[Scene: A cozy kitchen in Moscow. It’s snowing lightly outside. Dima and Ivan are sipping tea and munching on pirozhki.]
Dima: (laughs) So I was telling Natasha about my neighbor Oleg—you know, the one who always wears socks with sandals? Anyway, he told me his cat predicted his girlfriend would leave him, and just as he said that, I sneezed. Can you believe it? That’s how I knew he wasn’t making it up!
Ivan: (smirking) Wait, your sneeze is now a lie detector?
Dima: Ivan, don’t start. You know the saying—“If someone sneezes while telling a story, it means it’s true.” Even babushka swore by it.
Ivan: And babushka also believed sitting at the corner of the table meant you’d never get married.
Dima: (serious) That one is true! Remember Anya? She always sat on the corner—and now she lives with five cats and a pet hedgehog.
Ivan: Or maybe she just likes cats and doesn’t want to marry someone who tells her what seat to take at dinner.
Dima: (laughs) You always ruin the magic. What’s your explanation for my sneeze during Oleg’s story, then?
Ivan: Easy. Dry apartment, winter heating, and too much black pepper in your soup. Sneeze explained. No truth serum required.
Dima: You can’t explain away every coincidence with science. Sometimes it feels real, you know?
Ivan: I get that. Humans are wired to find patterns. It’s why we see faces in clouds and think Mercury retrograde makes printers break. It’s comforting.
Dima: So you’re saying my brain wants to believe my sneeze confirmed the story?
Ivan: Exactly. It’s like a shortcut to certainty. But science says: correlation doesn’t equal causation. Just because the sneeze happened during the story doesn’t mean the story is true.
Dima: (sipping tea) Hmm. But don’t you think it’s kind of poetic? Like the universe giving you a nudge—“Yep, that really happened.”
Ivan: It sounds poetic. But if sneezing equals truth, then I must’ve been honest every allergy season since I was ten.
Dima: (grinning) Maybe you’re the most truthful man in Moscow and just don’t know it.
Ivan: (laughing) Or maybe I need antihistamines.
Dima: But admit it, wouldn’t life be a little more interesting if some of these superstitions were true?
Ivan: Maybe. But I’d rather live with uncertainty and evidence than false certainty and rhinitis.
Dima: (mock offended) Are you calling my sneeze-based truth system false?
Ivan: Let’s test it. Tell me a story. I’ll wait for a sneeze.
Dima: Alright. Yesterday, I saw a UFO land behind the grocery store. Green lights, weird humming—
Ivan: (deadpan) No sneeze yet. Should I add pepper?
Dima: (laughs) Fine, fine. You win this round, Comrade Skeptic. But one day, I’ll sneeze mid-story and you’ll believe.
Ivan: On that day, I’ll personally write a paper: “Sneeze-Based Truth Verification: A New Epistemology.”
Dima: Deal. But only if babushka co-authors.
Science Vs Superstition 
Tell Us What You Think