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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing

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Speaker 1: you an episode from the Vault. This one it was

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Speaker 1: about a psychological effect called the Moses illusion. It originally

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Speaker 1: published February. All right, let's jump right in Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going

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Speaker 1: to be talking about an interesting observation in cognitive psychology

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Speaker 1: that deals with language that starts off as kind of

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Speaker 1: just a funny little quirk about the way we process

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Speaker 1: certain kinds of sentences but ends up having some some

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Speaker 1: broader and more interesting implications about knowledge and language and

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Speaker 1: thought both. The best way to start here would just

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Speaker 1: be to illustrate the prime example of the effect we're

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Speaker 1: going to be talking about. And to do that, I

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Speaker 1: think we need to do a bit of Bible trivia. Rob,

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Speaker 1: are you ready to go to Sunday School. Let's do it.

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Speaker 1: Let's go to Sunday School. Okay, And if you I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna ask you a few questions about the Bible. If

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Speaker 1: you get one wrong, you are going to get a paddling. Whoa,

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Speaker 1: what the domination? Is this one of the ones that

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Speaker 1: means business? All right? Okay, so how about let's see

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Speaker 1: it so, um, in in the garden of Eden, what

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Speaker 1: type of animal is it that tempts Eve to eat

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Speaker 1: from the tree? Oh, that's a snake, that's right, the

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Speaker 1: serpent it is? Uh. Okay. When after God created the world,

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Speaker 1: on which day of the week did he rest? Oh?

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Speaker 1: That was the seventh day. You got that one, right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: next one, How many animals of each kind did Moses

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Speaker 1: take on the arc? Oh? Too, of course. And there

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Speaker 1: you go. That is the prime example. Now, Rob, I

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Speaker 1: know you were playing along because you already know the

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Speaker 1: trick in here what I actually said when I asked

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Speaker 1: that question. Hopefully you were playing along at home as

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Speaker 1: as you're listening, or maybe you're not at home, wherever

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Speaker 1: the heck you are. Um, you may have thought the

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Speaker 1: same thing, right, Moses took two of each animal on

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Speaker 1: the arc. But in fact, in the Bible story which

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Speaker 1: maybe not everybody knows, but maybe you do know this

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Speaker 1: story of of the arc and in the Book of Genesis,

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Speaker 1: and you do in fact know that it was not

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Speaker 1: Moses who did that. It was Noah in the story

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Speaker 1: who took animals on the arc. And yet you thought

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Speaker 1: after I said the question that the answer is too

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Speaker 1: and didn't even register the fact that the name was wrong. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: It's it's an interesting uh phenomenon to uh, to encounter,

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Speaker 1: you know, others, but also in yourself because you m

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Speaker 1: there's several different ways to look at and we'll get

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Speaker 1: into a number of these here. But like even just

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Speaker 1: now when you ask me those questions like the serpent one,

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Speaker 1: I'm totally firm on that, like I of the I

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Speaker 1: know that aspect of the story inside and out. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And of course I know it's the seventh day that

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Speaker 1: he rested on the God rested on he she yet

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Speaker 1: ohever you want to look at it. Uh, But there

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Speaker 1: was still like this moment of hesitation because I was like,

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Speaker 1: it's seven, right, it is seven. I don't want to

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Speaker 1: come come off with the wrong answer on the podcast. Um.

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Speaker 1: But then when one encount and granted already knew the

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Speaker 1: answer to the third one, but there is this temptation

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Speaker 1: though too, like when you when you know why, when

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Speaker 1: you know the answer to something like you just you

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Speaker 1: can just jump in without hesitation, Like there's a certainty

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Speaker 1: that just propels you. Um, you're excited to get your

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Speaker 1: answer in and then you know, get the acclaim and

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Speaker 1: the praise for getting it right. Yeah, there's a certain

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Speaker 1: kind of way in which a question, especially a question

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Speaker 1: posed in quiz format, where you feel you are under

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Speaker 1: performance pressure and you're being evaluated for whether or not

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Speaker 1: you're going to get the right answer. It sort of

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Speaker 1: takes away some amount of critical thinking that would normally

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Speaker 1: go into reading a sentence and causes you to focus

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Speaker 1: more exclusive lee on like just can I get the

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Speaker 1: right answer? And so it's not hard to see how now,

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Speaker 1: and this of course might not be the only explanation

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Speaker 1: for why this is happening, but it's not hard to

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Speaker 1: see why you could pretty easily miss a major error

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Speaker 1: in a question that is not you know, that is

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Speaker 1: not necessarily something that you're fuzzy on to begin with,

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Speaker 1: Like you could know perfectly well that it's Noah in

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Speaker 1: the story, and yet it just goes completely over your head. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you know, we've we've been doing this podcast quite

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Speaker 1: a while at this point, and occasionally this this comes

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Speaker 1: up in our data, not so much in things that

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Speaker 1: we've researched for the podcast, because I feel like if

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Speaker 1: we've been crunching the facts or the numbers, you know,

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Speaker 1: or the you know, we're we're more likely to be

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Speaker 1: putting a lot of thought into the situation and we're

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Speaker 1: maybe just a you know, a little hesitant anyway. But

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Speaker 1: the times where I've personally like said something that was

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Speaker 1: absolutely incorrect, it would be something that I felt so

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Speaker 1: sure about that I just belt it out without fact

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Speaker 1: checking it at all. You know, Uh, something you generally

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Speaker 1: it's something not directly related to the episode, but something

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Speaker 1: that just kind of comes up in organic conversation. That's

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Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah, it's when you feel so confident that

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Speaker 1: you're not even being careful, you know that that you

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Speaker 1: can really make some big blunders. Uh. There were some

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Speaker 1: other questions I was reading about in one of the

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Speaker 1: I think the earliest study on this phenomenon we're talking

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Speaker 1: about today. Some of the other questions were in the

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Speaker 1: biblical story, what is Joshua swallowed by? Of course, that's

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Speaker 1: Jonah that is swallowed by the whale or the great fish,

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Speaker 1: the sea monster. Joshua of course is the the conquering

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Speaker 1: leader of the Israelites as they go about Kanaan. Another

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Speaker 1: one I really liked was in the novel Moby Dick.

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Speaker 1: What color was the whale that Captain Nemo was after?

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Speaker 1: I think I think I might have fallen for that one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder how much of the ego is

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Speaker 1: involved here, because it's like, you're kind of like, all right,

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Speaker 1: let's get to the part of this where I get

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Speaker 1: to talk and get to be the one is correct,

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Speaker 1: like like fast followers through all this other stuff. I

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Speaker 1: don't care. I have an answer and it is the

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Speaker 1: correct one. Yeah. Um, that's that's quite perceptive, and I

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Speaker 1: think that's right. Um. But anyway, so this question that

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Speaker 1: we're looking at today, that this effect of not noticing

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Speaker 1: that the question says Moses and just barreling right on

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Speaker 1: through to the answer, even if you know that it's

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Speaker 1: actually Noah in the story and not Moses. This effect

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Speaker 1: has a name, and it's known as the Moses illusion.

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Speaker 1: It's a particular type of semantic illusion that occurs when

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Speaker 1: we are trying to process certain kinds of sentences, and

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Speaker 1: this was first explored in a classic study in psychology.

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Speaker 1: It was a study called from Words to Meaning a

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Speaker 1: Semantic Illusion, published in the Journal of Verbal Learning and

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Speaker 1: Verbal Behavior in nineteen eighty one by Thomas D. Ericsson

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Speaker 1: and Mark E. Mattson. And I think it's interesting that

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Speaker 1: this original observation about this, this question about Moses, it

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Speaker 1: comes out of a mysterious question about how we process

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Speaker 1: the meaning of sentences. Uh. The authors of this study ask, quote,

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Speaker 1: how are the meanings of individual words combined to form

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Speaker 1: a more global description of meaning? And if you start

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Speaker 1: to think hard about this question about the human capacity

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Speaker 1: for language, I would argue it is absolutely astonishing. It's

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Speaker 1: almost baffling the way that we're not only able to

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Speaker 1: associate symbolic meaning with certain sounds coming out of our

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Speaker 1: mouths or glyphs on a page, but you're able to

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Speaker 1: combine those things endlessly to form and comprehend infinite variations

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Speaker 1: of combinations of those sounds, to create sentences that actually

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Speaker 1: means something and other people can understand what you mean

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Speaker 1: when you say them. Like, I think this type of

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Speaker 1: capacity for language is one of the features of the

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Speaker 1: natural world that to me seems closest to magic. Yeah. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: And I feel like that the mostest illusion is one

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Speaker 1: of those things that that reveals the magic that makes

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Speaker 1: you more aware of the magic trick that is inherent

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Speaker 1: to your just everyday perception of reality and how you

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Speaker 1: engage with facts and information and the fact that you're

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Speaker 1: just like it. It's crazy that we're just constantly throwing

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Speaker 1: together sentences, almost effortlessly, that are combining all these words together.

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Speaker 1: Each word has a huge range of of possible meanings

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Speaker 1: and associations, and and that we are able to do

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Speaker 1: this with such fluency, I mean, sometimes with more fluency

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Speaker 1: than other times. But uh, but yeah, it is truly

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Speaker 1: astounding to me. And so the authors here are sort

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Speaker 1: of talking about this process and some of the question

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Speaker 1: marks that existed at the time in science about how

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Speaker 1: we form sentences and how we comprehend sentences. So they

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Speaker 1: start in their introduction by talking about how quote a

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Speaker 1: central process in language comprehension is the construction of a

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Speaker 1: global description of the sentence meaning from the meanings of

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Speaker 1: individual words which make up the sentence. Right, So you

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Speaker 1: know what individual words mean, but somehow, like we're just

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Speaker 1: talking about, you can combine them into these overall gist

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Speaker 1: forms of what somebody is getting at. You know, like, like,

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Speaker 1: what kind of answer is being quested by a question

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Speaker 1: that might be made up of ten different words that

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Speaker 1: are all you know, throwing your brain in ten different directions.

