Ivan Oreshnikov

when i was a very small kid i had a friend who used to shake his head from side to side as he ran because he believed that it made him run faster. his theory was that if the world around him was a blur, then surely, he must be running faster. of course he wasn't running faster. but that did not stop him. eventually it caught on and all of his friends, including myself, were running around for a few months shaking our heads side to side as we ran. we must have looked hilarious! anyway, we stopped eventually. either because we realised it wasn't working, or we got neck ache. i can't remember. the group hallucination ended as fast as it started. the belief dissolved and we got back to running like we used to. like everybody always has. it's an odd thing because over a decade later i saw a group of kids running down a street doing exactly the same thing. i smiled, remembering how i once thought that worked too. falsehoods are often independently discovered and then adopted by groups, usually due to the insistence of a central figure. most of them don't last. eventually we find a bit of time for introspection and realise we've been wrong all along. that's why we don't see grown adults running down the street shaking their heads. anyway. something about not reading the code.