Belief and Reason

Belief and reason play an important role in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The guilty accident that causes the ghost's dilemma and sets in motion the development of life on Earth is founded in the fundamental problem of facing what's true versus believing what you want to believe. The ghost wants to believe that the engines are fixed, and so he sends an Electric Monk to tell him what he wants to believe. The Electric Monk is essentially a yes-man, a self-affirmation instead of a check of objective facts. The result is a disaster.

The WayForward Technologies program Reason is another example of the conflict between belief and reason. Instead of basing belief on facts and reasoning, the ironically named Reason program does the opposite. It manufactures facts and reasoning to fit a desired conclusion. The potential outcome, as the Electric Monk shows, is disastrous, and...