the idea that science has gotten us closer to understanding reality. There's no arguing with the results.
Human behavior is, of course, a lot more complex than the orbit of the planets around the sun. We just don't know enough about the human brain to be able to predict exactly how a person will react to a certain situation. Which is not to say that it's completely unpredictable. I can make a pretty good prediction about how it would play out if I cheated on my wife. (It would not end well for me.)
One of the things that I've come to appreciate as I've gotten older is the role that journalism plays in society. At its heart journalism is a lot like science. Its stated goal is to expose the truth. Or at least, get closer to the truth. When a politician says something that's not true a journalist can point out the facts that contradict that statement. They may stop short of calling it a lie, but they can at least try to set the record straight. Without agreement about what's true and what's false, there's no way to make progress. We might as well throw it all away. We could spend half our lives "teaching the controversy" about whether Earth is really flat.
I've had a feeling lately that we're on the precipice of a great reckoning. An unraveling of alternate realities. I've done my best to educate myself about the world. To separate truth from fiction. I feel pretty good about my understanding of the world and where I stand in it. But I could be wrong of course. I could lose my bet. No one knows for sure which number the ball will land on... right? No one knows the future, do they?
Good luck with your bet sir.