“The truth is sometimes incredible.”Luc de Vauvenargues · Reflecții și maxime · 1746 · Maxima 388
Reality isn't obliged to be believable; we reject strange truths because they sound too bizarre.
The mechanism: we judge plausibility, not truth. What is too bizarre, too inconvenient, or too poorly told gets rejected as unthinkable. Yet reality is not obliged to be believable. Witnesses describing an accident faithfully often convince less than a witness lying coherently, because truth has rough edges that lies smooth over.
Why it matters It guards against confusing what sounds plausible with what is true, especially when weighing testimony and news.