Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're back part two of our exploration of the
Speaker 1: illusory truth effect, probably the liar's best trick. If you
Speaker 1: haven't heard our last episodes, you'd probably go back listen
Speaker 1: to that first. But if you haven't, or if you have,
Speaker 1: let's just do a quick recap of what we talked
Speaker 1: about last time. We discussed all of the research on
Speaker 1: this thing that's sort of been part of folk wisdom
Speaker 1: that if you say something and if you repeat it
Speaker 1: and repeat it and repeat it, people become over time
Speaker 1: more likely to believe that thing. And that is thoroughly
Speaker 1: validated by experimental research, right. And we also talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about why does it even make sense that
Speaker 1: we would come to believe things that were not true
Speaker 1: about the world that we live in just because they
Speaker 1: were repeated. Yeah, And so the basis that we ultimately
Speaker 1: ended up on last time that seems to be favored
Speaker 1: by most of the psychologists to study this is based
Speaker 1: in the idea of processing fluency that for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: one researcher we talked about last time came to believe
Speaker 1: that it was because of conditioning based on real world effects.
Speaker 1: But for whatever reason, we tend to associate things that
Speaker 1: are easy to process, things with high processing fluency with truth.
Speaker 1: So something's easy to read, we think it's more true.
Speaker 1: Or if something is an idea we've seen or heard
Speaker 1: or encountered before, because that's easier to process. Because of familiarity,
Speaker 1: we believe that it is more likely to be true
Speaker 1: than if we're encountering it for the first time. But
Speaker 1: of course in all of this extreme implausibility is going
Speaker 1: to be a boundary condition that's going to kick in.
Speaker 1: So this is like the Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer?
Speaker 1: Uh level of of of implausibility? What just because the
Speaker 1: ages don't match up right well, just and it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like, all right, I'm not blieeding that that's
Speaker 1: it's ridiculous, but some people do believe that. So your
Speaker 1: boundary condition may not be where somebodynoundary condition is that
Speaker 1: the boundary conditions will vary from individual to individual. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So the question that we should address to
Speaker 1: start off in this one is in the last episode,
Speaker 1: we discussed how this effect has been thoroughly validated in
Speaker 1: the lab. But here's a question does it work in
Speaker 1: the real world and is it really all that powerful?
Speaker 1: Like a lot of researchers seem to assume that, surely,
Speaker 1: if you already know something about a subject, repetition of
Speaker 1: a contradictory false statement wouldn't actually undermine your real knowledge,
Speaker 1: would it. Surely they would tend to assume that this
Speaker 1: slusory truth effect only works for state statements that were
Speaker 1: uncertain about to begin with, and statements that seem highly plausible,
Speaker 1: like if you didn't know anything about either Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: or the Zodiac Killer really and then you would just
Speaker 1: sort of say, all right, maybe that's possible, whereas an
Speaker 1: individual who has read multiple books on the Zodiac Killer
Speaker 1: would say, no, that doesn't that doesn't match up. That
Speaker 1: is just ridiculous. Yeah, So that that's the assumption. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: some more recent research has really turned that assumption on
Speaker 1: its head. So I want to talk about an important
Speaker 1: recent study in the illusory truth effect that brings it's
Speaker 1: a bearer of bad news. The study is from the
Speaker 1: Journal of Experimental Psychology General in by Fasio Brashier, Pain
Speaker 1: and marsh and it's called knowledge does not protect against
Speaker 1: illusory truth. So they pointed out that the illusory truth
Speaker 1: effect that we talked about last time, based on processing fluency,
Speaker 1: is widely accepted, well established, but it had been previously
Speaker 1: thought that this effect was constrained by a few things. Now,
Speaker 1: one constraint shown to actually exist in the literature is
Speaker 1: recollection of the quality of the source of the information.
Speaker 1: So previous studies have shown that if you specifically remember
Speaker 1: where a statement came from, and you consider the source
Speaker 1: of the statement a dishonest or untrustworthy source, that can
Speaker 1: produce kind of a reverse truth effect, where repetition of
Speaker 1: a statement known to come from a liar or an
Speaker 1: untrustworthy source causes us to disbelieve it. So this sounds
Speaker 1: like this should be good news, right right? Yeah? Did
Speaker 1: I ultimately the question did I hear that on the radio? Did?
Speaker 1: Or did I see it on a T shirt? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Or was this on the cover of the National Enquirer?
