Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing
Speaker 1: you an episode from the Vault. This one it was
Speaker 1: about a psychological effect called the Moses illusion. It originally
Speaker 1: published February. All right, let's jump right in Welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about an interesting observation in cognitive psychology
Speaker 1: that deals with language that starts off as kind of
Speaker 1: just a funny little quirk about the way we process
Speaker 1: certain kinds of sentences but ends up having some some
Speaker 1: broader and more interesting implications about knowledge and language and
Speaker 1: thought both. The best way to start here would just
Speaker 1: be to illustrate the prime example of the effect we're
Speaker 1: going to be talking about. And to do that, I
Speaker 1: think we need to do a bit of Bible trivia. Rob,
Speaker 1: are you ready to go to Sunday School. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's go to Sunday School. Okay, And if you I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ask you a few questions about the Bible. If
Speaker 1: you get one wrong, you are going to get a paddling. Whoa,
Speaker 1: what the domination? Is this one of the ones that
Speaker 1: means business? All right? Okay, so how about let's see
Speaker 1: it so, um, in in the garden of Eden, what
Speaker 1: type of animal is it that tempts Eve to eat
Speaker 1: from the tree? Oh, that's a snake, that's right, the
Speaker 1: serpent it is? Uh. Okay. When after God created the world,
Speaker 1: on which day of the week did he rest? Oh?
Speaker 1: That was the seventh day. You got that one, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: next one, How many animals of each kind did Moses
Speaker 1: take on the arc? Oh? Too, of course. And there
Speaker 1: you go. That is the prime example. Now, Rob, I
Speaker 1: know you were playing along because you already know the
Speaker 1: trick in here what I actually said when I asked
Speaker 1: that question. Hopefully you were playing along at home as
Speaker 1: as you're listening, or maybe you're not at home, wherever
Speaker 1: the heck you are. Um, you may have thought the
Speaker 1: same thing, right, Moses took two of each animal on
Speaker 1: the arc. But in fact, in the Bible story which
Speaker 1: maybe not everybody knows, but maybe you do know this
Speaker 1: story of of the arc and in the Book of Genesis,
Speaker 1: and you do in fact know that it was not
Speaker 1: Moses who did that. It was Noah in the story
Speaker 1: who took animals on the arc. And yet you thought
Speaker 1: after I said the question that the answer is too
Speaker 1: and didn't even register the fact that the name was wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's an interesting uh phenomenon to uh, to encounter,
Speaker 1: you know, others, but also in yourself because you m
Speaker 1: there's several different ways to look at and we'll get
Speaker 1: into a number of these here. But like even just
Speaker 1: now when you ask me those questions like the serpent one,
Speaker 1: I'm totally firm on that, like I of the I
Speaker 1: know that aspect of the story inside and out. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course I know it's the seventh day that
Speaker 1: he rested on the God rested on he she yet
Speaker 1: ohever you want to look at it. Uh, But there
Speaker 1: was still like this moment of hesitation because I was like,
Speaker 1: it's seven, right, it is seven. I don't want to
Speaker 1: come come off with the wrong answer on the podcast. Um.
Speaker 1: But then when one encount and granted already knew the
Speaker 1: answer to the third one, but there is this temptation
Speaker 1: though too, like when you when you know why, when
Speaker 1: you know the answer to something like you just you
Speaker 1: can just jump in without hesitation, Like there's a certainty
Speaker 1: that just propels you. Um, you're excited to get your
Speaker 1: answer in and then you know, get the acclaim and
Speaker 1: the praise for getting it right. Yeah, there's a certain
Speaker 1: kind of way in which a question, especially a question
Speaker 1: posed in quiz format, where you feel you are under
Speaker 1: performance pressure and you're being evaluated for whether or not
Speaker 1: you're going to get the right answer. It sort of
Speaker 1: takes away some amount of critical thinking that would normally
Speaker 1: go into reading a sentence and causes you to focus
Speaker 1: more exclusive lee on like just can I get the
Speaker 1: right answer? And so it's not hard to see how now,
Speaker 1: and this of course might not be the only explanation
Speaker 1: for why this is happening, but it's not hard to
Speaker 1: see why you could pretty easily miss a major error
Speaker 1: in a question that is not you know, that is
Speaker 1: not necessarily something that you're fuzzy on to begin with,
Speaker 1: Like you could know perfectly well that it's Noah in
Speaker 1: the story, and yet it just goes completely over your head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've we've been doing this podcast quite
Speaker 1: a while at this point, and occasionally this this comes
Speaker 1: up in our data, not so much in things that
Speaker 1: we've researched for the podcast, because I feel like if
Speaker 1: we've been crunching the facts or the numbers, you know,
Speaker 1: or the you know, we're we're more likely to be
Speaker 1: putting a lot of thought into the situation and we're
Speaker 1: maybe just a you know, a little hesitant anyway. But
Speaker 1: the times where I've personally like said something that was
Speaker 1: absolutely incorrect, it would be something that I felt so
Speaker 1: sure about that I just belt it out without fact
Speaker 1: checking it at all. You know, Uh, something you generally
Speaker 1: it's something not directly related to the episode, but something
Speaker 1: that just kind of comes up in organic conversation. That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. Yeah, it's when you feel so confident that
Speaker 1: you're not even being careful, you know that that you
Speaker 1: can really make some big blunders. Uh. There were some
Speaker 1: other questions I was reading about in one of the
Speaker 1: I think the earliest study on this phenomenon we're talking
Speaker 1: about today. Some of the other questions were in the
Speaker 1: biblical story, what is Joshua swallowed by? Of course, that's
Speaker 1: Jonah that is swallowed by the whale or the great fish,
Speaker 1: the sea monster. Joshua of course is the the conquering
Speaker 1: leader of the Israelites as they go about Kanaan. Another
Speaker 1: one I really liked was in the novel Moby Dick.
Speaker 1: What color was the whale that Captain Nemo was after?
Speaker 1: I think I think I might have fallen for that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder how much of the ego is
Speaker 1: involved here, because it's like, you're kind of like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get to the part of this where I get
Speaker 1: to talk and get to be the one is correct,
Speaker 1: like like fast followers through all this other stuff. I
Speaker 1: don't care. I have an answer and it is the
Speaker 1: correct one. Yeah. Um, that's that's quite perceptive, and I
Speaker 1: think that's right. Um. But anyway, so this question that
Speaker 1: we're looking at today, that this effect of not noticing
Speaker 1: that the question says Moses and just barreling right on
Speaker 1: through to the answer, even if you know that it's
Speaker 1: actually Noah in the story and not Moses. This effect
Speaker 1: has a name, and it's known as the Moses illusion.
Speaker 1: It's a particular type of semantic illusion that occurs when
Speaker 1: we are trying to process certain kinds of sentences, and
Speaker 1: this was first explored in a classic study in psychology.
Speaker 1: It was a study called from Words to Meaning a
Speaker 1: Semantic Illusion, published in the Journal of Verbal Learning and
Speaker 1: Verbal Behavior in nineteen eighty one by Thomas D. Ericsson
Speaker 1: and Mark E. Mattson. And I think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: this original observation about this, this question about Moses, it
Speaker 1: comes out of a mysterious question about how we process
Speaker 1: the meaning of sentences. Uh. The authors of this study ask, quote,
Speaker 1: how are the meanings of individual words combined to form
Speaker 1: a more global description of meaning? And if you start
Speaker 1: to think hard about this question about the human capacity
Speaker 1: for language, I would argue it is absolutely astonishing. It's
Speaker 1: almost baffling the way that we're not only able to
Speaker 1: associate symbolic meaning with certain sounds coming out of our
Speaker 1: mouths or glyphs on a page, but you're able to
Speaker 1: combine those things endlessly to form and comprehend infinite variations
Speaker 1: of combinations of those sounds, to create sentences that actually
Speaker 1: means something and other people can understand what you mean
Speaker 1: when you say them. Like, I think this type of
Speaker 1: capacity for language is one of the features of the
Speaker 1: natural world that to me seems closest to magic. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I feel like that the mostest illusion is one
Speaker 1: of those things that that reveals the magic that makes
Speaker 1: you more aware of the magic trick that is inherent
Speaker 1: to your just everyday perception of reality and how you
Speaker 1: engage with facts and information and the fact that you're
Speaker 1: just like it. It's crazy that we're just constantly throwing
Speaker 1: together sentences, almost effortlessly, that are combining all these words together.
