Thank you for the feedback, which is very much appreciated!

First of all I confirm that I do believe in everything I said and I did not intend to explore the topic of self-deception.

I understand you saw my writing as a story with a mix of realistic and unrealistic events happening (whereas I hoped for everything to be realistic enough, besides the examples that were wonky on purpose to discuss various points of course).

the unrealistic events do not gain plausibility-about-reality by association-through-fiction.

Unless I am misunderstanding you, I very much agree that an unrealistic event doesn't become realistic just because it's hidden, or carefully placed, between realistic ones in a story. It indeed only sounds (at most) more realistic by association.

I don't take for granted that this observation is necessarily mutually exclusive with what you have written, but the observation is ostensibly mutually exclusive;

Now, I wonder if this impression you got is due to the fact you saw some specific elements as unrealistic, or as presented unrealistic, and more importantly, maybe it sounded like I myself presented them as unrealistic, and plowed ahead regardless?

Because if, instead, all of the events were to be understood as presented as realistic on my part, then there wouldn't be much doubt about my belief about "association" being seemingly alike to yours.
In that case I instead suppose you would have more readily took a gripe with a specific event or more that I wrote about.
I wasn't trying to introduce unrealistic events and swiping them under a rug (tricks of a association); I intended for the events to be taken as realistic (and challenged for failing at that).

I also did not intentionally strive to prove anything "good/nice to believe", it just so happened, unless I unintentionally guided my reasoning through means of personal tastes for conclusions I wished for.