Speaker 1: Like you remember that's where it came from, and you're
Speaker 1: you know, that's an untrustworthy source. So it actually has
Speaker 1: the reverse effect. You hear that repeated and it makes
Speaker 1: you go, no, no, no, that's not true at all.
Speaker 1: But this isn't as much of a protection as we think,
Speaker 1: because honestly, how well do you remember the exact source
Speaker 1: of every bit of semantic knowledge in your head? Why no,
Speaker 1: bat Boy did not come from the New York Times,
Speaker 1: But there are lots of other things that are in
Speaker 1: your head that did come from the cover of the
Speaker 1: National Enquirer, and you don't remember that that's where it
Speaker 1: aim from. I guarantee it you've stood in line at
Speaker 1: the grocery store. Well, if it's a story about any
Speaker 1: particular aged celebrities, brave last days or sad last days,
Speaker 1: they probably came from inquired But yes, there there, there's
Speaker 1: probably there are probably some stories in there that I
Speaker 1: would not definitely be able to pin down to inquire
Speaker 1: versus other sources, Robert, I see right through your bravado.
Speaker 1: Some Inquirer stories have gotten through to you. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: Other studies have backed this up. After just a period
Speaker 1: of a few weeks, what may have once been stored
Speaker 1: in the brain as false claim by an untrustworthy source
Speaker 1: could potentially, over time become just a familiar statement I remember, which,
Speaker 1: of course, once it's familiar translates it into more likely
Speaker 1: to be a true fact. There was at least one
Speaker 1: study that looked into this by beg Annas and far
Speaker 1: Nacci in nineteen two called Dissociation of Processes and belief,
Speaker 1: source recollections, statement, familiarity, and the Illusion of truth, And
Speaker 1: basically they found that when the source of a claim
Speaker 1: is not super memorable as unreliable, familiarity can be more
Speaker 1: important than truth or reliability. Okay, so it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a like a magazine that that has a negative reputation
Speaker 1: in your mind, but it's not something that's completely reputable either.
Speaker 1: It just kind of follows in between. Or even if
Speaker 1: it has a negative reputation and it's just not all
Speaker 1: that memorable, you can lose track of where it came
Speaker 1: from and it will suffer from the illusory truth effect.
Speaker 1: This can happen even when you should have remembered that
Speaker 1: it came from an untrustworthy source. There are exceptions when
Speaker 1: the source is really memorable, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: it doesn't protect you. Now, the second assumption about constraints
Speaker 1: on the illusory truth effect is about knowledge. Right, We've
Speaker 1: all got knowledge already in our heads, and the idea
Speaker 1: is that pre existing knowledge will protect against the effect,
Speaker 1: and this is what came under scrutiny in this particular
Speaker 1: study by Fasio and our co co authors. In so,
Speaker 1: despite being an assumption repeated again and again in the
Speaker 1: illusory truth literature, very few of the studies actually bothered
Speaker 1: to test whether knowledge protects people. I was just sort
Speaker 1: of asserted to be true as if it were obvious,
Speaker 1: and the few that did bother to test it in
Speaker 1: any way generally did so by testing how the effect
Speaker 1: presented in people who claimed subject area expertise. So uh,
Speaker 1: these studies yielded contradictory results. But here's a couple of examples.
Speaker 1: Scroll in nineteen eight three found that if you rate
Speaker 1: yourself as an expert on cars, Robert, would you rate
Speaker 1: yourself as an expert on cars? But some people would win.
Speaker 1: Some people around the office. Yeah, car experts, well found
Speaker 1: suffered smaller illusory truth effects uh than non experts on
Speaker 1: car trivia. So that would suggest, okay, knowledge gives you
Speaker 1: a little bit of an edge. You're not You're not
Speaker 1: as susceptible as amateurs. And then Parks and Tough in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six had people rate claims about known
Speaker 1: versus unknown consumer brands, and the illusory truth effect was
Speaker 1: bigger for statements about brands that people were unfamiliar with.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. So like, if you didn't already know
Speaker 1: anything about this brand, you were more susceptible to illusory
Speaker 1: truth effect on statements about the brand. Yeah, that makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense. On the other hand, Archy's Hackett and boem
Speaker 1: in nine nine found the opposite, that the higher a
Speaker 1: person rated their expertise in a subject, the more susceptible
Speaker 1: they were to the illusory truth effect in that subject area.
