kids would go around with signs saying “you have devoted your whole existence to a lie”, and threaten (emptily) to go into details unless they were given candy.
But that’s the fear of learning that one is mistaken, not the fear of being mistaken...
“You always thought I wasn’t the kind of person who would TP your house on Halloween, but if you don’t give me candy I’ll make you have been wrong all along!”
I can easily imagine a sci-fi horror story in which someone is powerful enough to do that. You’d have to demonstrate it first, of course, and the story would have to take some time to carefully explore what changes when someone is made to have been wrong, but it seems plausibly doable.
But that’s the fear of learning that one is mistaken, not the fear of being mistaken...
You’re right, of course. I don’t think a fully direct analogy is possible here. You can’t really threaten to make someone have been wrong.
“You always thought I wasn’t the kind of person who would TP your house on Halloween, but if you don’t give me candy I’ll make you have been wrong all along!”
“Hah, got you—I actually thought all along that you were the kind of person who would TP my house if and only if denied candy on Errorwe’en!”
“Okay, and given your beliefs, are you gonna give me candy?”
″...Have a Snickers.”
I can easily imagine a sci-fi horror story in which someone is powerful enough to do that. You’d have to demonstrate it first, of course, and the story would have to take some time to carefully explore what changes when someone is made to have been wrong, but it seems plausibly doable.