Speaker 1: Each word has a huge range of of possible meanings
Speaker 1: and associations, and and that we are able to do
Speaker 1: this with such fluency, I mean, sometimes with more fluency
Speaker 1: than other times. But uh, but yeah, it is truly
Speaker 1: astounding to me. And so the authors here are sort
Speaker 1: of talking about this process and some of the question
Speaker 1: marks that existed at the time in science about how
Speaker 1: we form sentences and how we comprehend sentences. So they
Speaker 1: start in their introduction by talking about how quote a
Speaker 1: central process in language comprehension is the construction of a
Speaker 1: global description of the sentence meaning from the meanings of
Speaker 1: individual words which make up the sentence. Right, So you
Speaker 1: know what individual words mean, but somehow, like we're just
Speaker 1: talking about, you can combine them into these overall gist
Speaker 1: forms of what somebody is getting at. You know, like, like,
Speaker 1: what kind of answer is being quested by a question
Speaker 1: that might be made up of ten different words that
Speaker 1: are all you know, throwing your brain in ten different directions.
Speaker 1: Yet you can get the gist of the question and
Speaker 1: figure out what is getting at pretty quickly actually, And
Speaker 1: they talk about how there's been a lot of work
Speaker 1: on how language processing works in the realm of artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: but at the time of this paper, there was still
Speaker 1: a lot that we didn't know about the global meaning
Speaker 1: of of a sentence and and how that's constructed in
Speaker 1: the brain. And so they summarize the way they're starting
Speaker 1: this paper by saying, uh, it has become widely assumed
Speaker 1: that sentences are subject to exhaustive analysis and consistency checks
Speaker 1: during processing, but this is not the case. People do
Speaker 1: not always understand what is said to them. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: fail to understand, sometimes they misunderstand. And while these failures
Speaker 1: of comprehension are sometimes due to lack of appropriate knowledge
Speaker 1: or error on the part of the speaker, there are
Speaker 1: other cases in which such failures occur when the understander
Speaker 1: possesses all the knowledge necessary for correct understanding. This paper
Speaker 1: explores such a phenomenon and then they give the example
Speaker 1: of the Moses illusion that we already talked about. The
Speaker 1: question that they pose is how many animals of each
Speaker 1: kind did Moses take on the arc? And so what
Speaker 1: the authors here found in their original study and eighty
Speaker 1: one was that the majority of people failed to notice
Speaker 1: a problem with the question and simply answer to despite
Speaker 1: later displaying knowledge that it was in fact Noah and
Speaker 1: the story and not Moses. And so that it's not
Speaker 1: that they just don't know that much about the Bible,
Speaker 1: like they can answer the question correctly when it's posed, like, hey,
Speaker 1: was it Noah or Moses who took animals onto the ark?
Speaker 1: They can answer that correctly and yet still fail to
Speaker 1: notice a problem in the question. And studies find that
Speaker 1: people do this even when they're not rushed. They still
Speaker 1: make the mistake when they are given unlimited time to
Speaker 1: think about it. Another interesting thing here they found was
Speaker 1: that the the effect is not caused by people misreading
Speaker 1: or miss hearing the question, because people still make the
Speaker 1: Moses illusion mistake even if they themselves read the question
Speaker 1: out loud, including the name Moses, so they are saying
Speaker 1: Moses out of their own lips, and they still might
Speaker 1: not notice it now. In this first study, the authors
Speaker 1: conclude that what's very important, because they're getting at things
Speaker 1: about the semantics of words and a sentence and how
Speaker 1: the meanings of sentences are formed. They conclude that shared
Speaker 1: semantic features of the mix up are probably significantly contributing
Speaker 1: to the effect. In other words, this effect would probably
Speaker 1: not be nearly as pronounced, maybe not even maybe totally
Speaker 1: non existent if the items were not in some way
Speaker 1: closely related in the way that's a two Bible characters are.
Speaker 1: If you ask, you know, how many of each kind
Speaker 1: did Captain Hook take into the arc, the effect probably vanishes.
Speaker 1: Another study, I was looking at side at an example
Speaker 1: I found really funny, which was how many animals of
Speaker 1: each kind did Nixon take on the arc? And yeah,
Speaker 1: and and I like that because they were saying, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what if it's just like phonological similarities, like Nixon and
Speaker 1: Noah have some similarities. They start with the same sound,
Speaker 1: they've got the same number of syllables. But clearly when
Speaker 1: you put Nixon in the sentence, people notice. And so
Speaker 1: the Moses illusion is just one persistent example from a
Speaker 1: class of mental phenomena that could be called knowledge neglect.
Speaker 1: This is a term used by a couple of authors
Speaker 1: that will cite later in the episode. But knowledge neglect
Speaker 1: and simplified terms, is when you behave as if you
Speaker 1: don't know something even though you definitely do know it.
Speaker 1: And the Moses illusion is of course an example of
Speaker 1: knowledge neglect, because the problem isn't that people think Moses
Speaker 1: was the biblical character who built the arc. You can
Speaker 1: know that it was Noah, not Moses. If you're asked directly,
Speaker 1: you'll get the answer right, but you don't notice the
Speaker 1: problem when it's phrased in a question like this. And
Speaker 1: of course it's not just Moses and Noah. There are
Speaker 1: plenty of other sentences in studies that have shown the
Speaker 1: same thing. Though it is interesting that Moses and Noah
Speaker 1: are like sort of the perfect example of it. I
Speaker 1: think there might be particular characteristics of these two names
Speaker 1: and characters that make it like that make people especially
Speaker 1: prone to the mix up in this case, though it
Speaker 1: is true for lots of other types of you know,
Speaker 1: words and objects. Well, speaking of that, let's do a
Speaker 1: quick breakdown and just especially for folks who are not
Speaker 1: that up on Moses and Noah. Uh, just to give
Speaker 1: a little you know, basic information about each of them,
Speaker 1: and give me, give me the magic the gathering card
Speaker 1: on each one. Okay, well let's start. Let's start with
Speaker 1: with Noah. Okay, certainly the the older of the two,
Speaker 1: the first that in the chronological order. So Noah was
Speaker 1: h is written as as a was an antediluvian patriarch
Speaker 1: in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. The basic story, God
Speaker 1: grows sick of humanity, so he tells Noah to round
Speaker 1: up his family and two of every animal and get
Speaker 1: them on a big old boat the arc, uh, the
Speaker 1: first of two arcs we're going to discuss here, so
Speaker 1: they alone can survive the noble flood that's about to happen. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one interesting variation. I think most people probably wouldn't even
Speaker 1: their brains wouldn't go this far into the question. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is actually more complicated than two of every kind,
Speaker 1: because it also says in the Noah's ark story that
Speaker 1: I think they're supposed to bring more of every kind
Speaker 1: of like certain types of animals, like certain clean animals
Speaker 1: and just two of the unclean animals or something. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, when you get it gets a little more
Speaker 1: complicated right, I mean it's all kinds of animal management. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I would love to see somebody fail the test
Speaker 1: of of the the Noah illusion the Moses illusion here
Speaker 1: by by going into a lot of detail about the
Speaker 1: you know, the the actual biblical text while still failing.