Speaker 1: Makes you wonder if there's like some kind of insecurity
Speaker 1: or like identity protective thing going on that. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I don't want I don't I don't want to be wrong,
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna nod my head on that. I
Speaker 1: don't want to look bad. I've already staked my reputation
Speaker 1: on being a car expert. Also, boem in nineteen found
Speaker 1: that psychology majors showed a larger illusory truth effect on
Speaker 1: psychology than non majors. But there's some issues with these studies,
Speaker 1: so Assio and her co authors point out that these
Speaker 1: types of tests don't actually manipulate direct knowledge of whether
Speaker 1: the statements are true or false, just sort of the
Speaker 1: perception of related knowledge. So they wanted to test this directly.
Speaker 1: They created a big list of statements like we've seen
Speaker 1: in these other tests, where you'll have true statements and
Speaker 1: false statements, and they base this off existing lists of
Speaker 1: facts that have been shown in previous studies to be
Speaker 1: either generally known or generally unknown. And this created four
Speaker 1: categories of statements. You've got known truths, unknown truths, known falsehoods,
Speaker 1: and unknown falsehoods. Here's some examples. You've got a known
Speaker 1: truth quote, the cyclops is a legendary one eyed giant
Speaker 1: of Greek mythology. Robert checks out. Checks out. Okay, how
Speaker 1: about the Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world.
Speaker 1: Checks out. Then you go into known falsehoods. The minotaur
Speaker 1: is the legendary one eyed giant of Greek mythology. Absolutely not.
Speaker 1: The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean in the world,
Speaker 1: and most people are expected to know that these are
Speaker 1: not true statements. Then you've got unknown stuff. Here's an example.
Speaker 1: Unknown truth Billy the kid's real last name? What was it?
Speaker 1: It's Bonnie. Unknown falsehood Billy the kid's real last name
Speaker 1: is Garrett. Yeah, I would have It would have been
Speaker 1: a toss up for me because I did not know
Speaker 1: Billy the kid's last name. I thought maybe it was
Speaker 1: a kid, you know, as in kid Rock as Kid
Speaker 1: Rocks first name is Billy kids last name and his
Speaker 1: middle name is there. There you go. So experiment one
Speaker 1: using this set of statements, forty students in the first phase.
Speaker 1: Subjects were shown a subset of statements from the list
Speaker 1: of all four types, and they were just asked to
Speaker 1: judge how interesting the statements were. You know, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a really fun task, right, Billy the kid's last
Speaker 1: name is Bonnie? How interesting was that? I get? More
Speaker 1: interesting than some names? Yeah? Maybe, I guess. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't find that one that interesting. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess it sounds like Bonnie as in like pretty
Speaker 1: it sounds. It sounds maybe a little odd for what,
Speaker 1: based on the photos, need to be kind of like
Speaker 1: an ugly looking, you know, Western outlaw. It makes me
Speaker 1: think like a Robert Burns kind of poem thing. And
Speaker 1: Bonnie Glenn or whereas Garrett sound, you know, it has
Speaker 1: kind of a guttural sound to it. Ye, got right, okay,
Speaker 1: So then they got the second phase. This happened immediately
Speaker 1: after the first phase. Students were given another subset of
Speaker 1: statements from the list, again all four types of statements,
Speaker 1: and they were warned that some statements were true and
Speaker 1: some were false, And they were also warned that they
Speaker 1: would see some repeats from the list that they had
Speaker 1: just reviewed for how interesting they were. And then they
Speaker 1: rated the claims on a scale of one to six
Speaker 1: about how true they were. There was also at the
Speaker 1: end an open ended knowledge check test with it had
Speaker 1: these open ended questions like what is the world's largest ocean?
Speaker 1: What is the one eyed monster of Greek myth uh
Speaker 1: to strengthen the experiment or's picture of the individual knowledge
Speaker 1: of each participant. So then you got the results. First
Speaker 1: of all, the original findings of the illusory truth effect
Speaker 1: were replicated. Repeated statements got higher truth ratings new statements
Speaker 1: that the students had never seen before. But also, quite surprisingly,
Speaker 1: knowledge did not seem to prevent the illusory truth effect.
