{"id":102357,"date":"2026-05-11T03:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T07:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=102357"},"modified":"2026-05-10T10:08:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T14:08:24","slug":"a-tale-of-how-the-people-lost-faith-in-the-oracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/11\/a-tale-of-how-the-people-lost-faith-in-the-oracle\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of how the people lost faith in the Oracle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the social media site formerly known as <em>Twitter<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/EveKeneinan\/status\/2052521501916569937\" target=\"_blank\">Eve Keneinan<\/a> tells a story about a people who once depended on the words of the Oracle and why they eventually stopped listening:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/romanhelmetguy\/status\/2052247014016987220\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-08-at-12-09-26-1-Roman-Helmet-Guy-on-X-People-havent-lost-trust-in-science-.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"598\" height=\"457\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-102358\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-08-at-12-09-26-1-Roman-Helmet-Guy-on-X-People-havent-lost-trust-in-science-.png 598w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-08-at-12-09-26-1-Roman-Helmet-Guy-on-X-People-havent-lost-trust-in-science--480x367.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-08-at-12-09-26-1-Roman-Helmet-Guy-on-X-People-havent-lost-trust-in-science--150x115.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 598px) 100vw, 598px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Once upon a time, the people of a certain land were blessed with an oracle of uncanny precision and depth in its predictions and information.  <\/p>\n<p>The people rose to prominence and prosperity thanks to consulting the oracle. <\/p>\n<p>However, the people were never allowed to consult the oracle directly, but only through the priests that carried their questions to it, and brought the oracle&#8217;s responses back to them.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, the priests began to confuse the virtues and gifts of the oracle as their own, and began no longer to bother asking the oracle questions before deciding on what &#8220;its&#8221; answers would be. <\/p>\n<p>Thus it transpired that, while the oracles was a reliable and beneficial as it ever was, since its true answers no longer reached the people, but merely the false and self-serving answers of the priests, the act of &#8220;consulting the oracle&#8221; became no longer beneficial.<\/p>\n<p>So people stopped consulting the oracle.<\/p>\n<p>The priests were mystified by this. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The oracle is as reliable as ever,&#8221; they said amongst themselves. &#8220;Why do the people then no longer trust it?&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>And yet they had done it themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Eve Keneinan tells a story about a people who once depended on the words of the Oracle and why they eventually stopped listening: Once upon a time, the people of a certain land were blessed with an oracle of uncanny precision and depth in its predictions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,28,41,16],"tags":[262,1233],"class_list":["post-102357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-media","category-quotations","category-science","tag-culture","tag-replicationcrisis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qCV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102399,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102357\/revisions\/102399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}