Speaker 1: I think that right. Well, it was fourteen of every
Speaker 1: kind of clean animal alright. Well, anyway, Noah strengths megaproject
Speaker 1: management and animal handling. Obviously weakness, alcoholism, that's a major
Speaker 1: part of the store, right. Um. Actors of note who
Speaker 1: have betrayed him. Uh, this is not a complete list,
Speaker 1: but these are the main main ones. John Houston, Russell Crowe,
Speaker 1: David Thrillful. This is a guy on Shameless. He also
Speaker 1: played Dr John d and Elizabeth the Golden Age. John Voight,
Speaker 1: David Rentall. Uh, David Rentall is the guy who played
Speaker 1: Aries Targarian on the Game of Thrones show. Oh interesting,
Speaker 1: wait a Aries to the Mad King. I believe. So
Speaker 1: that's the main areas, right, Okay, yeah, well maybe I
Speaker 1: guess for some reason I thought there was another one.
Speaker 1: I am wrong. Um, okay, So the I've got a
Speaker 1: really funny story about John Voight playing Noah. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing this one, oh, I have. It was made for TV.
Speaker 1: I think came out when I was in like middle school,
Speaker 1: and it is not at all faithful to the Bible,
Speaker 1: and to say, very hollywooded up version of the Noah's
Speaker 1: Arks story. John Voight does play Noah and the arc
Speaker 1: is attacked by pirates. What. Yeah, it's attacked by like
Speaker 1: water World pirates. I mean, it might as well be
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper and the Smokers, but it's actually I think
Speaker 1: they get attacked by pirates led by the biblical character Lot. Okay, alright, well,
Speaker 1: if that is in the Bible, at least they're they're
Speaker 1: playing around with it. Was this brought up at all
Speaker 1: when um Uh, when Darren Aronofsky was being criticized for
Speaker 1: the plot of his Noah movie, which has like um
Speaker 1: Uh giants and Nephelim in it. Oh, I kind of
Speaker 1: liked his Noah movie. It was way more more faithful
Speaker 1: to I think it included stuff from non canonical ancient texts,
Speaker 1: but was actually inspired by ancient texts. Okay, alright, I
Speaker 1: still haven't seen it. It's it's been on the list
Speaker 1: for a while. All Right, let's talk about Moses real quick. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Moses comes later. He's an Old Testament prophet um
Speaker 1: central figure in the narrative of the Exodus. In the account,
Speaker 1: he helps the Jewish people in their liberation from Egypt
Speaker 1: Egyptian captivity and following Tim the tin Plegs of Egypt.
Speaker 1: He assists him in the Exodus, and he also is
Speaker 1: involved with an arc. But it's the Ark of the Covenant,
Speaker 1: which we've discussed on the show before. Not a boat,
Speaker 1: but a golden vessel that contains sacred items. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would assume that the words are related because they're both
Speaker 1: like a container of kinds, like a big box. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Moses his strength community organizing of course, and sorcery
Speaker 1: his weaknesses. This is this is kind of interesting, I guess,
Speaker 1: because it's either not obeying God and everything or obeying
Speaker 1: God and everything, depending on who you ask, right, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you ask God, he would say, well,
Speaker 1: he didn't obey me and everything. That's why I didn't
Speaker 1: get to go into the Promised Land. But especially modern
Speaker 1: critics are like, it seems like he he may be
Speaker 1: followed the letter of the law a little bit too.
Speaker 1: Um uh too. Seriously, I seem to recall at one
Speaker 1: point him commanding the death penalty for a dude who
Speaker 1: was working on the Sabbath. That seems a little harsh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems seems a little harsh. Um. Okay, So actors
Speaker 1: of note who have betrayed Moses, well, Charlton has obviously,
Speaker 1: Burt Lancaster, mel Brooks, Ben Kingsley, Val Kilmer, though that
Speaker 1: that may have just been a voice role. And Christian Bale. Now,
Speaker 1: the last one is interesting because as I was looking
Speaker 1: at these actors was one of the interesting things is
Speaker 1: even though they're basically interchangeable, like the same, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: in most of these cases, you're dealing with the same
Speaker 1: white dude that could play either of these characters in
Speaker 1: a big Hollywood production. Um. But it's interesting that I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone has actually played both Moses and Noah,
Speaker 1: though Christian Bale reportedly came very close because Darren Aronofsky
Speaker 1: originally wanted Christian Bale to play the title role in
Speaker 1: his Noah film, but scheduling conflicts prohibited that from happening.
Speaker 1: Oh he couldn't because he was filming like terminator Mick
Speaker 1: g or whatever. Yeah. I don't know, but um, but
Speaker 1: imagine if if Bale had played both Noah and Moses.
Speaker 1: What would that have meant for the Moses illusion? Would
Speaker 1: it have made the would would it just destroy are
Speaker 1: semantic understanding of reality? Maybe there's a secret counsel. There's
Speaker 1: like no Hollywood, no actor can play both of these
Speaker 1: roles because it will totally tear our understanding of of
Speaker 1: of facts and fiction apart. I could see that. I mean, so,
Speaker 1: I think what some of the authors here are proposing
Speaker 1: is that the the fact that it's not just that
Speaker 1: Moses and Noah are words that kind of sound similar.
Speaker 1: They've got some similar consonants and uh in the same
Speaker 1: number of syllables, similar vowel sounds. That's all true, and
Speaker 1: that does seem to matter, But it's also very important
Speaker 1: that they are semantically related, that they are both characters
Speaker 1: from the Torah, from the Old Testament, and that sort
Speaker 1: of links them together. And I think the more you
Speaker 1: could do to link them even further together and associate
Speaker 1: them in in our minds, like yes, having one actor
Speaker 1: play both, I think that would actually probably make people
Speaker 1: even more susceptible. Yeah, um, I was thinking about this too,
Speaker 1: Like obviously we've already touched on a few extra examples
Speaker 1: of this. But I was trying to come up with
Speaker 1: with other examples that would play on the same energy here,
Speaker 1: and one that came to mind would be, uh, if
Speaker 1: we were to look to Chinese mythology, if we were
Speaker 1: to say, hey, how did the Yellow Emperor decide how
Speaker 1: to order the animals of the zodiac? And you might
Speaker 1: respond with, oh, well, there's this cool little story about
Speaker 1: a race for the animals, etcetera. Um, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: the Yellow Emperor. It was the Jade Emperor, who's an
Speaker 1: even more primordial god ruler than the Yellow Emperor. Um.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that seems like it could be
Speaker 1: could play in the similar could work in a similar
Speaker 1: way to the Moses and Noah illusion. Or how about
Speaker 1: this in Return of the Jedi, what was Django fet
Speaker 1: swallowed by? Oh? I just see. For some reason, I
Speaker 1: feel like that one doesn't work because then learn as
Speaker 1: you as soon as you say the word django, like
Speaker 1: people's alarms go off and like, wait a minute, what
Speaker 1: are we talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I
Speaker 1: don't maybe it would. Okay, here's one for Avatar, the
Speaker 1: last Airbender fans out there, Um, we're hearing from several
Speaker 1: of them. Which nation was the avatar Apa born into.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that one or not. But of
Speaker 1: course ang is the last and not the last avatar,
Speaker 1: and is the avatar uh Appa is the sky by
Speaker 1: sin that he rides on. Ah. I see, so I
Speaker 1: don't know ang Appa. Maybe that works not sure? Well
Speaker 1: that went over my head anyway. So you might think, well,
Speaker 1: now that we have told you there is such a
Speaker 1: thing as the Moses illusion, uh you know you would
Speaker 1: never fall for it, right because you know you will
Speaker 1: now always having this knowledge in your mind. Notice when
Speaker 1: there will be substitutions of this kind in a question
Speaker 1: or a sentence. But it turns out that's not necessarily true.