Speaker 1: Statements about both previously known and previously unknown facts were
Speaker 1: rated more true if they were repeated than if they
Speaker 1: were new. In other words, repetition increased perceived truthfulness, even
Speaker 1: for contradictions of facts that you know. So I want
Speaker 1: to quote from the author's quote reading a statement like
Speaker 1: a sorry is the name of the short pleaded skirt
Speaker 1: worn by Scott's increased participants later belief that that statement
Speaker 1: was true, even if they could correctly answer the question
Speaker 1: what is the name of the short pleaded skirt worn
Speaker 1: by Scotts? Isn't that bizarre? So like you ask somebody
Speaker 1: what is the short pleaded skirt worn by Scots and
Speaker 1: they answer kilt. But if you show them the phrase
Speaker 1: a sorry is the name of the short pleaded skirts
Speaker 1: skirt worn by Scots, and then show them the phrase
Speaker 1: again later, they will they will take the repeated phrase
Speaker 1: as evidence that that statement is more true than if
Speaker 1: they saw the statement for the first time. Again, it
Speaker 1: comes back to the shortcuts that our brain makes. How
Speaker 1: how weird? This's bizarre? I mean again, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a reminder that the human culture and human language just
Speaker 1: complicates everything. Yeah, it's crazy. Uh So again, the authors
Speaker 1: found that the repetition effect also emerged for truth. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't just false statements, it was true statements. To
Speaker 1: whether it's true or false, If you repeat it, people
Speaker 1: believe it more. So the takeaway from this first experiment
Speaker 1: is whether a statement is true or false, and whether
Speaker 1: you already no better or not. If somebody repeats the
Speaker 1: statement to you, on average, you're more likely to believe it.
Speaker 1: And then the second part of their study was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So they're discussing their own finding and they say, quote,
Speaker 1: the data suggests a counterintuitive relationship between fluency. Remember that's
Speaker 1: the fluency processing fluency. How easy it is to press
Speaker 1: this information between fluency and knowledge. Prior work assumes that
Speaker 1: people only rely on fluency if knowledge retrieval is unsuccessful
Speaker 1: i e. If participants lack relevant knowledge or fail to
Speaker 1: search memory at all. Experiment one demonstrated that the reverse
Speaker 1: may be true. Perhaps people retrieve their knowledge only if
Speaker 1: fluency is absent. So to test this out, they did
Speaker 1: a second experiment and they repeated a modified version of
Speaker 1: the experiment to test it. Uh. They believe that their
Speaker 1: results indicate that people sometimes use a fluency conditional model,
Speaker 1: which means they would rely on fluency even if knowledge
Speaker 1: is available to them. You start with fluency, and influency fails,
Speaker 1: you fall back on what you actually know. We shouldn't
Speaker 1: over interpret it, but in a limited way. There may
Speaker 1: be processes in the brain that say, I'm going to
Speaker 1: go for what feels easy before I even check my
Speaker 1: memory to see what, I know, what kind of lines
Speaker 1: up with there the mind's tendency to want to offload
Speaker 1: memory to people and gadgets like I do I have
Speaker 1: to remember that anymore if the machine is going to
Speaker 1: do it or my spouse is going to do it,
Speaker 1: and the brain says no, I think, well, that's completely
Speaker 1: prune that section. Here's the question. How often have you
Speaker 1: used a calculator to do math that you could yourself
Speaker 1: easily do? Um? You know what I mean? Like, not
Speaker 1: not problems that would be really hard, but something that
Speaker 1: if you just took ten seconds you could probably solve
Speaker 1: in your head. Yeah. I do that in Dungeons and
Speaker 1: Dragons sometimes when we get into hit points and whatnot.
Speaker 1: You know, I could certainly easy. I could either do
Speaker 1: it in my mind or just do it, you know,
Speaker 1: and pin and pencil real quick. But I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and type it into my calculator just to yeah, I
Speaker 1: get it done. I've done the same thing too. It's weird.
Speaker 1: It's a little disturbing why or search engines, you know,
Speaker 1: just just throwing in the mathematical equation something really simple,
Speaker 1: um so, such as just determining how old a particular
Speaker 1: actor is or how old they would have been during
Speaker 1: a certain movie. I feel like I do that all
Speaker 1: the time, Like you're saying, you do that even though
Speaker 1: you could easily know the answer if you checked your
Speaker 1: own memory. M hm. I feel like I do that
Speaker 1: less with search engine Like I definitely do the calculator thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not so much that I would remember, say how old
Speaker 1: Robert de Niro was during Godfather Too, but I would
Speaker 1: just use it. Would suddenly wonder how old he was,
Speaker 1: And so I would you do the simple mathematical scenario
Speaker 1: of you know, subtracting subtracting one year from the other.
