I've been thinking a bit about human history, and I think that a lot of important stuff that happens is driven by ideas that are just plain not true in the sense of the objective reality. As SkepticsTM, we like to concern ourselves with finding out what it the objective reality, but as far as what actually drives human events, what really matters isn't what is objectively true, but what people believe is true.
Did Marie Antoinette actually say "Let them eat cake?" I don't think that any serious scholar that has looked into the matter believes that she really said that. But most people have heard that somewhere. I don't remember when or how I first heard about it, but I'm pretty sure that I learned it as a "fact" at first, even though it isn't. Did that sort of thing help her end up at the guillotine? Was the French Revolution driven by stuff like that? I don't know.
Not to mention the more obvious stuff, like religious beliefs. How many wars have been fought over competing mythologies, none of which are actually true in any objective sense?
World Wars I and II? A lot of wrong beliefs led to those. Is it a mistake to think that objective reality really matters?