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Speaker 1: Yet you can get the gist of the question and

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Speaker 1: figure out what is getting at pretty quickly actually, And

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Speaker 1: they talk about how there's been a lot of work

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Speaker 1: on how language processing works in the realm of artificial intelligence,

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Speaker 1: but at the time of this paper, there was still

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Speaker 1: a lot that we didn't know about the global meaning

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Speaker 1: of of a sentence and and how that's constructed in

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Speaker 1: the brain. And so they summarize the way they're starting

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Speaker 1: this paper by saying, uh, it has become widely assumed

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Speaker 1: that sentences are subject to exhaustive analysis and consistency checks

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Speaker 1: during processing, but this is not the case. People do

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Speaker 1: not always understand what is said to them. Sometimes they

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Speaker 1: fail to understand, sometimes they misunderstand. And while these failures

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Speaker 1: of comprehension are sometimes due to lack of appropriate knowledge

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Speaker 1: or error on the part of the speaker, there are

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Speaker 1: other cases in which such failures occur when the understander

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Speaker 1: possesses all the knowledge necessary for correct understanding. This paper

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Speaker 1: explores such a phenomenon and then they give the example

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Speaker 1: of the Moses illusion that we already talked about. The

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Speaker 1: question that they pose is how many animals of each

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Speaker 1: kind did Moses take on the arc? And so what

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Speaker 1: the authors here found in their original study and eighty

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Speaker 1: one was that the majority of people failed to notice

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Speaker 1: a problem with the question and simply answer to despite

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Speaker 1: later displaying knowledge that it was in fact Noah and

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Speaker 1: the story and not Moses. And so that it's not

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Speaker 1: that they just don't know that much about the Bible,

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Speaker 1: like they can answer the question correctly when it's posed, like, hey,

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Speaker 1: was it Noah or Moses who took animals onto the ark?

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Speaker 1: They can answer that correctly and yet still fail to

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Speaker 1: notice a problem in the question. And studies find that

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Speaker 1: people do this even when they're not rushed. They still

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Speaker 1: make the mistake when they are given unlimited time to

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Speaker 1: think about it. Another interesting thing here they found was

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Speaker 1: that the the effect is not caused by people misreading

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Speaker 1: or miss hearing the question, because people still make the

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Speaker 1: Moses illusion mistake even if they themselves read the question

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Speaker 1: out loud, including the name Moses, so they are saying

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Speaker 1: Moses out of their own lips, and they still might

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Speaker 1: not notice it now. In this first study, the authors

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Speaker 1: conclude that what's very important, because they're getting at things

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Speaker 1: about the semantics of words and a sentence and how

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Speaker 1: the meanings of sentences are formed. They conclude that shared

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Speaker 1: semantic features of the mix up are probably significantly contributing

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Speaker 1: to the effect. In other words, this effect would probably

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Speaker 1: not be nearly as pronounced, maybe not even maybe totally

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Speaker 1: non existent if the items were not in some way

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Speaker 1: closely related in the way that's a two Bible characters are.

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Speaker 1: If you ask, you know, how many of each kind

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Speaker 1: did Captain Hook take into the arc, the effect probably vanishes.

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Speaker 1: Another study, I was looking at side at an example

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Speaker 1: I found really funny, which was how many animals of

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Speaker 1: each kind did Nixon take on the arc? And yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and I like that because they were saying, Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: what if it's just like phonological similarities, like Nixon and

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Speaker 1: Noah have some similarities. They start with the same sound,

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Speaker 1: they've got the same number of syllables. But clearly when

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Speaker 1: you put Nixon in the sentence, people notice. And so

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Speaker 1: the Moses illusion is just one persistent example from a

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Speaker 1: class of mental phenomena that could be called knowledge neglect.

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Speaker 1: This is a term used by a couple of authors

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Speaker 1: that will cite later in the episode. But knowledge neglect

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Speaker 1: and simplified terms, is when you behave as if you

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Speaker 1: don't know something even though you definitely do know it.

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Speaker 1: And the Moses illusion is of course an example of

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Speaker 1: knowledge neglect, because the problem isn't that people think Moses

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Speaker 1: was the biblical character who built the arc. You can

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Speaker 1: know that it was Noah, not Moses. If you're asked directly,

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Speaker 1: you'll get the answer right, but you don't notice the

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Speaker 1: problem when it's phrased in a question like this. And

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Speaker 1: of course it's not just Moses and Noah. There are

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Speaker 1: plenty of other sentences in studies that have shown the

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Speaker 1: same thing. Though it is interesting that Moses and Noah

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Speaker 1: are like sort of the perfect example of it. I

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Speaker 1: think there might be particular characteristics of these two names

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Speaker 1: and characters that make it like that make people especially

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Speaker 1: prone to the mix up in this case, though it

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Speaker 1: is true for lots of other types of you know,

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Speaker 1: words and objects. Well, speaking of that, let's do a

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Speaker 1: quick breakdown and just especially for folks who are not

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Speaker 1: that up on Moses and Noah. Uh, just to give

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Speaker 1: a little you know, basic information about each of them,

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Speaker 1: and give me, give me the magic the gathering card

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Speaker 1: on each one. Okay, well let's start. Let's start with

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Speaker 1: with Noah. Okay, certainly the the older of the two,

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Speaker 1: the first that in the chronological order. So Noah was

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Speaker 1: h is written as as a was an antediluvian patriarch

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Speaker 1: in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. The basic story, God

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Speaker 1: grows sick of humanity, so he tells Noah to round

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Speaker 1: up his family and two of every animal and get

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Speaker 1: them on a big old boat the arc, uh, the

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Speaker 1: first of two arcs we're going to discuss here, so

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Speaker 1: they alone can survive the noble flood that's about to happen. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: one interesting variation. I think most people probably wouldn't even

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Speaker 1: their brains wouldn't go this far into the question. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It is actually more complicated than two of every kind,

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Speaker 1: because it also says in the Noah's ark story that

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Speaker 1: I think they're supposed to bring more of every kind

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Speaker 1: of like certain types of animals, like certain clean animals

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Speaker 1: and just two of the unclean animals or something. But

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Speaker 1: but yeah, when you get it gets a little more

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Speaker 1: complicated right, I mean it's all kinds of animal management. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: which I would love to see somebody fail the test

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Speaker 1: of of the the Noah illusion the Moses illusion here

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Speaker 1: by by going into a lot of detail about the

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Speaker 1: you know, the the actual biblical text while still failing.

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Speaker 1: I think that right. Well, it was fourteen of every

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Speaker 1: kind of clean animal alright. Well, anyway, Noah strengths megaproject

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Speaker 1: management and animal handling. Obviously weakness, alcoholism, that's a major

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Speaker 1: part of the store, right. Um. Actors of note who

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Speaker 1: have betrayed him. Uh, this is not a complete list,

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Speaker 1: but these are the main main ones. John Houston, Russell Crowe,

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Speaker 1: David Thrillful. This is a guy on Shameless. He also

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Speaker 1: played Dr John d and Elizabeth the Golden Age. John Voight,

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Speaker 1: David Rentall. Uh, David Rentall is the guy who played

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Speaker 1: Aries Targarian on the Game of Thrones show. Oh interesting,

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Speaker 1: wait a Aries to the Mad King. I believe. So

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Speaker 1: that's the main areas, right, Okay, yeah, well maybe I

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Speaker 1: guess for some reason I thought there was another one.

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Speaker 1: I am wrong. Um, okay, So the I've got a

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Speaker 1: really funny story about John Voight playing Noah. I remember

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Speaker 1: seeing this one, oh, I have. It was made for TV.

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Speaker 1: I think came out when I was in like middle school,

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Speaker 1: and it is not at all faithful to the Bible,

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Speaker 1: and to say, very hollywooded up version of the Noah's

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Speaker 1: Arks story. John Voight does play Noah and the arc

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Speaker 1: is attacked by pirates. What. Yeah, it's attacked by like

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Speaker 1: water World pirates. I mean, it might as well be

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Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper and the Smokers, but it's actually I think

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Speaker 1: they get attacked by pirates led by the biblical character Lot. Okay, alright, well,

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Speaker 1: if that is in the Bible, at least they're they're

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Speaker 1: playing around with it. Was this brought up at all

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Speaker 1: when um Uh, when Darren Aronofsky was being criticized for

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Speaker 1: the plot of his Noah movie, which has like um

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Speaker 1: Uh giants and Nephelim in it. Oh, I kind of

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Speaker 1: liked his Noah movie. It was way more more faithful

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Speaker 1: to I think it included stuff from non canonical ancient texts,

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Speaker 1: but was actually inspired by ancient texts. Okay, alright, I

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Speaker 1: still haven't seen it. It's it's been on the list

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Speaker 1: for a while. All Right, let's talk about Moses real quick. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So Moses comes later. He's an Old Testament prophet um

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Speaker 1: central figure in the narrative of the Exodus. In the account,

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Speaker 1: he helps the Jewish people in their liberation from Egypt

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Speaker 1: Egyptian captivity and following Tim the tin Plegs of Egypt.