Speaker 1: Let's plant a lie in everybody's mind right now, Robert
Speaker 1: de Niro was four hundred and twenty three years old
Speaker 1: when he did Godfather Too. And now you'll remember that
Speaker 1: that's implausible. That that's the implausibility barrier in action. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I should do something else. Yeah, we'll come back
Speaker 1: to that. But anyway, So the conclusion of this experiment
Speaker 1: by Fasio and Co. Authors is that quote participants demonstrated
Speaker 1: knowledge neglect or the failure to rely on stored knowledge
Speaker 1: in the face of fluent processing experiences, so they'd rather
Speaker 1: go for what was easy to process than what was
Speaker 1: the correct answer based on their own knowledge. At the
Speaker 1: same time, it's really important to note that this doesn't
Speaker 1: happen every time, it doesn't happen with every person, it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen with every question, and it doesn't necessarily happen
Speaker 1: with huge effects, so the effect is relatively small. This
Speaker 1: was actually pointed out pretty well in a BBC article
Speaker 1: in sixteen by Tom Stafford. He pointed out that while
Speaker 1: repeated exposure to statements increase their believability, the biggest influence
Speaker 1: on whether a statement was rated true or not was
Speaker 1: whether it was actually true. So the the illusory truth
Speaker 1: effect is valid, and it does change the averages of
Speaker 1: the answers, but it's not like the only thing that matters,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't overpower our real knowledge about the truth.
Speaker 1: It's just weird that it does have some effect in
Speaker 1: the face of actual knowledge we have when actual knowledge
Speaker 1: should mean it has no effect. Does that make sense again?
Speaker 1: I just come back to the you know to to
Speaker 1: to the fact that the mind is going to offload
Speaker 1: whatever information it can or whatever processing it can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those lazy brains of ours. Okay, well, we should take
Speaker 1: a quick break and the when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will discuss more recent research on the illusory truth effect
Speaker 1: and some related concepts and what it means for our lives.
Speaker 1: Than all right, we're back. So we've discussed the subject
Speaker 1: of false memories before. The many ways in which false
Speaker 1: memories can form UM. Psychologist Daniel Shackter identified seven in
Speaker 1: fact his his work the seventh sins of memory, transients
Speaker 1: and absent mindedness, blocking, misattribution, bias, persistence. Uh, and I
Speaker 1: like to think of it this way. Memory is is
Speaker 1: not something that is carved in stone, but rather uh,
Speaker 1: something that is sculptured from clay. And the clay of
Speaker 1: memory remains valuable every time we retrieve it from the
Speaker 1: drawer and handle it. As psychologist Pascal Boyer, who referenced
Speaker 1: in our last episode pointed out, um examples of this
Speaker 1: range from wordless recall, intrusions and experiments, to therapy induced
Speaker 1: imaginings of past lives and or ritual abuse, which we've
Speaker 1: we've discussed on the episode on the on the show
Speaker 1: before in past episodes. Uh so, memory retrieval is a
Speaker 1: very delicate stage. There's actually a line from the television
Speaker 1: series The Expanse that I think captures this perfectly well.
Speaker 1: The character Miller played by Thomas jane Um. He sums
Speaker 1: up that they have the character sum up this rather
Speaker 1: perfectly says, you know, every time you remember something, your
Speaker 1: mind changes it a little, until your best and worst
Speaker 1: memories are your biggest illusions. So in the two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven paper Remembering makes evidence compelling retrieval from memory
Speaker 1: can give rise to the illusion of truth from Jason
Speaker 1: d Azubko and Jonathan Fugel, saying the authors conclude that quote,
Speaker 1: memory retrieval is a powerful method for increasing the perceived
Speaker 1: validity of statements and subsequent illusion of truth, and that
Speaker 1: the illusion of truth is a robust effect that can
Speaker 1: be observed even without directly pulling the factual statements in question. WHOA,
Speaker 1: so this is sort of the same effect, but not
Speaker 1: statements coming in from the outside. Right. So they conducted
Speaker 1: a two seven person study, all individuals from the University
Speaker 1: of Waterloo, so we're, you know, relatively small study, and
Speaker 1: they and they admit that they quote may have made
Speaker 1: it particularly difficult to observe any differences between our control
Speaker 1: condition and our experimental conditions. So as always, you know,
Speaker 1: more studies are required. But uh, here's how it shakes out. Quote.