Speaker 1: Uh So there was this original research from nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: but there have been a bunch of studies in the
Speaker 1: decades since then replicating the original finding and further probing
Speaker 1: the effect to figure out what's going on in our brains.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I wanted to talk about some typical findings.
Speaker 1: First of all, some things that were summarized in h
Speaker 1: in a few literature reviews I was looking at. One
Speaker 1: was in a book chapter by Elizabeth J. Marsh and
Speaker 1: SHARDA Umanath. It was a book called Processing Inaccurate Information
Speaker 1: published by M. I. T. Press. In that book sounds
Speaker 1: like a scream, but their chapter is called knowledge neglect
Speaker 1: failures to notice contradictions with stored knowledge and will revisit
Speaker 1: this chapter a few times later in the episode. But
Speaker 1: they summarize some things about the Moses illusion. Uh so
Speaker 1: they say that most of the time people will fall
Speaker 1: for the Moses solution even though they actually know the
Speaker 1: difference between Moses and Noah, as demonstrated with later interrogation.
Speaker 1: So you can ask people questions like who built the
Speaker 1: arc or who took the animals into the arc, and
Speaker 1: they'll get the answer right, but they still fail to
Speaker 1: notice that it's Moses in the question. And this can
Speaker 1: be accomplished with other similar Switcherus actually included rob a
Speaker 1: list for you to look at of questions like this one.
Speaker 1: I like, is um, what did Goldilocks eat at the
Speaker 1: Three Little Pigs house? And a lot of people will
Speaker 1: is to answer porridge, even though you can later ask
Speaker 1: them like, hey, whose house did Goldilocks go into? The
Speaker 1: three bears or the three Little pigs? And they of
Speaker 1: course know that it was the bears. Now that One's
Speaker 1: interesting because for me anyway, there's a there's an associated
Speaker 1: mental image of the bears or the pigs. Uh. They
Speaker 1: they look rather different, uh, and and ultimately they have
Speaker 1: different functions in the stories, whereas Moses and Noah are
Speaker 1: more interchangeable. And it is the same sort of character
Speaker 1: and there of course the same species, because the pigs
Speaker 1: are there to be the victims of the big bad
Speaker 1: wolf story and to get beaten, and the bears are
Speaker 1: there too. I don't know what, just hang out in
Speaker 1: their house, I guess right, But I can still imagine
Speaker 1: someone uh falling for this or or you know, having
Speaker 1: airing in answering this question, because in a way, again,
Speaker 1: you're you're racing into the finish line. You're picking up
Speaker 1: on the you know, the basics of the question, even
Speaker 1: though you're you're you're skipping over this. This this this
Speaker 1: misinformation that's embedded in the middle of it. Right. Though,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that you mentioned racing to get to the answer.
Speaker 1: I do think you're basically right about that, except it
Speaker 1: doesn't really seem that time is a factor here, because
Speaker 1: giving people extra or even unlimited time to think about
Speaker 1: the question does not eliminate the effect does it, So
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to result from people being in a
Speaker 1: hurry in terms of time, though I think you could
Speaker 1: still think about it as people being in a hurry
Speaker 1: in terms of just like wanting to get to the
Speaker 1: part where they answer the question. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: that could be like self imposed time limits, even if
Speaker 1: they're not imposed by somebody externally trying to rush you through. Now, Also,
Speaker 1: in a typical setup for these Moses illusion experiments, readers
Speaker 1: will be warned that some questions will contain incorrect presuppositions,
Speaker 1: so it's not just like a trick question where they
Speaker 1: don't know this is coming. They'll be told, Okay, some
Speaker 1: of these questions will be valid questions, in which case
Speaker 1: you should just answer them, but other questions will have
Speaker 1: incorrect presuppositions, and when you come across one of those,
Speaker 1: you should note that the question is not valid. Now,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is, I would think something like that
Speaker 1: would almost completely erase the effect, because you're putting people
Speaker 1: on guard to be like interrogating the questions. But it doesn't.
Speaker 1: You can put people on guard like that and they
Speaker 1: still fall for the Moses solution. In these experiments, it
Speaker 1: does seem to be a very robust effect, like a
Speaker 1: substantial number of people will fail to detect errors in questions,
Speaker 1: even though they later showed that they possessed the knowledge
Speaker 1: to answer them correctly. Uh. The exact percentages of the effect,
Speaker 1: though very a good bit UH from that chapter by
Speaker 1: Martian Umanov the they right quote. Overall, the Moses solution
Speaker 1: is robust, with readers answering from fourteen percent to forty
Speaker 1: percent to fifty two percent to seventy seven percent of
Speaker 1: distorted questions depending on the particular experiments. So they're citing
Speaker 1: a number of different results there. The fourteen percent was
Speaker 1: by van Jarsveld Dikstra, and Herman's was Hannon and Donovan
Speaker 1: and too, and one was Ericson and Mattson in one
Speaker 1: and was Barton and Sandford inte. And I would imagine
Speaker 1: these differences have a lot to do with like what
Speaker 1: what exactly types of warnings you're giving people ahead of time,
Speaker 1: what exactly what exact examples are used? As we've said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's clear that different questions are more
Speaker 1: prone than others. Like I think more people would probably
Speaker 1: fall for the Moses Noah confusion than for the Three
Speaker 1: Little Pigs, Three bears confusion. Yeah, I have to say
Speaker 1: some of the the examples that you included on a
Speaker 1: list here, it's it's interesting to run through this because
Speaker 1: even though I'm not encountering them as actual questions like
Speaker 1: one and someone in one of these studies would be
Speaker 1: I can certainly pick up on the ones that I
Speaker 1: feel like would have been more likely to fool me, like,
Speaker 1: for instance, what kind of treated Lincoln chop down? What
Speaker 1: kind of treated Washington chop down? Um? Like I can
Speaker 1: imagine myself sort of this being a story I'm not
Speaker 1: tremendously in the it in, but have a version off
Speaker 1: stored away I can instantly skip, or even not instantly,
Speaker 1: but even with some thought would be like I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: cherry Tree, cherry Tree, that's the one, you know, even
Speaker 1: if said Lincoln. Yeah, even if it's said Lincoln, because
Speaker 1: also I don't know Lincoln. Something about like their stories
Speaker 1: about him, you know, we also have sort of tall
Speaker 1: tales about him and his exploits, and um, the one
Speaker 1: about him, Uh, there's one about him answering a duel.
Speaker 1: Somebody challenged him to a duel and he says, well,
Speaker 1: I get to choose the place and the weapon. So
Speaker 1: I choose, uh, what's sledgehammers and five feet of water
Speaker 1: or something? DAVI that he's tall and the other person
Speaker 1: was short, something like that. I have no idea if
Speaker 1: that's an even a legitimate story, but I have it
Speaker 1: in my head. So I have an image of Lincoln
Speaker 1: holding some sort of long handled tool, so it fits
Speaker 1: in nicely into the story, like I can easily overlay
Speaker 1: one over the other. Yeah. One of the examples that
Speaker 1: I feel extremely confident that I would not fall for
Speaker 1: is the one of what is the name of the
Speaker 1: Mexican dip made with mashed artichokes? I definitely, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just know artichokes. No, that is not what it is.
Speaker 1: You don't mash artichokes, do you. I mean, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it. Could could make an artichoke paste, but artichoke guacamole.
