Nonsense, contradictions, and complexity don't just frustrate us, they actually frighten us on an unconscious level. This tendency explains a lot of the nonsense going on around the healthcare debate. We know that it's impossible to predict ALL the results of our actions, and we can't handle it. The solution? I think it's the recommendation of the White Queen in Alice:
Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said `one can't believe impossible things.'`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it
for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before
breakfast.'
Mind - How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect - NYTimes.com, 2009-Oct-5, by Benedict Carey
“We’re so motivated to get rid of that feeling that we look for meaning and coherence elsewhere,” said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and lead author of the paper appearing in the journal Psychological Science. “We channel the feeling into some other project, and it appears to improve some kinds of learning.”
Researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened. ...
In a series of new papers, Dr. Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, argue that these findings are variations on the same process: maintaining meaning, or coherence. The brain evolved to predict, and it does so by identifying patterns.