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Speaker 1: He assists him in the Exodus, and he also is

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Speaker 1: involved with an arc. But it's the Ark of the Covenant,

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Speaker 1: which we've discussed on the show before. Not a boat,

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Speaker 1: but a golden vessel that contains sacred items. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: would assume that the words are related because they're both

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Speaker 1: like a container of kinds, like a big box. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So Moses his strength community organizing of course, and sorcery

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Speaker 1: his weaknesses. This is this is kind of interesting, I guess,

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Speaker 1: because it's either not obeying God and everything or obeying

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Speaker 1: God and everything, depending on who you ask, right, uh,

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you ask God, he would say, well,

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Speaker 1: he didn't obey me and everything. That's why I didn't

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Speaker 1: get to go into the Promised Land. But especially modern

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Speaker 1: critics are like, it seems like he he may be

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Speaker 1: followed the letter of the law a little bit too.

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Speaker 1: Um uh too. Seriously, I seem to recall at one

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Speaker 1: point him commanding the death penalty for a dude who

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Speaker 1: was working on the Sabbath. That seems a little harsh. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it seems seems a little harsh. Um. Okay, So actors

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Speaker 1: of note who have betrayed Moses, well, Charlton has obviously,

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Speaker 1: Burt Lancaster, mel Brooks, Ben Kingsley, Val Kilmer, though that

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Speaker 1: that may have just been a voice role. And Christian Bale. Now,

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Speaker 1: the last one is interesting because as I was looking

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Speaker 1: at these actors was one of the interesting things is

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Speaker 1: even though they're basically interchangeable, like the same, Um, you know,

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Speaker 1: in most of these cases, you're dealing with the same

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Speaker 1: white dude that could play either of these characters in

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Speaker 1: a big Hollywood production. Um. But it's interesting that I

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Speaker 1: don't think anyone has actually played both Moses and Noah,

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Speaker 1: though Christian Bale reportedly came very close because Darren Aronofsky

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Speaker 1: originally wanted Christian Bale to play the title role in

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Speaker 1: his Noah film, but scheduling conflicts prohibited that from happening.

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Speaker 1: Oh he couldn't because he was filming like terminator Mick

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Speaker 1: g or whatever. Yeah. I don't know, but um, but

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Speaker 1: imagine if if Bale had played both Noah and Moses.

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Speaker 1: What would that have meant for the Moses illusion? Would

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Speaker 1: it have made the would would it just destroy are

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Speaker 1: semantic understanding of reality? Maybe there's a secret counsel. There's

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Speaker 1: like no Hollywood, no actor can play both of these

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Speaker 1: roles because it will totally tear our understanding of of

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Speaker 1: of facts and fiction apart. I could see that. I mean, so,

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Speaker 1: I think what some of the authors here are proposing

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Speaker 1: is that the the fact that it's not just that

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Speaker 1: Moses and Noah are words that kind of sound similar.

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Speaker 1: They've got some similar consonants and uh in the same

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Speaker 1: number of syllables, similar vowel sounds. That's all true, and

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Speaker 1: that does seem to matter, But it's also very important

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Speaker 1: that they are semantically related, that they are both characters

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Speaker 1: from the Torah, from the Old Testament, and that sort

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Speaker 1: of links them together. And I think the more you

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Speaker 1: could do to link them even further together and associate

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Speaker 1: them in in our minds, like yes, having one actor

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Speaker 1: play both, I think that would actually probably make people

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Speaker 1: even more susceptible. Yeah, um, I was thinking about this too,

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Speaker 1: Like obviously we've already touched on a few extra examples

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Speaker 1: of this. But I was trying to come up with

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Speaker 1: with other examples that would play on the same energy here,

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Speaker 1: and one that came to mind would be, uh, if

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Speaker 1: we were to look to Chinese mythology, if we were

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Speaker 1: to say, hey, how did the Yellow Emperor decide how

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Speaker 1: to order the animals of the zodiac? And you might

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Speaker 1: respond with, oh, well, there's this cool little story about

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Speaker 1: a race for the animals, etcetera. Um, but it wasn't

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Speaker 1: the Yellow Emperor. It was the Jade Emperor, who's an

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Speaker 1: even more primordial god ruler than the Yellow Emperor. Um.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know that seems like it could be

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Speaker 1: could play in the similar could work in a similar

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Speaker 1: way to the Moses and Noah illusion. Or how about

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Speaker 1: this in Return of the Jedi, what was Django fet

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Speaker 1: swallowed by? Oh? I just see. For some reason, I

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Speaker 1: feel like that one doesn't work because then learn as

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Speaker 1: you as soon as you say the word django, like

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Speaker 1: people's alarms go off and like, wait a minute, what

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Speaker 1: are we talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I

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Speaker 1: don't maybe it would. Okay, here's one for Avatar, the

390
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Speaker 1: last Airbender fans out there, Um, we're hearing from several

391
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Speaker 1: of them. Which nation was the avatar Apa born into.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that one or not. But of

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Speaker 1: course ang is the last and not the last avatar,

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Speaker 1: and is the avatar uh Appa is the sky by

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Speaker 1: sin that he rides on. Ah. I see, so I

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Speaker 1: don't know ang Appa. Maybe that works not sure? Well

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Speaker 1: that went over my head anyway. So you might think, well,

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Speaker 1: now that we have told you there is such a

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Speaker 1: thing as the Moses illusion, uh you know you would

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Speaker 1: never fall for it, right because you know you will

401
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Speaker 1: now always having this knowledge in your mind. Notice when

402
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Speaker 1: there will be substitutions of this kind in a question

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Speaker 1: or a sentence. But it turns out that's not necessarily true.

404
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Speaker 1: Uh So there was this original research from nineteen eighty one,

405
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Speaker 1: but there have been a bunch of studies in the

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Speaker 1: decades since then replicating the original finding and further probing

407
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Speaker 1: the effect to figure out what's going on in our brains.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, I wanted to talk about some typical findings.

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Speaker 1: First of all, some things that were summarized in h

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Speaker 1: in a few literature reviews I was looking at. One

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Speaker 1: was in a book chapter by Elizabeth J. Marsh and

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Speaker 1: SHARDA Umanath. It was a book called Processing Inaccurate Information

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Speaker 1: published by M. I. T. Press. In that book sounds

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Speaker 1: like a scream, but their chapter is called knowledge neglect

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Speaker 1: failures to notice contradictions with stored knowledge and will revisit

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Speaker 1: this chapter a few times later in the episode. But

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Speaker 1: they summarize some things about the Moses illusion. Uh so

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Speaker 1: they say that most of the time people will fall

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Speaker 1: for the Moses solution even though they actually know the

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Speaker 1: difference between Moses and Noah, as demonstrated with later interrogation.

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Speaker 1: So you can ask people questions like who built the

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Speaker 1: arc or who took the animals into the arc, and

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Speaker 1: they'll get the answer right, but they still fail to

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Speaker 1: notice that it's Moses in the question. And this can

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Speaker 1: be accomplished with other similar Switcherus actually included rob a

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Speaker 1: list for you to look at of questions like this one.

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Speaker 1: I like, is um, what did Goldilocks eat at the

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Speaker 1: Three Little Pigs house? And a lot of people will

429
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:02,640
Speaker 1: is to answer porridge, even though you can later ask

430
00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:06,040
Speaker 1: them like, hey, whose house did Goldilocks go into? The

431
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:08,080
Speaker 1: three bears or the three Little pigs? And they of

432
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:10,360
Speaker 1: course know that it was the bears. Now that One's

433
00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:14,280
Speaker 1: interesting because for me anyway, there's a there's an associated

434
00:23:14,320 --> 00:23:18,119
Speaker 1: mental image of the bears or the pigs. Uh. They

435
00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:20,960
Speaker 1: they look rather different, uh, and and ultimately they have

436
00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:25,000
Speaker 1: different functions in the stories, whereas Moses and Noah are

437
00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:27,879
Speaker 1: more interchangeable. And it is the same sort of character

438
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:30,440
Speaker 1: and there of course the same species, because the pigs

439
00:23:30,480 --> 00:23:32,360
Speaker 1: are there to be the victims of the big bad

440
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:36,040
Speaker 1: wolf story and to get beaten, and the bears are

441
00:23:36,080 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 1: there too. I don't know what, just hang out in

442
00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:40,280
Speaker 1: their house, I guess right, But I can still imagine

443
00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:43,600
Speaker 1: someone uh falling for this or or you know, having

444
00:23:44,040 --> 00:23:47,280
Speaker 1: airing in answering this question, because in a way, again,

445
00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:49,119
Speaker 1: you're you're racing into the finish line. You're picking up

446
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:52,840
Speaker 1: on the you know, the basics of the question, even

447
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:56,320
Speaker 1: though you're you're you're skipping over this. This this this

448
00:23:56,520 --> 00:24:00,240
Speaker 1: misinformation that's embedded in the middle of it. Right. Though,

449
00:24:00,240 --> 00:24:02,639
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you mentioned racing to get to the answer.