Speaker 1: If this account is correct, the current work demonstrates that
Speaker 1: information retrieved from memory cannot only be viewed as relatively
Speaker 1: more important than more difficult to retrieve information, but can
Speaker 1: also be viewed as more important than information that is
Speaker 1: explicitly provided. In particular, information that is retrieved from memory
Speaker 1: may actually be more fluently processed in general than information
Speaker 1: that is directly perceived. So the idea here is that
Speaker 1: repetition entailed in memory retrieval need not be from an
Speaker 1: external source. It can be internal. In the form of
Speaker 1: memory retrieval, it is it is quote naturally more familiar
Speaker 1: in fluent than information that is perceived. Wow, that that
Speaker 1: is profound. Actually, like the idea that you that your memories,
Speaker 1: the haze of your memories is greater evidence sometimes to
Speaker 1: your own mind than what's in front of your eyes
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, and it and it means that like
Speaker 1: for the for the lie or the untruth to to resonate, Uh,
Speaker 1: it only needs to be memorable, like something that you'll
Speaker 1: continually retrieve and that forms that serves as a form
Speaker 1: of repetition. Oh, and this is so true of so
Speaker 1: many of these lies they get repeated so often in
Speaker 1: public conversations. Is that they're the really memorable, weird, outlandish
Speaker 1: ones that stick around. I think about in the last episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about the the belief that's still so common
Speaker 1: that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Yes, there's no
Speaker 1: evidence of it, and it's like such a weird thing
Speaker 1: to suggest that it sticks in people's brains, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you keep coming back to you keep rethinking it. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess we just made you think of it again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the horrible thing about this, right. We'll have to
Speaker 1: have a discussion about that at the end of the episode.
Speaker 1: Another way of looking at it is this, So, if
Speaker 1: you're a regular listener to this podcast, if I were
Speaker 1: to remind you in every episode that Joe drinks a
Speaker 1: full cup of coffee every morning before he gets out
Speaker 1: of bed, that's not true. That's a lie that I
Speaker 1: just made up. But if I repeated it in every episode,
Speaker 1: and even if Joe said it's a lie, you're hearing
Speaker 1: it enough right that the repetition is going to uh
Speaker 1: potentially influence you. And it's also it's it's a perfectly
Speaker 1: reasonable lie. Right, there's no like if you said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's actually what I do, nobody would think you weird
Speaker 1: or anything. Right, it'd be kind of weird that I
Speaker 1: drank it without getting out of bed. Well, I assume
Speaker 1: somebody brings it to you, or I mean, I didn't
Speaker 1: say that you have the coffee machine set up on
Speaker 1: the I've got a night stand coffee robot that pours
Speaker 1: coffee on my face every morning. But but what if
Speaker 1: instead of saying this sly every episode, what I just
Speaker 1: once I told everybody that Joe McCormick before he gets
Speaker 1: out of bed in the morning, he um, he shoots
Speaker 1: back three six hour energy drinks, one after the other. No,
Speaker 1: do you do that to me? Robert Like, but that's
Speaker 1: potentially more memorable because it's a little stranger, it's maybe
Speaker 1: a little more funny, and therefore it's exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of untruth that might pop up again. Like you're just
Speaker 1: you're thinking of Joe. You're hearing Joe talk and you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Joe shooting back six hour energy drinks first thing in
Speaker 1: the morning. I don't do that either, come on, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally see your point, and I think you're absolutely correct.
Speaker 1: So what they're saying here is essentially that there is
Speaker 1: an illusion of truth effect, not just for statements you
Speaker 1: hear from the outside, but from your own memories. Every
Speaker 1: time you go back and check in with the memory,
Speaker 1: you're reinforcing it and making it seem more true, even
Speaker 1: if you didn't necessarily believe it to be true in
Speaker 1: the first place. Yeah, and you know, they don't really
Speaker 1: get into this, but it also makes me think of
Speaker 1: like just negative things people might have said to you
Speaker 1: in the past. You know, if you know some criticism
Speaker 1: that is is not accurate, but it steams you, and
Speaker 1: then you end up sort of you end up reflecting
Speaker 1: on it, perhaps even traumatically, and then it makes you
Speaker 1: more susceptible to its power. Well, yeah, I mean, as
Speaker 1: as always, you have that fear that all criticisms of
Speaker 1: you are accurate. Now, I'd like to turn to another
Speaker 1: paper here, this one with the title making up History
Speaker 1: False memories of fake news stories, And this is from
Speaker 1: Europe's Journal of Psychology from two thousand and twelve. Uh,
Speaker 1: and again it's worth noting, Uh, this is again a
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve paper, So this predates the more recent
Speaker 1: usage and politicization of the term fake news. So in
Speaker 1: this they wanted to see if false news stories that
Speaker 1: were familiar would result in the creation of false memories
Speaker 1: of having heard the story outside of the experiment. So
Speaker 1: had a small study here forty four undergraduate psychology students
Speaker 1: and they're participating in exchange for course credit. They exposed
Speaker 1: the participants to false news stories that they portrayed as true,
Speaker 1: and then five weeks later, the participants were found to
Speaker 1: be more likely to rate the false news pieces as
Speaker 1: true than test subjects only just exposed to the stories. Uh.
