| It is true, many people believe things that are unwarranted, and suffer for it. Of course, I am not sure why they could not weigh the risk/benefit of sleeping on tracks that they did not know to be obsolete, so maybe they were just plain stupid. In any case, most of what we know is by way of authorities, we are rarely in a position to independently verify. We rely on teachers, textbooks, advisors, folklore, and so forth. The difficulty is in estimating how much trust to repose in a given potential authority. Frankly, if I were afraid of rattlesnakes, and a fellow whom I took to be experienced told me that sleeping on tracks staved them off, I might try it, despite skepticism, merely out of desperation to do something, especially if a rattlesnake had crossed my path. It is hard to say, especially assuming I was an ignorant peasant....... |