450
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:05,359
Speaker 1: I do think you're basically right about that, except it

451
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:08,479
Speaker 1: doesn't really seem that time is a factor here, because

452
00:24:08,680 --> 00:24:12,240
Speaker 1: giving people extra or even unlimited time to think about

453
00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 1: the question does not eliminate the effect does it, So

454
00:24:16,080 --> 00:24:18,119
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to result from people being in a

455
00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:20,680
Speaker 1: hurry in terms of time, though I think you could

456
00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:23,240
Speaker 1: still think about it as people being in a hurry

457
00:24:23,320 --> 00:24:25,800
Speaker 1: in terms of just like wanting to get to the

458
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:28,359
Speaker 1: part where they answer the question. I don't know, maybe

459
00:24:28,359 --> 00:24:30,760
Speaker 1: that could be like self imposed time limits, even if

460
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:35,840
Speaker 1: they're not imposed by somebody externally trying to rush you through. Now, Also,

461
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 1: in a typical setup for these Moses illusion experiments, readers

462
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 1: will be warned that some questions will contain incorrect presuppositions,

463
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:45,639
Speaker 1: so it's not just like a trick question where they

464
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:48,880
Speaker 1: don't know this is coming. They'll be told, Okay, some

465
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:51,760
Speaker 1: of these questions will be valid questions, in which case

466
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:55,080
Speaker 1: you should just answer them, but other questions will have

467
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:58,800
Speaker 1: incorrect presuppositions, and when you come across one of those,

468
00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:01,920
Speaker 1: you should note that the question is not valid. Now,

469
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:04,399
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is, I would think something like that

470
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:07,400
Speaker 1: would almost completely erase the effect, because you're putting people

471
00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:10,760
Speaker 1: on guard to be like interrogating the questions. But it doesn't.

472
00:25:11,000 --> 00:25:13,040
Speaker 1: You can put people on guard like that and they

473
00:25:13,080 --> 00:25:17,119
Speaker 1: still fall for the Moses solution. In these experiments, it

474
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:19,639
Speaker 1: does seem to be a very robust effect, like a

475
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:23,400
Speaker 1: substantial number of people will fail to detect errors in questions,

476
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,160
Speaker 1: even though they later showed that they possessed the knowledge

477
00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:30,520
Speaker 1: to answer them correctly. Uh. The exact percentages of the effect,

478
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:33,400
Speaker 1: though very a good bit UH from that chapter by

479
00:25:33,720 --> 00:25:37,720
Speaker 1: Martian Umanov the they right quote. Overall, the Moses solution

480
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 1: is robust, with readers answering from fourteen percent to forty

481
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:45,679
Speaker 1: percent to fifty two percent to seventy seven percent of

482
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 1: distorted questions depending on the particular experiments. So they're citing

483
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:52,040
Speaker 1: a number of different results there. The fourteen percent was

484
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:59,160
Speaker 1: by van Jarsveld Dikstra, and Herman's was Hannon and Donovan

485
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:04,359
Speaker 1: and too, and one was Ericson and Mattson in one

486
00:26:04,560 --> 00:26:08,959
Speaker 1: and was Barton and Sandford inte. And I would imagine

487
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: these differences have a lot to do with like what

488
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:15,200
Speaker 1: what exactly types of warnings you're giving people ahead of time,

489
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 1: what exactly what exact examples are used? As we've said,

490
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,120
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's clear that different questions are more

491
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:24,879
Speaker 1: prone than others. Like I think more people would probably

492
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: fall for the Moses Noah confusion than for the Three

493
00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:31,440
Speaker 1: Little Pigs, Three bears confusion. Yeah, I have to say

494
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 1: some of the the examples that you included on a

495
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:36,200
Speaker 1: list here, it's it's interesting to run through this because

496
00:26:36,560 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 1: even though I'm not encountering them as actual questions like

497
00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:42,159
Speaker 1: one and someone in one of these studies would be

498
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:44,399
Speaker 1: I can certainly pick up on the ones that I

499
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:48,679
Speaker 1: feel like would have been more likely to fool me, like,

500
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: for instance, what kind of treated Lincoln chop down? What

501
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 1: kind of treated Washington chop down? Um? Like I can

502
00:26:55,720 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: imagine myself sort of this being a story I'm not

503
00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:01,680
Speaker 1: tremendously in the it in, but have a version off

504
00:27:01,720 --> 00:27:06,080
Speaker 1: stored away I can instantly skip, or even not instantly,

505
00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 1: but even with some thought would be like I think, yeah,

506
00:27:08,080 --> 00:27:10,680
Speaker 1: cherry Tree, cherry Tree, that's the one, you know, even

507
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 1: if said Lincoln. Yeah, even if it's said Lincoln, because

508
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:17,959
Speaker 1: also I don't know Lincoln. Something about like their stories

509
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:19,680
Speaker 1: about him, you know, we also have sort of tall

510
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:22,919
Speaker 1: tales about him and his exploits, and um, the one

511
00:27:22,960 --> 00:27:26,680
Speaker 1: about him, Uh, there's one about him answering a duel.

512
00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:28,879
Speaker 1: Somebody challenged him to a duel and he says, well,

513
00:27:28,880 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: I get to choose the place and the weapon. So

514
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:35,400
Speaker 1: I choose, uh, what's sledgehammers and five feet of water

515
00:27:35,520 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 1: or something? DAVI that he's tall and the other person

516
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: was short, something like that. I have no idea if

517
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 1: that's an even a legitimate story, but I have it

518
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:44,879
Speaker 1: in my head. So I have an image of Lincoln

519
00:27:45,280 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 1: holding some sort of long handled tool, so it fits

520
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:52,639
Speaker 1: in nicely into the story, like I can easily overlay

521
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: one over the other. Yeah. One of the examples that

522
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,119
Speaker 1: I feel extremely confident that I would not fall for

523
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:01,960
Speaker 1: is the one of what is the name of the

524
00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:07,199
Speaker 1: Mexican dip made with mashed artichokes? I definitely, I mean,

525
00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:10,040
Speaker 1: I just know artichokes. No, that is not what it is.

526
00:28:10,480 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 1: You don't mash artichokes, do you. I mean, I haven't

527
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:19,440
Speaker 1: seen it. Could could make an artichoke paste, but artichoke guacamole.

528
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:23,320
Speaker 1: That sounds gross, I mean, but yet artichoke depp is amazing,

529
00:28:23,440 --> 00:28:28,959
Speaker 1: but artichoke guacamole just says it sound right? But anyway,

530
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:32,440
Speaker 1: So Marcia and Umanov also note that um that that

531
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 1: error detection is lower when items uh that items are

532
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: swapped are similar in a couple of ways. We've already

533
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 1: mentioned these, but they reiterate that it helps when there's

534
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: phonological similarity. So do the words sound close to each other?

535
00:28:46,080 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: I feel like, uh, Avocados and artichokes, like they have

536
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:52,400
Speaker 1: some similar vowel sounds, and they start with the same letter,

537
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 1: but they sound different enough to me that I'm immediately strong.

538
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: I think somehow like the hard k sound coming towards

539
00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:01,000
Speaker 1: the end of the word art a choke, but coming

540
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:04,040
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of or, I guess in the middle

541
00:29:04,080 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 1: of avocado. Somehow, that makes a big difference in my brain.

542
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:11,320
Speaker 1: And then, of course, as we've been saying, semantic similarity,

543
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:14,719
Speaker 1: are the concept somehow similar or related? Would we put

544
00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: them in a kind of meaning next us together in

545
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:20,000
Speaker 1: the brain? Uh? And and of course it's notable that

546
00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:23,160
Speaker 1: the Moses versus Noah one meets both of the criteria.

547
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:26,520
Speaker 1: They sound similar and they're related. So anyway, it's just

548
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 1: this interesting fact about our brains that something about being

549
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 1: asked a question like this. So trying to process a

550
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,720
Speaker 1: sentence like the questions in these studies causes us to

551
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: ignore the fact that the contents of the sentence conflict

552
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:42,680
Speaker 1: with things that we know to be true, and I

553
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:45,520
Speaker 1: wanted to mention one other study I was looking at that.

554
00:29:45,760 --> 00:29:50,080
Speaker 1: This one is by Hadency Bottoms, Andrea and Slick and

555
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:54,360
Speaker 1: Elizabeth J. Marsh from published in the journal Memory called

556
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: Memory and the Moses illusion failures to detect contradictions with

557
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:02,800
Speaker 1: stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences. Now we can revisit

558
00:30:03,160 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 1: some of the things in this more as we go on,

559
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to note a few things that

560
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 1: they bring up. Uh So, first of all, they note

561
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:14,160
Speaker 1: some other previous findings in their introduction. One is that

562
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: um error detection improves, so people are less likely to

563
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: fall for the Moses illusion when the error appears in

564
00:30:22,000 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: what they call the cleft phrase or the main focus

565
00:30:25,760 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: of the sentence. So there are ways that you can

566
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: basically ask the same question but just sort of rearrange

567
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 1: the words to make people more likely to notice the problem. So,

568
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:38,280
Speaker 1: if you take the sentence how many animals of each

569
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:41,040
Speaker 1: kind did Moses take on the arc? The word Moses

570
00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:45,280
Speaker 1: is kind of syntactically de emphasized in that sentence, you know,

571
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:47,520
Speaker 1: it's not like the main focus of the way the

572
00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 1: sentence is phrased. You can re orient the words to

573
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:53,720
Speaker 1: make moses more prominent in the sentence, in which case

574
00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,720
Speaker 1: people are more likely to catch the problem. Yeah, Like

575
00:30:56,800 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 1: I also feel like having the word show up so

576
00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:02,160
Speaker 1: late in the sentence. I'm I'm, I'm. Like, you're always

577
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 1: predicting where sentences are going, you know, yes, so you've

578
00:31:05,640 --> 00:31:07,680
Speaker 1: kind of already filled it in to a certain extent,

579
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 1: like you know, you know who we're talking about. Uh,

580
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 1: even if you end up using the wrong name. Um, yeah,

581
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:16,280
Speaker 1: I think you're exactly right about that. Like that, once

582
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:18,000
Speaker 1: you've heard I don't know, you get like four or

583
00:31:18,040 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 1: five words into the sentence, you you sort of are

584
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:22,480
Speaker 1: like you already know what it's going to be, and

585
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: you're just sort of like okay, you like mostly ignoring

586
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: the words that come after that. Another thing that they