Speaker 1: That sounds gross, I mean, but yet artichoke depp is amazing,
Speaker 1: but artichoke guacamole just says it sound right? But anyway,
Speaker 1: So Marcia and Umanov also note that um that that
Speaker 1: error detection is lower when items uh that items are
Speaker 1: swapped are similar in a couple of ways. We've already
Speaker 1: mentioned these, but they reiterate that it helps when there's
Speaker 1: phonological similarity. So do the words sound close to each other?
Speaker 1: I feel like, uh, Avocados and artichokes, like they have
Speaker 1: some similar vowel sounds, and they start with the same letter,
Speaker 1: but they sound different enough to me that I'm immediately strong.
Speaker 1: I think somehow like the hard k sound coming towards
Speaker 1: the end of the word art a choke, but coming
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of or, I guess in the middle
Speaker 1: of avocado. Somehow, that makes a big difference in my brain.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, as we've been saying, semantic similarity,
Speaker 1: are the concept somehow similar or related? Would we put
Speaker 1: them in a kind of meaning next us together in
Speaker 1: the brain? Uh? And and of course it's notable that
Speaker 1: the Moses versus Noah one meets both of the criteria.
Speaker 1: They sound similar and they're related. So anyway, it's just
Speaker 1: this interesting fact about our brains that something about being
Speaker 1: asked a question like this. So trying to process a
Speaker 1: sentence like the questions in these studies causes us to
Speaker 1: ignore the fact that the contents of the sentence conflict
Speaker 1: with things that we know to be true, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to mention one other study I was looking at that.
Speaker 1: This one is by Hadency Bottoms, Andrea and Slick and
Speaker 1: Elizabeth J. Marsh from published in the journal Memory called
Speaker 1: Memory and the Moses illusion failures to detect contradictions with
Speaker 1: stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences. Now we can revisit
Speaker 1: some of the things in this more as we go on,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to note a few things that
Speaker 1: they bring up. Uh So, first of all, they note
Speaker 1: some other previous findings in their introduction. One is that
Speaker 1: um error detection improves, so people are less likely to
Speaker 1: fall for the Moses illusion when the error appears in
Speaker 1: what they call the cleft phrase or the main focus
Speaker 1: of the sentence. So there are ways that you can
Speaker 1: basically ask the same question but just sort of rearrange
Speaker 1: the words to make people more likely to notice the problem. So,
Speaker 1: if you take the sentence how many animals of each
Speaker 1: kind did Moses take on the arc? The word Moses
Speaker 1: is kind of syntactically de emphasized in that sentence, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like the main focus of the way the
Speaker 1: sentence is phrased. You can re orient the words to
Speaker 1: make moses more prominent in the sentence, in which case
Speaker 1: people are more likely to catch the problem. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I also feel like having the word show up so
Speaker 1: late in the sentence. I'm I'm, I'm. Like, you're always
Speaker 1: predicting where sentences are going, you know, yes, so you've
Speaker 1: kind of already filled it in to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: like you know, you know who we're talking about. Uh,
Speaker 1: even if you end up using the wrong name. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're exactly right about that. Like that, once
Speaker 1: you've heard I don't know, you get like four or
Speaker 1: five words into the sentence, you you sort of are
Speaker 1: like you already know what it's going to be, and
Speaker 1: you're just sort of like okay, you like mostly ignoring
Speaker 1: the words that come after that. Another thing that they
Speaker 1: point out that's interesting is that error detection improves when
Speaker 1: questions appear in a difficult to read font And they
Speaker 1: say this is because it reduces processing fluency, which in
Speaker 1: turn makes material seem less familiar and less true. And
Speaker 1: this was found by Song and Schwartz in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. And this, of course, this comes back to
Speaker 1: our old friend. Processing fluency, a cognitive factor that I
Speaker 1: believe is one of the most underappreciated influences on our
Speaker 1: thoughts and beliefs and behavior. We talked about it in
Speaker 1: our episode on the illusory truth effect. Basically, processing fluency
Speaker 1: means how easy is it for this stimulus to be
Speaker 1: processed by the brain and uh, and it came up
Speaker 1: in the illusory truth Effect episode because I remember. The
Speaker 1: illusory truth effect is where statements you've encountered before seem
Speaker 1: more true than statements that are new to you. And
Speaker 1: one possible explanation for this is that familiar statements are
Speaker 1: easier for the brain to process than unfamiliar ones are,
Speaker 1: and at some level, the brain makes an equivalence between
Speaker 1: that processing fluency, how easy it is to process this
Speaker 1: incoming sentence because it's familiar and factual trustworthiness. They actually
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with one another, but the brain
Speaker 1: maybe uses a little bit of shortcut there. So are
Speaker 1: you saying that in the future for our our shared notes, Joe,
Speaker 1: we should use chill or font instead of whatever we're
Speaker 1: using now. Yeah, that would that make it less like
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that would generally slow us down
Speaker 1: and make it harder to do the podcast, But it
Speaker 1: also might make it less likely that we would just
Speaker 1: like flub words here and there, because it would be
Speaker 1: a like really effortful, laborious process to get through every
Speaker 1: single thought, which you know sometimes it is anyway, but
Speaker 1: that that's on us, um. But anyway, So Song and
Speaker 1: Shorts here in two thousand and eight found that simply
Speaker 1: by making statements harder to read so you put them in,
Speaker 1: you said, Chiller, I was thinking, Papyrus. I don't know
Speaker 1: what what actual thought they used, but it would just
Speaker 1: make people more likely to spot errors in the questions
Speaker 1: instead of just rolling right over them without noticing. And
Speaker 1: you know that makes sense to me, Yeah, yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: It is interesting that that's how our brains work, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is sort of counterintuitive at the same time, like
Speaker 1: you might just assume that if something's harder to read,
Speaker 1: you would be less likely to catch errors in it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think there's some kind of process where
Speaker 1: it's like slowing you down. It's not allowing you to
Speaker 1: just like skip over the parts that it seemed like yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: Moses whatever. It's like like a bit of food that's
Speaker 1: extra chewy, so you're going to really taste this, You're
Speaker 1: really going to get a feel for the texture. There's
Speaker 1: no just wolf in this down. Yeah. Now, In the
Speaker 1: study by Bottoms at All, they were looking at the
Speaker 1: question of whether participants can detect errors in questions better
Speaker 1: if there are just more errors overall in the sample
Speaker 1: of questions. So, if I give you a bunch of
Speaker 1: questions and like, I don't know, seventy of them contain
Speaker 1: errors of this kind in them, are people more likely
Speaker 1: to catch them? And it looks like the answer is yes. Like,
Speaker 1: if you if you've got people on guard because they
Speaker 1: were just constantly problems with these questions, their guard goes
Speaker 1: up and they do seem to make the Moses illusion
Speaker 1: mistake less often. And it strikes me that that could
Speaker 1: be possibly, or at least partially because once you start,
Speaker 1: you know, showing people questions where most of them contain
Speaker 1: a problem, or even just a large minority of them
Speaker 1: contain a problem, people probably start uh interacting with the
Speaker 1: question less as questions and becoming less focused on just
Speaker 1: getting the answer and start looking at them more like
Speaker 1: a puzzle where you're you're trying to parse the sentence
Speaker 1: very clearly. Yeah, Yeah, It's like, how is this trying
Speaker 1: to trick me. Yeah, but then there's one kind of
Speaker 1: scary implication from this paper the author's right quote. More generally,
Speaker 1: the failure to detect errors had negative memorial consequences, increasing
Speaker 1: the likelihood that errors were used to answer later general
Speaker 1: knowledge questions. Methodological implications of this finding are discussed, as
Speaker 1: it suggests that typical analyzes likely underestimate the size of
Speaker 1: the Moses illusion. Overall, answering distorted questions can yield errors
Speaker 1: in the knowledge base. More importantly, prior knowledge does not
Speaker 1: protect against these negative memorial consequences. And Robert, I think
Speaker 1: you had a note about that. We can talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about that in a bit, but yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: there there is some evidence that just steamrolling over an
Speaker 1: incorrect fact in a sentence, even when you know otherwise,
Speaker 1: can can later damage your ability to recall that fact correctly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it Yeah, as as well discuss here. It's it's
Speaker 1: not just a situation where oh, well this is a quirk.