Speaker 1: They the author's right. These results suggest that repeating false
Speaker 1: claims will not only increase their believability, but also result
Speaker 1: in source monitoring errors. So again we get in back
Speaker 1: into this situation where you're you have this headline or
Speaker 1: this news story popping around in your head, but you
Speaker 1: ask yourself, where did I hear that? Was it a
Speaker 1: talk show, radio talk show? Uh? Was it the BBC?
Speaker 1: Was it a verified news source in my Facebook feed?
Speaker 1: Or just some dubious bit of news that's kind of
Speaker 1: passing through. Oh and by the way, the author not
Speaker 1: authors on that particular UM paper is Danielle C. Coolage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this really makes me think about how, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I wonder how the Internet has changed the way we
Speaker 1: think about sources of information. Like has the Internet and say,
Speaker 1: like social media feeds made us more scrupulous about the
Speaker 1: sources of information or less scrupulous I don't know, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's had a you know, divergent effect on different people. Well,
Speaker 1: I think you have. You you do have sort of
Speaker 1: two different timelines going on there, because I feel like,
Speaker 1: on one hand, you have the industry responding. You have
Speaker 1: like Facebook, for instance, responding to criticisms and an overall
Speaker 1: need for better sourcing and uh an attribution of of
Speaker 1: publication sources. And then also I think every individual is
Speaker 1: probably going through this this situation where perhaps they're more
Speaker 1: trusting and then they realize, oh, I really need to
Speaker 1: be better about seeing where I'm getting my information and
Speaker 1: then have it to self correct. Now there's another paper
Speaker 1: that gets into some of this here, and this UH
Speaker 1: is a four forthcoming paper from the Journal of Experimental
Speaker 1: Psychology General. Now we should just out with le Lester
Speaker 1: a scare. This is a forthcoming paper, so take with
Speaker 1: a grain of salt that it has not yet fully
Speaker 1: passed all of the pre pre publication review procedures. But
Speaker 1: it's a it's been put out there and people have
Speaker 1: been talking about it. Yeah. Titled prior exposure increases perceived
Speaker 1: accuracy of fake news and and key here and all
Speaker 1: this is quote fluency via prior exposure. They say that
Speaker 1: even a single exposure increases subsequent perceptions of accuracy. Quote Moreover,
Speaker 1: this illusory truth effect for fake news headlines occurs despite
Speaker 1: a low level of overall believability, and even when the
Speaker 1: stories are labeled as contested by fact checkers or are
Speaker 1: inconsistent with the reader's political ideology. Also key here, that
Speaker 1: is the extreme implausibility that we've been discussing. You know,
Speaker 1: this boundary condition over the illusory truth effect. Um only
Speaker 1: a small degree of potential plausibility is sufficient for repetition
Speaker 1: to increase perceived accuracy. How small, Well imagine it is
Speaker 1: going to vary from individual to individual. Right, we come
Speaker 1: back to this. You mentioned earlier that then my my
Speaker 1: boundary condition is not gonna be the same as yours. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a weird thing to wonder about. So, like you
Speaker 1: might say that, for one person, if you showed them
Speaker 1: a headline about bat Boy, they would not that wouldn't
Speaker 1: even register as possibly true to begin with, So they're
Speaker 1: never gonna believe it's more likely to be true later,
Speaker 1: but somebody else might. But a lot of those other
Speaker 1: types of headlines, just like weird, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: nasty rumors about celebrities or politicians, A lot of those
Speaker 1: that are slightly more plausible than say, bat Boy, are
Speaker 1: probably gonna stick in a lot of people's minds. I
Speaker 1: think about the way that news feed algorithms keep popular
Speaker 1: stories in front of your eyes on social media. If
Speaker 1: you keep coming back and scrolling, the most popular fake
Speaker 1: news stories do tend to show up again and again
Speaker 1: and again. Yeah, and then hopefully people are shooting it
Speaker 1: down again. But but even then it's gonna have matter.