587
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:32,040
Speaker 1: point out that's interesting is that error detection improves when

588
00:31:32,280 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 1: questions appear in a difficult to read font And they

589
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: say this is because it reduces processing fluency, which in

590
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 1: turn makes material seem less familiar and less true. And

591
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:47,200
Speaker 1: this was found by Song and Schwartz in two thousand

592
00:31:47,200 --> 00:31:49,400
Speaker 1: and eight. And this, of course, this comes back to

593
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 1: our old friend. Processing fluency, a cognitive factor that I

594
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 1: believe is one of the most underappreciated influences on our

595
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:00,520
Speaker 1: thoughts and beliefs and behavior. We talked about it in

596
00:32:00,560 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 1: our episode on the illusory truth effect. Basically, processing fluency

597
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: means how easy is it for this stimulus to be

598
00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:11,200
Speaker 1: processed by the brain and uh, and it came up

599
00:32:11,240 --> 00:32:13,960
Speaker 1: in the illusory truth Effect episode because I remember. The

600
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: illusory truth effect is where statements you've encountered before seem

601
00:32:18,440 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 1: more true than statements that are new to you. And

602
00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 1: one possible explanation for this is that familiar statements are

603
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: easier for the brain to process than unfamiliar ones are,

604
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:33,320
Speaker 1: and at some level, the brain makes an equivalence between

605
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:37,040
Speaker 1: that processing fluency, how easy it is to process this

606
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: incoming sentence because it's familiar and factual trustworthiness. They actually

607
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:44,160
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with one another, but the brain

608
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:48,280
Speaker 1: maybe uses a little bit of shortcut there. So are

609
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:51,520
Speaker 1: you saying that in the future for our our shared notes, Joe,

610
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 1: we should use chill or font instead of whatever we're

611
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:58,080
Speaker 1: using now. Yeah, that would that make it less like

612
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that would generally slow us down

613
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:02,840
Speaker 1: and make it harder to do the podcast, But it

614
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:05,840
Speaker 1: also might make it less likely that we would just

615
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:10,240
Speaker 1: like flub words here and there, because it would be

616
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: a like really effortful, laborious process to get through every

617
00:33:14,000 --> 00:33:17,000
Speaker 1: single thought, which you know sometimes it is anyway, but

618
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 1: that that's on us, um. But anyway, So Song and

619
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: Shorts here in two thousand and eight found that simply

620
00:33:22,640 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 1: by making statements harder to read so you put them in,

621
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: you said, Chiller, I was thinking, Papyrus. I don't know

622
00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 1: what what actual thought they used, but it would just

623
00:33:31,160 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 1: make people more likely to spot errors in the questions

624
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:37,200
Speaker 1: instead of just rolling right over them without noticing. And

625
00:33:37,680 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: you know that makes sense to me, Yeah, yeah, it does.

626
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: It is interesting that that's how our brains work, though, Yeah,

627
00:33:44,720 --> 00:33:46,960
Speaker 1: it is sort of counterintuitive at the same time, like

628
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:49,880
Speaker 1: you might just assume that if something's harder to read,

629
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 1: you would be less likely to catch errors in it.

630
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:54,920
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think there's some kind of process where

631
00:33:54,960 --> 00:33:57,440
Speaker 1: it's like slowing you down. It's not allowing you to

632
00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 1: just like skip over the parts that it seemed like yeah, yeah, okay,

633
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:04,040
Speaker 1: Moses whatever. It's like like a bit of food that's

634
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 1: extra chewy, so you're going to really taste this, You're

635
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: really going to get a feel for the texture. There's

636
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:11,120
Speaker 1: no just wolf in this down. Yeah. Now, In the

637
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 1: study by Bottoms at All, they were looking at the

638
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:17,799
Speaker 1: question of whether participants can detect errors in questions better

639
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:21,840
Speaker 1: if there are just more errors overall in the sample

640
00:34:21,880 --> 00:34:23,480
Speaker 1: of questions. So, if I give you a bunch of

641
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: questions and like, I don't know, seventy of them contain

642
00:34:27,239 --> 00:34:30,080
Speaker 1: errors of this kind in them, are people more likely

643
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:32,840
Speaker 1: to catch them? And it looks like the answer is yes. Like,

644
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:35,200
Speaker 1: if you if you've got people on guard because they

645
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:38,799
Speaker 1: were just constantly problems with these questions, their guard goes

646
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:41,200
Speaker 1: up and they do seem to make the Moses illusion

647
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,439
Speaker 1: mistake less often. And it strikes me that that could

648
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:48,440
Speaker 1: be possibly, or at least partially because once you start,

649
00:34:48,760 --> 00:34:52,400
Speaker 1: you know, showing people questions where most of them contain

650
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 1: a problem, or even just a large minority of them

651
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 1: contain a problem, people probably start uh interacting with the

652
00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:03,759
Speaker 1: question less as questions and becoming less focused on just

653
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 1: getting the answer and start looking at them more like

654
00:35:07,120 --> 00:35:09,840
Speaker 1: a puzzle where you're you're trying to parse the sentence

655
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:13,000
Speaker 1: very clearly. Yeah, Yeah, It's like, how is this trying

656
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: to trick me. Yeah, but then there's one kind of

657
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:21,440
Speaker 1: scary implication from this paper the author's right quote. More generally,

658
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:25,800
Speaker 1: the failure to detect errors had negative memorial consequences, increasing

659
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:29,720
Speaker 1: the likelihood that errors were used to answer later general

660
00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:34,640
Speaker 1: knowledge questions. Methodological implications of this finding are discussed, as

661
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 1: it suggests that typical analyzes likely underestimate the size of

662
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 1: the Moses illusion. Overall, answering distorted questions can yield errors

663
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:47,480
Speaker 1: in the knowledge base. More importantly, prior knowledge does not

664
00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:52,000
Speaker 1: protect against these negative memorial consequences. And Robert, I think

665
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:53,360
Speaker 1: you had a note about that. We can talk a

666
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:55,720
Speaker 1: little bit more about that in a bit, but yeah, basically,

667
00:35:55,800 --> 00:36:00,320
Speaker 1: there there is some evidence that just steamrolling over an

668
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 1: incorrect fact in a sentence, even when you know otherwise,

669
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 1: can can later damage your ability to recall that fact correctly. Yeah, yeah,

670
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:13,759
Speaker 1: so it Yeah, as as well discuss here. It's it's

671
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 1: not just a situation where oh, well this is a quirk.

672
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:18,279
Speaker 1: This is interesting. The brain does this. I mean, it

673
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,719
Speaker 1: is that, but it it has it has greater implications. Yeah.

674
00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 1: Now I want to go back on the other side

675
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 1: and say that when we encounter things like this, you know,

676
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 1: illusions that humans often fall for. When you read about

677
00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: a certain type of I don't know, cognitive bias or

678
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:39,400
Speaker 1: or something. I think our tendency is often to at

679
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:42,800
Speaker 1: first react like, wow, our dumb brains were so stupid.

680
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:45,680
Speaker 1: But but I think there's another way to think about it,

681
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 1: and that's this. How amazing is it that we have

682
00:36:50,480 --> 00:36:54,279
Speaker 1: such a powerful command of language based reasoning that we

683
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 1: can answer questions even though key elements of the sentence

684
00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:01,759
Speaker 1: do not match with our knowledge base. I mean, think

685
00:37:01,760 --> 00:37:05,920
Speaker 1: about the trouble that a computer would run into trying

686
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:09,400
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. Like, While it's an interesting

687
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:12,720
Speaker 1: case of an illusion failing to notice facts that conflict

688
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: with our existing knowledge, it's also a demonstration of an

689
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing capacity for language comprehension, even when there are

690
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:24,959
Speaker 1: severe errors in the questions or sentences that we're trying

691
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 1: to comprehend, Like somehow our brains are so good at

692
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 1: getting what seems to be the gist the intended global

693
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 1: meaning of a sentence, even when pivotal items in that

694
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: sentence are wrong and should be pointing you off in

695
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:43,319
Speaker 1: the wrong direction and make you totally confused. Yeah, yeah, um,

696
00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:45,560
Speaker 1: you know, I can't help but be reminded in all

697
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:48,399
Speaker 1: this about the drawing of the bicycle that we've touched

698
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 1: on before about often, I mean it's different. We're not

699
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:53,800
Speaker 1: dealing with language, We're dealing with a uh like a

700
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:56,520
Speaker 1: mental image. Like we all think we have the mental

701
00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: image of a bicycle pretty firm in our heads, and

702
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:01,040
Speaker 1: yet when put to the test, when acts asked to

703
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:05,439
Speaker 1: draw a bicycle, um, we're often floored. You know. Yeah,

704
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:08,160
Speaker 1: that was a different one of our cognitive Allusions episodes.

705
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:10,840
Speaker 1: That was the the illusion of explanatory depth. Yeah, the

706
00:38:10,920 --> 00:38:15,000
Speaker 1: issue where people they tend to think like that they

707
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:18,440
Speaker 1: understand how something works until they're asked to explain it.

708
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:21,640
Speaker 1: So somehow the brain has a way of representing a

709
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: sort of pat Tempken comprehension, you know that it puts

710
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:27,880
Speaker 1: up this facade of yeah, you know how that works.

711
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:30,000
Speaker 1: I I I know how I know the parts of

712
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:32,440
Speaker 1: a bicycle. I know all the parts of a can opener.