Speaker 1: This is interesting. The brain does this. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is that, but it it has it has greater implications. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I want to go back on the other side
Speaker 1: and say that when we encounter things like this, you know,
Speaker 1: illusions that humans often fall for. When you read about
Speaker 1: a certain type of I don't know, cognitive bias or
Speaker 1: or something. I think our tendency is often to at
Speaker 1: first react like, wow, our dumb brains were so stupid.
Speaker 1: But but I think there's another way to think about it,
Speaker 1: and that's this. How amazing is it that we have
Speaker 1: such a powerful command of language based reasoning that we
Speaker 1: can answer questions even though key elements of the sentence
Speaker 1: do not match with our knowledge base. I mean, think
Speaker 1: about the trouble that a computer would run into trying
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. Like, While it's an interesting
Speaker 1: case of an illusion failing to notice facts that conflict
Speaker 1: with our existing knowledge, it's also a demonstration of an
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing capacity for language comprehension, even when there are
Speaker 1: severe errors in the questions or sentences that we're trying
Speaker 1: to comprehend, Like somehow our brains are so good at
Speaker 1: getting what seems to be the gist the intended global
Speaker 1: meaning of a sentence, even when pivotal items in that
Speaker 1: sentence are wrong and should be pointing you off in
Speaker 1: the wrong direction and make you totally confused. Yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't help but be reminded in all
Speaker 1: this about the drawing of the bicycle that we've touched
Speaker 1: on before about often, I mean it's different. We're not
Speaker 1: dealing with language, We're dealing with a uh like a
Speaker 1: mental image. Like we all think we have the mental
Speaker 1: image of a bicycle pretty firm in our heads, and
Speaker 1: yet when put to the test, when acts asked to
Speaker 1: draw a bicycle, um, we're often floored. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a different one of our cognitive Allusions episodes.
Speaker 1: That was the the illusion of explanatory depth. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: issue where people they tend to think like that they
Speaker 1: understand how something works until they're asked to explain it.
Speaker 1: So somehow the brain has a way of representing a
Speaker 1: sort of pat Tempken comprehension, you know that it puts
Speaker 1: up this facade of yeah, you know how that works.
Speaker 1: I I I know how I know the parts of
Speaker 1: a bicycle. I know all the parts of a can opener.
Speaker 1: I could make one basically. But then if you are
Speaker 1: asked to like explain the steps of how it works
Speaker 1: or draw all the parts, you're like, uh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought about this a lot watching the Outlander TV show
Speaker 1: about the time traveler goes back in time and she's
Speaker 1: recreating various things that she knows about from the future,
Speaker 1: and like, God, like, how many of us, you know,
Speaker 1: we go if we were to do that, if we
Speaker 1: were to go back in time, we might tell somebody
Speaker 1: about all these marvelous things like oh yeah, penicillin and
Speaker 1: uh you know, by sickles and whatnot, and it'd be like,
Speaker 1: oh great, how did it work? And it'd be like,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, no, no idea, I have some some vague
Speaker 1: so I have some of the facts that I had,
Speaker 1: but not near enough to reproduce anything that I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Coming back to this
Speaker 1: thing about how the Moses ilusion is, it is and
Speaker 1: could be looked at as an example of how amazingly
Speaker 1: adaptive at comprehension our brains are. Actually found a book
Speaker 1: chapter discussing this very aspect of the effect. So the
Speaker 1: authors here were hik Young Park and Lynn M. Rader.
Speaker 1: Uh And this was a chapter in a book, and
Speaker 1: the chapter was called the Moses Illusion. I think it
Speaker 1: was published in two thousand four. And so they're talking
Speaker 1: about different potential explanations for the Moses illusion. What's going
Speaker 1: on in the brain, and they conclude that they, or
Speaker 1: at least they argue that the most likely explanation for
Speaker 1: what's going on when we fall for this is something
Speaker 1: they call the partial match HYPOTHESI us so I just
Speaker 1: want to read from their conclusion that's along the lines
Speaker 1: of what we've just been talking about. Quote. Research on
Speaker 1: the Moses illusion demonstrates that people have difficulty in detecting
Speaker 1: distortions or inaccuracies when a distorted element is semantically related
Speaker 1: to the theme of the sentence. Why should our cognitive
Speaker 1: system be so tolerant of distortions and find it so
Speaker 1: difficult to do careful matches to memory. It might seem
Speaker 1: that partial matching is a less than ideal way to
Speaker 1: process information. However, the partial match process is not only
Speaker 1: common and normal, but also a necessary mechanism of our
Speaker 1: cognitive system. This partial match process enables useful communication and comprehension.
Speaker 1: Very few things that we see or here will perfectly
Speaker 1: match the representation that we already have stored in memory.
Speaker 1: In order to answer questions, we need to be able
Speaker 1: to use an acceptable match. In order to understand a
Speaker 1: new situation and map it onto something we have already
Speaker 1: seen or done, we must apt slight variations every day.
Speaker 1: At many levels, we accept slight distortions without even noticing
Speaker 1: the process. Occasionally we notice a distortion and choose to
Speaker 1: ignore it, but more frequently we do not even realize
Speaker 1: that distortions have occurred. A rigid comprehension system would have
Speaker 1: a difficult time. Indeed, many of our cognitive operations are
Speaker 1: driven by familiarity based heuristics rather than careful matching operations.
Speaker 1: The Moses illusion is an example of how the adaptive
Speaker 1: human cognitive system works. Everyday, cognitive processing must be based
Speaker 1: on simple heuristics, such as matching sets of features, rather
Speaker 1: than exact matches, as very few tasks require exact matches.
Speaker 1: Sentences do not match stored information. Faces change, voices may
Speaker 1: change slightly, even our pets and friends change over time. Therefore,
Speaker 1: it makes sense that people do use partial matches in
Speaker 1: the normal course of matching to memory. Rcial matching is
Speaker 1: immutable because it is the most efficient way for memory
Speaker 1: to operate given the nature of the environment in which
Speaker 1: we live. And so, yeah, this really makes me think
Speaker 1: along the lines of what we were just saying a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago. Like the Moses illusion is kind of
Speaker 1: funny when you notice yourself doing it, but it's also
Speaker 1: it's also kind of a superpower. Yeah, Like, imagine if
Speaker 1: you went to a video store, which we still have
Speaker 1: one in Atlanta. Imagine you went there and you were
Speaker 1: to say, um, yeah, I'm looking for a particular movie.
