Column: Meaning and knowledge: Why stories beat facts Modified: 4/17/2021 10:10:02 PM What are called “conspiracy theories” are not theories at all but stories about deception in high places. And because they are stories they cannot be refuted by facts. The story that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump remains compelling to many Americans in the face of myriad facts and arguments arrayed against it. Many kinds of popular stories, it turns out, are immune from refutation by argument. To see why, we need to understand how stories differ from arguments. Stories are devices to make sense of events: they aim at meaning. Arguments are devices to discover the truth: they aim at knowledge.