713
00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:34,880
Speaker 1: I could make one basically. But then if you are

714
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:37,479
Speaker 1: asked to like explain the steps of how it works

715
00:38:37,600 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 1: or draw all the parts, you're like, uh, yeah, I

716
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:44,839
Speaker 1: thought about this a lot watching the Outlander TV show

717
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: about the time traveler goes back in time and she's

718
00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:50,120
Speaker 1: recreating various things that she knows about from the future,

719
00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:52,279
Speaker 1: and like, God, like, how many of us, you know,

720
00:38:52,360 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 1: we go if we were to do that, if we

721
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:55,920
Speaker 1: were to go back in time, we might tell somebody

722
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:58,800
Speaker 1: about all these marvelous things like oh yeah, penicillin and

723
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:01,360
Speaker 1: uh you know, by sickles and whatnot, and it'd be like,

724
00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:02,719
Speaker 1: oh great, how did it work? And it'd be like,

725
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:05,240
Speaker 1: uh yeah, no, no idea, I have some some vague

726
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:07,239
Speaker 1: so I have some of the facts that I had,

727
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:10,520
Speaker 1: but not near enough to reproduce anything that I'm talking about.

728
00:39:14,920 --> 00:39:17,719
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Coming back to this

729
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:21,040
Speaker 1: thing about how the Moses ilusion is, it is and

730
00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:24,880
Speaker 1: could be looked at as an example of how amazingly

731
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:29,200
Speaker 1: adaptive at comprehension our brains are. Actually found a book

732
00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: chapter discussing this very aspect of the effect. So the

733
00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:36,720
Speaker 1: authors here were hik Young Park and Lynn M. Rader.

734
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 1: Uh And this was a chapter in a book, and

735
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:42,759
Speaker 1: the chapter was called the Moses Illusion. I think it

736
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:45,399
Speaker 1: was published in two thousand four. And so they're talking

737
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 1: about different potential explanations for the Moses illusion. What's going

738
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 1: on in the brain, and they conclude that they, or

739
00:39:51,440 --> 00:39:54,200
Speaker 1: at least they argue that the most likely explanation for

740
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,799
Speaker 1: what's going on when we fall for this is something

741
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: they call the partial match HYPOTHESI us so I just

742
00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:03,479
Speaker 1: want to read from their conclusion that's along the lines

743
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,719
Speaker 1: of what we've just been talking about. Quote. Research on

744
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:10,240
Speaker 1: the Moses illusion demonstrates that people have difficulty in detecting

745
00:40:10,360 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 1: distortions or inaccuracies when a distorted element is semantically related

746
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:17,719
Speaker 1: to the theme of the sentence. Why should our cognitive

747
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: system be so tolerant of distortions and find it so

748
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:24,919
Speaker 1: difficult to do careful matches to memory. It might seem

749
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 1: that partial matching is a less than ideal way to

750
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:32,080
Speaker 1: process information. However, the partial match process is not only

751
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:35,640
Speaker 1: common and normal, but also a necessary mechanism of our

752
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:41,080
Speaker 1: cognitive system. This partial match process enables useful communication and comprehension.

753
00:40:41,560 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 1: Very few things that we see or here will perfectly

754
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:48,560
Speaker 1: match the representation that we already have stored in memory.

755
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:51,560
Speaker 1: In order to answer questions, we need to be able

756
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:55,120
Speaker 1: to use an acceptable match. In order to understand a

757
00:40:55,160 --> 00:40:58,080
Speaker 1: new situation and map it onto something we have already

758
00:40:58,120 --> 00:41:02,680
Speaker 1: seen or done, we must apt slight variations every day.

759
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 1: At many levels, we accept slight distortions without even noticing

760
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:10,120
Speaker 1: the process. Occasionally we notice a distortion and choose to

761
00:41:10,239 --> 00:41:14,279
Speaker 1: ignore it, but more frequently we do not even realize

762
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: that distortions have occurred. A rigid comprehension system would have

763
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 1: a difficult time. Indeed, many of our cognitive operations are

764
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 1: driven by familiarity based heuristics rather than careful matching operations.

765
00:41:27,920 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 1: The Moses illusion is an example of how the adaptive

766
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:35,840
Speaker 1: human cognitive system works. Everyday, cognitive processing must be based

767
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 1: on simple heuristics, such as matching sets of features, rather

768
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:44,360
Speaker 1: than exact matches, as very few tasks require exact matches.

769
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:49,759
Speaker 1: Sentences do not match stored information. Faces change, voices may

770
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:54,240
Speaker 1: change slightly, even our pets and friends change over time. Therefore,

771
00:41:54,280 --> 00:41:57,279
Speaker 1: it makes sense that people do use partial matches in

772
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 1: the normal course of matching to memory. Rcial matching is

773
00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 1: immutable because it is the most efficient way for memory

774
00:42:04,239 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: to operate given the nature of the environment in which

775
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:09,799
Speaker 1: we live. And so, yeah, this really makes me think

776
00:42:09,840 --> 00:42:12,160
Speaker 1: along the lines of what we were just saying a

777
00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:15,080
Speaker 1: few minutes ago. Like the Moses illusion is kind of

778
00:42:15,200 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: funny when you notice yourself doing it, but it's also

779
00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:22,960
Speaker 1: it's also kind of a superpower. Yeah, Like, imagine if

780
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 1: you went to a video store, which we still have

781
00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 1: one in Atlanta. Imagine you went there and you were

782
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:30,640
Speaker 1: to say, um, yeah, I'm looking for a particular movie.

783
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:33,960
Speaker 1: Um it started Anthony Hopkins and it had a puppet

784
00:42:34,000 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: in it. And instead of being able to piece that

785
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:40,200
Speaker 1: together and tell you which movie you're talking about, what

786
00:42:40,320 --> 00:42:42,440
Speaker 1: if they were to say, Okay, keep listening, I need

787
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: you to list the entire cast. I need all of

788
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,879
Speaker 1: the details. We have to make acent match here. Or Yeah,

789
00:42:47,880 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: imagine somebody comes into the video store and they say,

790
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:53,920
Speaker 1: I'm looking for The Godfather too, and they say, sorry,

791
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: we don't have that. What they actually have is The

792
00:42:57,040 --> 00:43:00,680
Speaker 1: Godfather Cole and Part two. Oh man, that that's not

793
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:03,680
Speaker 1: completely unbelievable and not with our video store, but just

794
00:43:03,760 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 1: sort of like the cliche video store. You mean the

795
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:13,759
Speaker 1: god Father part to Philistine. I mean, that's a kind

796
00:43:13,800 --> 00:43:15,680
Speaker 1: of silly example, but I think the authors of this

797
00:43:15,840 --> 00:43:19,520
Speaker 1: chapter are exactly right that every basically, every single moment

798
00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:23,800
Speaker 1: of our lives, we are testing reality against our memories,

799
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 1: and we have to do so in a fast and

800
00:43:25,840 --> 00:43:28,600
Speaker 1: loose way, and our ability to do so in a

801
00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:31,719
Speaker 1: fast and loose way without relying on every detail to

802
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:35,880
Speaker 1: be an exact correct match is is what allows us

803
00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 1: to live adaptively, to sort of like be thinking creatures

804
00:43:40,800 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 1: looking for exact matches between the current case you're observing

805
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:47,680
Speaker 1: and what's stored in your memory. Like I made the

806
00:43:47,719 --> 00:43:50,799
Speaker 1: comparison to a computer earlier. Today, I guess we're more

807
00:43:50,880 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: familiar with more adaptive types of computer functions that are

808
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 1: based on like AI or like huge amounts of machine

809
00:43:56,760 --> 00:43:58,879
Speaker 1: learning or something like that. It makes me think about

810
00:43:58,920 --> 00:44:02,640
Speaker 1: like the early old days of dealing with the you know,

811
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:07,640
Speaker 1: computer programming, where like if you slightly misspelled, like you know, um,

812
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:10,680
Speaker 1: you're you're playing Zork or something and you type like

813
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:13,680
Speaker 1: wolke north the w o l K, it's not is

814
00:44:13,719 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: to be like that is not a valid action. Like yeah,

815
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: it's amazing nowadays, how just like how much thumb fumbling

816
00:44:20,719 --> 00:44:23,480
Speaker 1: I can put into typing something in search and it

817
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:26,080
Speaker 1: still knows what I'm talking about. I still um able

818
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:27,560
Speaker 1: to floor it every now and then because I'll get

819
00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:31,319
Speaker 1: really reckless and u and it'll just have no clue.

820
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:34,279
Speaker 1: But but more often than not, it'll it'll guess what

821
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: I'm going for. But that is amazing because that is

822
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:40,879
Speaker 1: the the the input receiver whatever, you know. This piece

823
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:44,200
Speaker 1: of technology it's called AI because it's becoming more like

824
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:47,920
Speaker 1: our brains. It's becoming usefully sloppy and and loose in

825
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 1: the way our brains are. Now. I guess we could

826
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 1: talk about a couple of other possible examples of knowledge

827
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:57,239
Speaker 1: neglect or implications of knowledge neglect. One that I came

828
00:44:57,280 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: across that I thought was pretty funny is something that

829
00:45:00,840 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 1: seems fairly narrow, but it's known as the yolk phenomenon. Uh,

830
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 1: So it goes like this apparently was originally described in

831
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:12,040
Speaker 1: an article in the Psychological Review by Gregory Kimball and

832
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 1: Lawrence Pearl Mutter. Uh this was in the year ninety

833
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:18,640
Speaker 1: if I didn't already say that, But it consists of

834
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:22,680
Speaker 1: asking somebody a list of questions and and it's designed

835
00:45:22,719 --> 00:45:25,560
Speaker 1: to produce a certain answer. So you say, what do

836
00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:28,279
Speaker 1: we call the tree that grows from acorns? And you

837
00:45:28,400 --> 00:45:30,400
Speaker 1: say an oak? And then you say, what do you

838
00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:33,880
Speaker 1: call a funny story joke? What's the sound made by

839
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:37,560
Speaker 1: a frog croak? What's another word? For a cape cloak.