Speaker 1: Um it started Anthony Hopkins and it had a puppet
Speaker 1: in it. And instead of being able to piece that
Speaker 1: together and tell you which movie you're talking about, what
Speaker 1: if they were to say, Okay, keep listening, I need
Speaker 1: you to list the entire cast. I need all of
Speaker 1: the details. We have to make acent match here. Or Yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine somebody comes into the video store and they say,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for The Godfather too, and they say, sorry,
Speaker 1: we don't have that. What they actually have is The
Speaker 1: Godfather Cole and Part two. Oh man, that that's not
Speaker 1: completely unbelievable and not with our video store, but just
Speaker 1: sort of like the cliche video store. You mean the
Speaker 1: god Father part to Philistine. I mean, that's a kind
Speaker 1: of silly example, but I think the authors of this
Speaker 1: chapter are exactly right that every basically, every single moment
Speaker 1: of our lives, we are testing reality against our memories,
Speaker 1: and we have to do so in a fast and
Speaker 1: loose way, and our ability to do so in a
Speaker 1: fast and loose way without relying on every detail to
Speaker 1: be an exact correct match is is what allows us
Speaker 1: to live adaptively, to sort of like be thinking creatures
Speaker 1: looking for exact matches between the current case you're observing
Speaker 1: and what's stored in your memory. Like I made the
Speaker 1: comparison to a computer earlier. Today, I guess we're more
Speaker 1: familiar with more adaptive types of computer functions that are
Speaker 1: based on like AI or like huge amounts of machine
Speaker 1: learning or something like that. It makes me think about
Speaker 1: like the early old days of dealing with the you know,
Speaker 1: computer programming, where like if you slightly misspelled, like you know, um,
Speaker 1: you're you're playing Zork or something and you type like
Speaker 1: wolke north the w o l K, it's not is
Speaker 1: to be like that is not a valid action. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing nowadays, how just like how much thumb fumbling
Speaker 1: I can put into typing something in search and it
Speaker 1: still knows what I'm talking about. I still um able
Speaker 1: to floor it every now and then because I'll get
Speaker 1: really reckless and u and it'll just have no clue.
Speaker 1: But but more often than not, it'll it'll guess what
Speaker 1: I'm going for. But that is amazing because that is
Speaker 1: the the the input receiver whatever, you know. This piece
Speaker 1: of technology it's called AI because it's becoming more like
Speaker 1: our brains. It's becoming usefully sloppy and and loose in
Speaker 1: the way our brains are. Now. I guess we could
Speaker 1: talk about a couple of other possible examples of knowledge
Speaker 1: neglect or implications of knowledge neglect. One that I came
Speaker 1: across that I thought was pretty funny is something that
Speaker 1: seems fairly narrow, but it's known as the yolk phenomenon. Uh,
Speaker 1: So it goes like this apparently was originally described in
Speaker 1: an article in the Psychological Review by Gregory Kimball and
Speaker 1: Lawrence Pearl Mutter. Uh this was in the year ninety
Speaker 1: if I didn't already say that, But it consists of
Speaker 1: asking somebody a list of questions and and it's designed
Speaker 1: to produce a certain answer. So you say, what do
Speaker 1: we call the tree that grows from acorns? And you
Speaker 1: say an oak? And then you say, what do you
Speaker 1: call a funny story joke? What's the sound made by
Speaker 1: a frog croak? What's another word? For a cape cloak.
Speaker 1: What do we call the white of an egg? And
Speaker 1: most people say yolk um, which is obviously wrong, And
Speaker 1: people are not confused about the white of an egg
Speaker 1: being called the yolk. But it seems like instead the
Speaker 1: implication is that there's a certain kind of pattern seeking
Speaker 1: that overtakes semantic processing here, like the brain starts to
Speaker 1: conclude while you're answering these questions because of the established
Speaker 1: pattern that rhyming is more important than the actual meaning
Speaker 1: of the word that rhymes and you know it rhymes
Speaker 1: march exactly. It's the rhymes reason effects sort of. I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: which I think we talked with that in our episode
Speaker 1: on anti metaboli. But I was wondering, I wonder how
Speaker 1: many items in a list like this it takes before
Speaker 1: the majority of respondents will give the yolk type answer,
Speaker 1: will ignore the known meaning of a word and just
Speaker 1: supply the nonsensical rhyming match. I don't know. I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm very susceptible to this one, because I I
Speaker 1: recently was trying to do a recipe and it got
Speaker 1: kind of confusing, and I had a moment where I
Speaker 1: had to ask myself, wait, which part is the yolk
Speaker 1: and which is white. Um, it was only a momentary lapse,
Speaker 1: but there were a lot of things going on. There
Speaker 1: was a lot. I was like having to take them apart,
Speaker 1: you know, as one of those we have to have
Speaker 1: the egg white and one bowl and the yolks and
Speaker 1: the other. And it was I was making a su
Speaker 1: flight That's what it was, and an applicated dish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I did had I had not had coffee yet either,
Speaker 1: so I had that going for me. Um. It was successful.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there was that moment where I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I have to have so many egg whites and then
Speaker 1: a different number of yolks and which ones which? Now?
Speaker 1: Uh so I would totally fall for this. I mean,
Speaker 1: did you succeed? Did it rise? Yeah? I had Rise.
Speaker 1: It was good. Yeah. I don't think I want to
Speaker 1: put it in regular weekly rotation, but it was. It
Speaker 1: was good for a special treat. I feel like the
Speaker 1: soufle a that is just one of the most notorious, tricky,
Speaker 1: tricky dishes for people who aren't I guess like working
Speaker 1: in you know, kitchens or bakeries every day. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was still it was tricky. It was tricky for me
Speaker 1: even though I went with a very what seemed like
Speaker 1: a very simple recipe that that didn't steer me too wrong,
Speaker 1: but still I got lost a little bit for a moment. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm impressed, So I was. I was reading through this
Speaker 1: book chapter as well, um on Knowledge Neglect by marsh
Speaker 1: and Humana, and uh, yeah, this was this was very interesting.
Speaker 1: Um so yeah. They point to a couple of other misconceptions.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've mentioned these on on the episode
Speaker 1: thus far, but one of them was Toronto is the
Speaker 1: capital of Canada, and a blow to the head cure's amnesia,
Speaker 1: which I guess is like a TV you know, cartoon
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. But these are all like examples
Speaker 1: of misconceptions that you might have in your head that
Speaker 1: are are not true. They point out that you know
Speaker 1: it tries, we might misconceptions are impossible to ignore, and uh,
Speaker 1: your best hope if you can't avoid hearing misconceptions altogether,
Speaker 1: which again is probably impossible, uh, is to have them
Speaker 1: immediately corrected. But that would be difficult, Like you'd have
Speaker 1: to have like a standing conversation with somebody who would
Speaker 1: not fall for your miscommunication, you know, or you'd have
Speaker 1: to just be constantly, uh like with with paranoia, just
Speaker 1: fact checking everything you come across. Otherwise some of them
Speaker 1: are going to get past your your guard and they're
Speaker 1: not going to be instantly corrected. And then they're just
Speaker 1: kinda they're just kind of in there. Like even if
Speaker 1: you hear otherwise later, you might still fall back to
Speaker 1: the earlier misconception. Yeah, or it's just or it's something
Speaker 1: that doesn't come up in daily life, you know, so
Speaker 1: you just there's never been an opportunity for it to
Speaker 1: be corrected. I'm reminded of that episode of This American
Speaker 1: Life where they started off by talking about this, uh,
Speaker 1: this this particular individual who had just grown up thinking
Speaker 1: that unicorns existed, like it had never been corrected for,
Speaker 1: and so she just had that misconception in her head
Speaker 1: until finally she's at a party in there and there's
Speaker 1: a conversation, like just a random chatter about, hey, what
Speaker 1: are your favorite animals or something, and she she mentions
Speaker 1: the unicorn and there's like this awkward silence. So why
Speaker 1: would that be all that awkward? I mean, would she
Speaker 1: like the unicorn which is real? Well, I think it was,
Speaker 1: it was probably why if I'm remembering it correctly it was.
Speaker 1: There's a certain bit of ambiguity where people are like,
Speaker 1: is she joking or oh my goodness, she's not joking.
