Mario Henriquez

Professor: Dr. Smith

March 17, 2014

“Change the subject, I’ve already knew the truth”

          How would you react, when somebody comes to you and talk about a subject or something that you already know? Image that someone approach to you saying something that you are familiar with, and his or her explanations or facts are opposite of what you knew. In the passage of “ I Know the Truth, So Don’t Bother Me With Facts,” by Jeffrey Kluger show us how people react when someone present an opinion or a case on a specific subject that a person already knew but that person who you are presenting the facts act differently because you and him or her has different belief. Kluger says: "Even when people do take time to learn the facts, however, the effort often does no good." It is difficult to convince someone who believe in something and you come to tell that person something opposite of their believe, no matter, the facts that you show to that person, your efforts could be useless because you do not know how long it will take to that person to accept the facts. I consider that, if someone is presenting me a subject about something that I already knew, I will hear that person because it could give me more details or changed something that I knew but could be totally wrong.

          My neighbor was worried about the health care policies of Barack Obama. I told her the different options that she could make. However, she told me that I was wrong because she heard from somebody else that if she does not have a health insurance, she has to pay a penalty. I explained her that: “ If you are working, your company supposed to offer you a health insurance but if they do not offer you that, you should go by yourself and apply for health insurance because it is important to have that in case if something happen to you.” She told me that, she also is afraid because they might charge her a lot of money and she does not make sufficient money to pay insurance. I told her that: “It depends on how much you earn, for example, maybe you are earning less than a thousand and they will approve your case.” I convinced her after a long conversation, and next day she went to get the information in the health care office. On the same day afternoon, I saw her and she told me that, she found the information that she needed and presented her income and her case will be approve because she is not earning enough money. My neighbor, resulted her problem, however she knew about the case but did not have too much details.

          This passage reminds me of, an article that I read about Christopher Columbus. I believe that he was a hero and a big character in the America history but the article that I read, was showing facts that were against of my believes. It was saying that Christopher Columbus is true that he was a big and important character in America history but he destroyed a lot of human being, which was Indians in the Caribbean. He was a criminal because he killed and mistreat slaves. For that moment, I felt offended because of my believe but I started to think and realized that, what was saying in the article was true because in my country, the Dominican Republic, we are mixed of Europeans and Africans. Columbus when arrived there, they were Indians and they were killed by his soldiers. In the history book only explain, the good side of the history but it does not mention a lot of bad things that Christopher Columbus did. Everything has a logical meaning, before he arrived as I mentioned people were living in that island and the colonist invaded the entire territory and killed everyone. A lot of people like me, or some of them takes time to realize something true that is familiar, as Kluger explained before we take time to change our believe.

          As I mention before, it is good to know about a subject or a case that someone is presenting you because you will have knowledge of what the other person is saying. Probably, you will feel uncomfortable because you believe in something that is totally opposite of the other person but you should hear his or her points of view because both can share and obtain more experience.