840
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:40,200
Speaker 1: What do we call the white of an egg? And

841
00:45:40,400 --> 00:45:44,840
Speaker 1: most people say yolk um, which is obviously wrong, And

842
00:45:44,880 --> 00:45:47,520
Speaker 1: people are not confused about the white of an egg

843
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: being called the yolk. But it seems like instead the

844
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,920
Speaker 1: implication is that there's a certain kind of pattern seeking

845
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:57,440
Speaker 1: that overtakes semantic processing here, like the brain starts to

846
00:45:57,520 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 1: conclude while you're answering these questions because of the established

847
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 1: pattern that rhyming is more important than the actual meaning

848
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:08,320
Speaker 1: of the word that rhymes and you know it rhymes

849
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 1: march exactly. It's the rhymes reason effects sort of. I mean, uh,

850
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:15,160
Speaker 1: which I think we talked with that in our episode

851
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:19,000
Speaker 1: on anti metaboli. But I was wondering, I wonder how

852
00:46:19,120 --> 00:46:21,920
Speaker 1: many items in a list like this it takes before

853
00:46:22,040 --> 00:46:25,680
Speaker 1: the majority of respondents will give the yolk type answer,

854
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:27,759
Speaker 1: will ignore the known meaning of a word and just

855
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:31,759
Speaker 1: supply the nonsensical rhyming match. I don't know. I feel

856
00:46:31,760 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 1: like I'm very susceptible to this one, because I I

857
00:46:34,400 --> 00:46:37,719
Speaker 1: recently was trying to do a recipe and it got

858
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:40,160
Speaker 1: kind of confusing, and I had a moment where I

859
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:42,839
Speaker 1: had to ask myself, wait, which part is the yolk

860
00:46:42,880 --> 00:46:47,400
Speaker 1: and which is white. Um, it was only a momentary lapse,

861
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: but there were a lot of things going on. There

862
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:51,280
Speaker 1: was a lot. I was like having to take them apart,

863
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:52,360
Speaker 1: you know, as one of those we have to have

864
00:46:52,440 --> 00:46:54,800
Speaker 1: the egg white and one bowl and the yolks and

865
00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:56,600
Speaker 1: the other. And it was I was making a su

866
00:46:56,680 --> 00:47:00,479
Speaker 1: flight That's what it was, and an applicated dish. Yeah,

867
00:47:00,640 --> 00:47:02,719
Speaker 1: and I did had I had not had coffee yet either,

868
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:05,840
Speaker 1: so I had that going for me. Um. It was successful.

869
00:47:05,920 --> 00:47:07,680
Speaker 1: But yeah, there was that moment where I'm like, okay,

870
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:09,839
Speaker 1: I have to have so many egg whites and then

871
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:13,440
Speaker 1: a different number of yolks and which ones which? Now?

872
00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:16,719
Speaker 1: Uh so I would totally fall for this. I mean,

873
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:19,439
Speaker 1: did you succeed? Did it rise? Yeah? I had Rise.

874
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:21,360
Speaker 1: It was good. Yeah. I don't think I want to

875
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:23,719
Speaker 1: put it in regular weekly rotation, but it was. It

876
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:25,840
Speaker 1: was good for a special treat. I feel like the

877
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 1: soufle a that is just one of the most notorious, tricky,

878
00:47:29,239 --> 00:47:31,919
Speaker 1: tricky dishes for people who aren't I guess like working

879
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:34,560
Speaker 1: in you know, kitchens or bakeries every day. Yeah, it

880
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:36,400
Speaker 1: was still it was tricky. It was tricky for me

881
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:38,360
Speaker 1: even though I went with a very what seemed like

882
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 1: a very simple recipe that that didn't steer me too wrong,

883
00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: but still I got lost a little bit for a moment. Well,

884
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:48,120
Speaker 1: I'm impressed, So I was. I was reading through this

885
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:51,480
Speaker 1: book chapter as well, um on Knowledge Neglect by marsh

886
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:55,400
Speaker 1: and Humana, and uh, yeah, this was this was very interesting.

887
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:58,640
Speaker 1: Um so yeah. They point to a couple of other misconceptions.

888
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:01,800
Speaker 1: I don't think we've mentioned these on on the episode

889
00:48:01,840 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 1: thus far, but one of them was Toronto is the

890
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:09,040
Speaker 1: capital of Canada, and a blow to the head cure's amnesia,

891
00:48:09,160 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: which I guess is like a TV you know, cartoon

892
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. But these are all like examples

893
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 1: of misconceptions that you might have in your head that

894
00:48:16,280 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 1: are are not true. They point out that you know

895
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:23,319
Speaker 1: it tries, we might misconceptions are impossible to ignore, and uh,

896
00:48:23,960 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 1: your best hope if you can't avoid hearing misconceptions altogether,

897
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:30,400
Speaker 1: which again is probably impossible, uh, is to have them

898
00:48:30,480 --> 00:48:34,200
Speaker 1: immediately corrected. But that would be difficult, Like you'd have

899
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:38,319
Speaker 1: to have like a standing conversation with somebody who would

900
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:41,239
Speaker 1: not fall for your miscommunication, you know, or you'd have

901
00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 1: to just be constantly, uh like with with paranoia, just

902
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:48,799
Speaker 1: fact checking everything you come across. Otherwise some of them

903
00:48:48,840 --> 00:48:51,919
Speaker 1: are going to get past your your guard and they're

904
00:48:51,920 --> 00:48:54,840
Speaker 1: not going to be instantly corrected. And then they're just

905
00:48:54,960 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 1: kinda they're just kind of in there. Like even if

906
00:48:57,160 --> 00:49:00,040
Speaker 1: you hear otherwise later, you might still fall back to

907
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 1: the earlier misconception. Yeah, or it's just or it's something

908
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: that doesn't come up in daily life, you know, so

909
00:49:05,600 --> 00:49:07,440
Speaker 1: you just there's never been an opportunity for it to

910
00:49:07,480 --> 00:49:11,440
Speaker 1: be corrected. I'm reminded of that episode of This American

911
00:49:11,520 --> 00:49:14,239
Speaker 1: Life where they started off by talking about this, uh,

912
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:17,800
Speaker 1: this this particular individual who had just grown up thinking

913
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:21,320
Speaker 1: that unicorns existed, like it had never been corrected for,

914
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:24,160
Speaker 1: and so she just had that misconception in her head

915
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:27,200
Speaker 1: until finally she's at a party in there and there's

916
00:49:27,320 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: a conversation, like just a random chatter about, hey, what

917
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:32,800
Speaker 1: are your favorite animals or something, and she she mentions

918
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:36,960
Speaker 1: the unicorn and there's like this awkward silence. So why

919
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:39,360
Speaker 1: would that be all that awkward? I mean, would she

920
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:42,759
Speaker 1: like the unicorn which is real? Well, I think it was,

921
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:45,200
Speaker 1: it was probably why if I'm remembering it correctly it was.

922
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:47,560
Speaker 1: There's a certain bit of ambiguity where people are like,

923
00:49:47,680 --> 00:49:50,160
Speaker 1: is she joking or oh my goodness, she's not joking.

924
00:49:50,239 --> 00:49:52,799
Speaker 1: She thinks there. But it also makes all of us,

925
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:56,320
Speaker 1: I think, wonder, which, what what misconceptions do we have

926
00:49:57,080 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 1: just rattling around in our brain right now? We have

927
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:01,719
Speaker 1: no idea, but they're just they're ready to go at

928
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 1: any moment, you know, they can be loaded into the

929
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:08,440
Speaker 1: torpedo tube of conversation or podcasting or the next job interview,

930
00:50:08,800 --> 00:50:11,040
Speaker 1: just just just ready to go when you have no idea.

931
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:13,440
Speaker 1: I'd say one of the most common edits I have

932
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:15,680
Speaker 1: to make to this show before we release it as

933
00:50:15,719 --> 00:50:18,160
Speaker 1: I realized that I just sort of said something that

934
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:21,160
Speaker 1: I knew was true. And then later I'm listening back

935
00:50:21,200 --> 00:50:23,160
Speaker 1: to it, I'm like, wait a minute, I don't think

936
00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:26,520
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, yeah, I've definitely definitely done that before.

937
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: But well, I mean when I said it, I wasn't

938
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,920
Speaker 1: even wondering, you know, just now now. The authors here,

939
00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: they they touch on, of course, the fact that the

940
00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: prior knowledge seems like it should be able to protect us, uh,

941
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:40,440
Speaker 1: you know, and and yet quote surprisingly, the effects of

942
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:43,480
Speaker 1: exposure to misconceptions are not limited to cases where people

943
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:45,840
Speaker 1: are ignorant of the true state of the world. We

944
00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: touched on that already. Um. Another great example they bring

945
00:50:49,480 --> 00:50:52,319
Speaker 1: bring out is a plane crashed, where did they bury

946
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 1: the survivors? Okay, which you know obviously you're not going

947
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:59,000
Speaker 1: to bury survivors, you were going to bury the dead.

948
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:01,320
Speaker 1: But again, this is another question where you've kind of

949
00:51:01,360 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: filled in all the blanks, you know. Uh, they by

950
00:51:04,280 --> 00:51:07,920
Speaker 1: the time the survivors is the last word in the sentence. Uh,

951
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:10,120
Speaker 1: and you fall for it, right, So it's not like

952
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:12,680
Speaker 1: you think that the survivors get buried, but you could

953
00:51:12,719 --> 00:51:15,080
Speaker 1: be trying to answer the questions just because like that's

954
00:51:15,120 --> 00:51:18,400
Speaker 1: gone straight past you. Yeah, And they really drive home

955
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 1: in this that knowledge neglect isn't just a momentary lapse

956
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 1: in memory, but rather something with real consequences for memory.

