Lies to Children: Prosthetics

A new series on hard truths and soft landings

There’s a particular kind of lie that isn’t meant to deceive. It’s meant to prepare.

Terry Pratchett, ever the chronicler of human absurdity and cosmic truth, called them “lies to children.” These are the simplified stories we tell when the real story is too complex, too long, or too terrifying to hand over all at once. The Earth goes around the sun. Energy makes things go. Santa watches your behavior and adjusts inventory accordingly.

These are not lies in the malicious sense. They are scaffolding. They are tools. They are—fittingly—prosthetics.

So let’s start there.

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“Papa, why do pirates have hooks?”

Because life is sharp.

That’s the truth hidden under the lie. The lie might say: “Hooks are part of the costume,” or “That’s just how pirates looked back then.” But the real story is that people get hurt. On ships, in war, by accident, by others. Swords and ropes and the snapping tension of wooden planks all had their say. And when a hand was lost, a hook was fashioned—not out of menace, but necessity.

That’s not where the story ends.

Because the hook wasn’t just a symbol of injury. It became a symbol of adaptation. The pirate with the hook was still standing. Still working. Still fighting. Still steering the ship.

And so we come to prosthetics—not the mythical iron peg-legs or cursed stumps of old tales, but the evolving, electrified, engineered marvels that replace what’s been lost.

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The body as something rebuildable

Modern prosthetics are astonishing. Myoelectric limbs that read muscle signals. Mind-machine interfaces. Custom-fit 3D printed parts with aesthetics that run from skin-tone realism to superhero chrome.

But even these are lies to children.

Because prosthetics aren’t just mechanical limbs. They are doorways to understanding embodiment. They force us to ask: what is a body? What is function? What is identity, when reshaped by technology?

A child might say, “That person has a robot arm.” And the lie works. It creates awe. It builds curiosity. It makes space for more truth later.

Later, we can say: “That’s not just a robot arm. That’s their arm. It listens to their thoughts. It helps them eat. It was built because they adapted.”

Later still, we can say: “Bodies break. Sometimes they’re born different. Sometimes they change. But we learn. We build. We help.”

And then, perhaps: “You’ll break sometimes too. And you’ll learn. And you’ll adapt. And you’ll still be you.”

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Hooks became hands became algorithms became selves

A prosthetic is not a solution to injury. It’s a conversation with reality. A negotiation between biology and technology, between limitation and imagination.

We start with hooks because they’re easy to draw in a picture book. But the real story goes further. It stretches into neuroplasticity, into identity, into transhumanism, into grief and survival and the glorious mess of being a person whose parts don’t all come from the same place.

And that’s where this series is headed.

Each article will pick a complicated subject and begin with a lie to children. Not to deceive, but to teach—truths shaped for small hands, curious minds, and hearts not yet armored by despair.

Next time: Why the sky isn’t really blue. And neither is anything else.

Welcome aboard.