Speaker 1: She thinks there. But it also makes all of us,
Speaker 1: I think, wonder, which, what what misconceptions do we have
Speaker 1: just rattling around in our brain right now? We have
Speaker 1: no idea, but they're just they're ready to go at
Speaker 1: any moment, you know, they can be loaded into the
Speaker 1: torpedo tube of conversation or podcasting or the next job interview,
Speaker 1: just just just ready to go when you have no idea.
Speaker 1: I'd say one of the most common edits I have
Speaker 1: to make to this show before we release it as
Speaker 1: I realized that I just sort of said something that
Speaker 1: I knew was true. And then later I'm listening back
Speaker 1: to it, I'm like, wait a minute, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, yeah, I've definitely definitely done that before.
Speaker 1: But well, I mean when I said it, I wasn't
Speaker 1: even wondering, you know, just now now. The authors here,
Speaker 1: they they touch on, of course, the fact that the
Speaker 1: prior knowledge seems like it should be able to protect us, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and and yet quote surprisingly, the effects of
Speaker 1: exposure to misconceptions are not limited to cases where people
Speaker 1: are ignorant of the true state of the world. We
Speaker 1: touched on that already. Um. Another great example they bring
Speaker 1: bring out is a plane crashed, where did they bury
Speaker 1: the survivors? Okay, which you know obviously you're not going
Speaker 1: to bury survivors, you were going to bury the dead.
Speaker 1: But again, this is another question where you've kind of
Speaker 1: filled in all the blanks, you know. Uh, they by
Speaker 1: the time the survivors is the last word in the sentence. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you fall for it, right, So it's not like
Speaker 1: you think that the survivors get buried, but you could
Speaker 1: be trying to answer the questions just because like that's
Speaker 1: gone straight past you. Yeah, And they really drive home
Speaker 1: in this that knowledge neglect isn't just a momentary lapse
Speaker 1: in memory, but rather something with real consequences for memory.
Speaker 1: If you don't recognize the error, the error can become
Speaker 1: coded into your memory, into your worldview as fact. Uh.
Speaker 1: And because that error was recently encountered, it's more easily accessed.
Speaker 1: So again we have to remember that items in our
Speaker 1: memory are not made of stone, they're made of clay.
Speaker 1: Merely accessing them can change them. And our most accessed
Speaker 1: memories are the most changed memories of all the ones
Speaker 1: we can trust the least. Um So, an air that
Speaker 1: pops to mind quickly is more likely to be thought
Speaker 1: of as fact, not Oh I heard once that X.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about X, but I think X, but
Speaker 1: rather just X is true, X is the answer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess this is This is connecting back to
Speaker 1: that finding we talked about earlier that you know, um
Speaker 1: that even against your existing prior knowledge, like misconceptions or
Speaker 1: errors that get by you unnoticed in one of these
Speaker 1: Moses solution type sentences can later damage your ability to
Speaker 1: remember the actual fact of that sentence correctly. Um, it
Speaker 1: can undermine your knowledge that it was in fact Noah, potentially.
Speaker 1: And this makes me think about the broader phenomenon of
Speaker 1: people who are really trying to argue a point will
Speaker 1: often structure sentences to try to get something past you
Speaker 1: really quickly. In the non pivotal part of the sentence.
Speaker 1: It's almost like we have an intuitive grasp of the
Speaker 1: Moses solution type thing, where like a, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you see people like like arguing about politics on TV
Speaker 1: or something, and like so one person will pose a
Speaker 1: question to the other person, and the the pivotal part
Speaker 1: of the sentence that's supposed to be in dispute, maybe
Speaker 1: is is one part of the sentence, but then in
Speaker 1: a different part of the sentence, there's also like a
Speaker 1: disputable claim that's just like shoved in there and goes
Speaker 1: by real quick, right right, Yeah. If you end up
Speaker 1: with a statement that has some some mistruths sort of
Speaker 1: sprinkled in there that are not key to the like
Speaker 1: the main you know, talking point, or even the main untruth,
Speaker 1: you know, that's that can often be the nefarious thing too.
Speaker 1: It's like you catch the larger um misconception or lie
Speaker 1: in the statement, but then there are other lies in
Speaker 1: there that you're not paying attention to because of the
Speaker 1: big one. Now, the authors here they point out that
Speaker 1: improved monitoring can help, you know, this is stuff like
Speaker 1: we're talking about, like putting things in a different font, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: But drawing attention to errors can have the opposite effect,
Speaker 1: increasing suggestibility, which is is weird therefore to it as
Speaker 1: an ironic effect. Um. Plus, many manipulations designed to promote
Speaker 1: monitoring may actually fail to do so, And they say
Speaker 1: it's difficult to predict which manipulations will actually work. So again,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no like one guy, like, here are
Speaker 1: the three steps you need to take to uh to
Speaker 1: keep this misinformation from leaking into your brain. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of what I take away from this is that, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, being well informed is an ongoing process
Speaker 1: that last your entire life. And it's not a question
Speaker 1: of like just getting the right facts in the bank
Speaker 1: one time and then you're set. You know. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of upkeep involved and a lot of just
Speaker 1: continual pruning and not just new weeds, weeds that have
Speaker 1: been in there your whole life sometimes or seeing right
Speaker 1: bap the very least. Um. Yeah. The authors why, they
Speaker 1: also drive home that ultimately we know a lot more
Speaker 1: about how people come to misremember events versus misremember facts,
Speaker 1: especially when errors are are the errors involved contradict stored knowledge.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, you know, again we get into
Speaker 1: the complexity of memory, the different types of memory that
Speaker 1: we have going on the brain. Um, and we we
Speaker 1: still have a lot more to learn about just how
Speaker 1: this all comes together. Yeah. Now, you know, here's a
Speaker 1: question that comes to mind. Um, I wonder if anyone
Speaker 1: has constructed a Moses illusion statement using Bilbo and Frodo.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, that might so. Um, like what was Bilbo
Speaker 1: carrying into the fires of Mountain Doom? Yeah, that's sort
Speaker 1: of thing. I don't know, of course, I guess you
Speaker 1: would want to you'd want to try and construct it
Speaker 1: right so that you get Bilbo there at the very
Speaker 1: end or Frodo at the very end, depending on how
Speaker 1: you're you're you're messing around with its rum who was
Speaker 1: who was the dragon whose lair was infiltrated by Frodo Baggins. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing that might work. Yeah, I said,
Speaker 1: Bilbo and Frodo or even closer together than Noah and Moses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they are certainly that they actually overlap, as
Speaker 1: opposed to being separated by by long stretches of time.
Speaker 1: Very very similar characters actually related, right, they are related? Yeah? Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that they would work. What Uncle, great uncle Uncle,
Speaker 1: So I always forget what happened to Frodo's parents. I've
Speaker 1: read it and I still forget it. I'm gonna say, uncle,
Speaker 1: all the all the Hobbits are cousins. Yeah, they're all related. Actually, yes,
Speaker 1: all right, well there you have it. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from everybody about this, because of course this just
Speaker 1: touches on how our brains work and how it now
Speaker 1: they are brains work with with new information, be it
Speaker 1: accurate or or or or misconception. Uh So I think
Speaker 1: everybody out there has something to share. Which of these
Speaker 1: Moses illusions worked the most on you? Which ones I've
Speaker 1: worked on you in the past. Uh, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. All right. If you want to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, you
Speaker 1: know where to find it. You can find the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever you get your
Speaker 1: your podcasts, and we'll have core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you've got listener mail.
Speaker 1: On Mondays, you've got them, We've got the Artifact on Wednesdays.
Speaker 1: You've got Weird House Cinema on Fridays in a vault
Speaker 1: episode on the weekends, Huge things. As always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
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Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
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