957
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 1: If you don't recognize the error, the error can become

958
00:51:27,760 --> 00:51:32,000
Speaker 1: coded into your memory, into your worldview as fact. Uh.

959
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:36,880
Speaker 1: And because that error was recently encountered, it's more easily accessed.

960
00:51:37,520 --> 00:51:39,839
Speaker 1: So again we have to remember that items in our

961
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:42,600
Speaker 1: memory are not made of stone, they're made of clay.

962
00:51:43,000 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 1: Merely accessing them can change them. And our most accessed

963
00:51:46,719 --> 00:51:50,160
Speaker 1: memories are the most changed memories of all the ones

964
00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:52,719
Speaker 1: we can trust the least. Um So, an air that

965
00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:55,839
Speaker 1: pops to mind quickly is more likely to be thought

966
00:51:55,840 --> 00:51:59,200
Speaker 1: of as fact, not Oh I heard once that X.

967
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:01,600
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about X, but I think X, but

968
00:52:01,760 --> 00:52:04,439
Speaker 1: rather just X is true, X is the answer. Yeah,

969
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:06,239
Speaker 1: So I guess this is This is connecting back to

970
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:09,040
Speaker 1: that finding we talked about earlier that you know, um

971
00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:14,840
Speaker 1: that even against your existing prior knowledge, like misconceptions or

972
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 1: errors that get by you unnoticed in one of these

973
00:52:17,760 --> 00:52:21,239
Speaker 1: Moses solution type sentences can later damage your ability to

974
00:52:21,360 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 1: remember the actual fact of that sentence correctly. Um, it

975
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: can undermine your knowledge that it was in fact Noah, potentially.

976
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:31,400
Speaker 1: And this makes me think about the broader phenomenon of

977
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: people who are really trying to argue a point will

978
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:40,200
Speaker 1: often structure sentences to try to get something past you

979
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:43,840
Speaker 1: really quickly. In the non pivotal part of the sentence.

980
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:46,360
Speaker 1: It's almost like we have an intuitive grasp of the

981
00:52:46,480 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 1: Moses solution type thing, where like a, I don't know,

982
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:53,120
Speaker 1: you see people like like arguing about politics on TV

983
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 1: or something, and like so one person will pose a

984
00:52:55,960 --> 00:52:59,719
Speaker 1: question to the other person, and the the pivotal part

985
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 1: of the sentence that's supposed to be in dispute, maybe

986
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:04,480
Speaker 1: is is one part of the sentence, but then in

987
00:53:04,560 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 1: a different part of the sentence, there's also like a

988
00:53:07,080 --> 00:53:10,719
Speaker 1: disputable claim that's just like shoved in there and goes

989
00:53:10,800 --> 00:53:13,319
Speaker 1: by real quick, right right, Yeah. If you end up

990
00:53:13,320 --> 00:53:16,480
Speaker 1: with a statement that has some some mistruths sort of

991
00:53:16,560 --> 00:53:19,360
Speaker 1: sprinkled in there that are not key to the like

992
00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:22,760
Speaker 1: the main you know, talking point, or even the main untruth,

993
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 1: you know, that's that can often be the nefarious thing too.

994
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:30,480
Speaker 1: It's like you catch the larger um misconception or lie

995
00:53:30,680 --> 00:53:32,360
Speaker 1: in the statement, but then there are other lies in

996
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:34,320
Speaker 1: there that you're not paying attention to because of the

997
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:36,440
Speaker 1: big one. Now, the authors here they point out that

998
00:53:36,520 --> 00:53:39,279
Speaker 1: improved monitoring can help, you know, this is stuff like

999
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:42,759
Speaker 1: we're talking about, like putting things in a different font, etcetera. Um,

1000
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: But drawing attention to errors can have the opposite effect,

1001
00:53:47,840 --> 00:53:51,279
Speaker 1: increasing suggestibility, which is is weird therefore to it as

1002
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:56,080
Speaker 1: an ironic effect. Um. Plus, many manipulations designed to promote

1003
00:53:56,160 --> 00:53:58,879
Speaker 1: monitoring may actually fail to do so, And they say

1004
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:02,680
Speaker 1: it's difficult to predict which manipulations will actually work. So again,

1005
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 1: there's no there's no like one guy, like, here are

1006
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:07,960
Speaker 1: the three steps you need to take to uh to

1007
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:11,359
Speaker 1: keep this misinformation from leaking into your brain. I think

1008
00:54:11,360 --> 00:54:13,640
Speaker 1: a lot of what I take away from this is that, uh,

1009
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 1: I don't know, being well informed is an ongoing process

1010
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:21,000
Speaker 1: that last your entire life. And it's not a question

1011
00:54:21,120 --> 00:54:23,680
Speaker 1: of like just getting the right facts in the bank

1012
00:54:23,840 --> 00:54:27,879
Speaker 1: one time and then you're set. You know. Yeah, there's

1013
00:54:27,880 --> 00:54:30,200
Speaker 1: a lot of upkeep involved and a lot of just

1014
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 1: continual pruning and not just new weeds, weeds that have

1015
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:36,120
Speaker 1: been in there your whole life sometimes or seeing right

1016
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: bap the very least. Um. Yeah. The authors why, they

1017
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 1: also drive home that ultimately we know a lot more

1018
00:54:43,160 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: about how people come to misremember events versus misremember facts,

1019
00:54:48,640 --> 00:54:53,360
Speaker 1: especially when errors are are the errors involved contradict stored knowledge.

1020
00:54:53,440 --> 00:54:56,040
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, you know, again we get into

1021
00:54:56,080 --> 00:54:59,000
Speaker 1: the complexity of memory, the different types of memory that

1022
00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:01,840
Speaker 1: we have going on the brain. Um, and we we

1023
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 1: still have a lot more to learn about just how

1024
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:07,920
Speaker 1: this all comes together. Yeah. Now, you know, here's a

1025
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:10,080
Speaker 1: question that comes to mind. Um, I wonder if anyone

1026
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,800
Speaker 1: has constructed a Moses illusion statement using Bilbo and Frodo.

1027
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:18,800
Speaker 1: Oh yes, that might so. Um, like what was Bilbo

1028
00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:22,319
Speaker 1: carrying into the fires of Mountain Doom? Yeah, that's sort

1029
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:23,680
Speaker 1: of thing. I don't know, of course, I guess you

1030
00:55:23,680 --> 00:55:26,120
Speaker 1: would want to you'd want to try and construct it

1031
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:28,000
Speaker 1: right so that you get Bilbo there at the very

1032
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: end or Frodo at the very end, depending on how

1033
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:35,000
Speaker 1: you're you're you're messing around with its rum who was

1034
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:39,919
Speaker 1: who was the dragon whose lair was infiltrated by Frodo Baggins. Yeah, yeah,

1035
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:42,279
Speaker 1: that sort of thing that might work. Yeah, I said,

1036
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:45,879
Speaker 1: Bilbo and Frodo or even closer together than Noah and Moses. Yeah,

1037
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 1: I mean they are certainly that they actually overlap, as

1038
00:55:50,640 --> 00:55:53,279
Speaker 1: opposed to being separated by by long stretches of time.

1039
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 1: Very very similar characters actually related, right, they are related? Yeah? Um, yeah,

1040
00:55:59,760 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 1: it's that they would work. What Uncle, great uncle Uncle,

1041
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:05,920
Speaker 1: So I always forget what happened to Frodo's parents. I've

1042
00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:09,439
Speaker 1: read it and I still forget it. I'm gonna say, uncle,

1043
00:56:09,520 --> 00:56:12,839
Speaker 1: all the all the Hobbits are cousins. Yeah, they're all related. Actually, yes,

1044
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:16,200
Speaker 1: all right, well there you have it. We'd love to

1045
00:56:16,239 --> 00:56:18,040
Speaker 1: hear from everybody about this, because of course this just

1046
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:20,319
Speaker 1: touches on how our brains work and how it now

1047
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:23,960
Speaker 1: they are brains work with with new information, be it

1048
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:29,000
Speaker 1: accurate or or or or misconception. Uh So I think

1049
00:56:29,040 --> 00:56:32,160
Speaker 1: everybody out there has something to share. Which of these

1050
00:56:32,960 --> 00:56:35,880
Speaker 1: Moses illusions worked the most on you? Which ones I've

1051
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: worked on you in the past. Uh, we'd love to

1052
00:56:38,160 --> 00:56:40,600
Speaker 1: hear from you. All right. If you want to check

1053
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:42,759
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you

1054
00:56:42,840 --> 00:56:44,600
Speaker 1: know where to find it. You can find the Stuff

1055
00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:46,520
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your

1056
00:56:46,680 --> 00:56:49,360
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and we'll have core episodes of Stuff to

1057
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:52,319
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you've got listener mail.

1058
00:56:52,360 --> 00:56:55,400
Speaker 1: On Mondays, you've got them, We've got the Artifact on Wednesdays.

1059
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:57,919
Speaker 1: You've got Weird House Cinema on Fridays in a vault

1060
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:01,279
Speaker 1: episode on the weekends, Huge things. As always to our

1061
00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:04,520
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like

1062
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this

1063
00:57:06,800 --> 00:57:09,560
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

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Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at

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Speaker 1: contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, this is the

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Speaker 1: i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening

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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.