Speaker 1: It's going to have a limited effect based on this
Speaker 1: particular study here. Yeah, so it's worth remembering that these
Speaker 1: effects are small, but small effects can add up quick example,
Speaker 1: one of these fake headlines that they looked at here
Speaker 1: was it was this ridiculous story and totally untrue Originally
Speaker 1: five percent believed it was true. The second time people
Speaker 1: saw it, ten percent believed it was true. So that
Speaker 1: might sound small, but aggregated over whole populations with lots
Speaker 1: of manipulative false stories and lies, this kind of thing
Speaker 1: could have huge effects. It could swing an election in
Speaker 1: a country. It could tip public opinion on an issue
Speaker 1: from a minority opinion to a majority opinion. It could
Speaker 1: have real effects in the world. Yeah, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: more than one of these going on at a given time.
Speaker 1: Some of them are gonna catch on, some of them
Speaker 1: are not. But uh, adding them all together and they
Speaker 1: could have an effect. So I think maybe we should
Speaker 1: transition to talk about what we should do, both as
Speaker 1: receivers of information trying to figure out what's true and
Speaker 1: as purveyors of information who you know how public conversations.
Speaker 1: What should we do in order to try to avoid
Speaker 1: creating wide widespread misbeliefs in knowing what we know? Now, well,
Speaker 1: let's receive an advertisement and then come right back with
Speaker 1: an answer to that question. Okay, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: all right, we're back. So one of the first questions
Speaker 1: I think we should ask is what can you do
Speaker 1: about this if you So say you've listened to these
Speaker 1: past couple episodes and you're like, wow, So I I
Speaker 1: accept that I'm susceptible to the illusory truth effect. I
Speaker 1: know that being exposed to an untrue statement, or hearing
Speaker 1: an untrue statement repeated, is going to probably make me
Speaker 1: more likely to believe it. How can I protect myself
Speaker 1: against it? Especially given that we've seen all these studies
Speaker 1: showing that various things apparently don't protect you or don't
Speaker 1: necessarily protect you. Knowing otherwise isn't even necessarily going to
Speaker 1: protect you. And I've I've felt that before, Robert, I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, Like there are cases where I'm
Speaker 1: confident that I actually know what's true. I've done the research,
Speaker 1: I know what reality is, and yet seeing a lie
Speaker 1: that's that exists in contradiction to what I know, over
Speaker 1: and over and over again actually does work on me.
Speaker 1: I can feel it working on me. I can feel
Speaker 1: doubt setting in. When I see a lie repeated with
Speaker 1: great frequency, I start to wonder, like, is it true?
Speaker 1: I mean, I've checked it out before and there's nothing
Speaker 1: to it. But maybe I don't I miss something, Maybe
Speaker 1: the maybe there's some new information I'm not pretty too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I really do feel it working on me, even
Speaker 1: though you know I'm somewhat aware of this, and so
Speaker 1: it can be difficult. It can be hard to know
Speaker 1: what to do to protect yourself. But here's one thing
Speaker 1: I want to offer as a as a general rule.
Speaker 1: A huge red flag for judging a statements truth or
Speaker 1: falsehood is I feel like I've heard that somewhere before,
Speaker 1: And I do this. I'm you know, I I fall
Speaker 1: prey to this. I do it all the time. Actually,
Speaker 1: in a conversation, I think something's true because I have
Speaker 1: exactly that feeling. I feel like I've heard this somewhere before.
Speaker 1: I would say, if it feels familiar, but you can't
Speaker 1: recall why it's true, and you can't recall the source
Speaker 1: of where you heard it, you are in the danger zone.
Speaker 1: That is the red That is the red zone for
Speaker 1: repeating and reinforcing a false belief. So I think maybe
Speaker 1: we should try a little experiment. Let's do it. Let's
Speaker 1: repeat something a bunch of times and see if it
Speaker 1: sets in. So here's the phrase, if it feels familiar,
Speaker 1: check the facts. If it feels familiar, check the facts.
Speaker 1: If it feels familiar, check the facts. If it feels familiar,
Speaker 1: check the facts. It feels familiar, check the facts. Death
Speaker 1: to video Dromes, Long Live the New Flesh. All right,
Speaker 1: well we've we've we've done it, job, Joe, I think
Speaker 1: we've we've won. Now we haven't one yet. There's actually
Speaker 1: there's some more stuff we've got to talk about. Uh So.
Speaker 1: One of the other studies we looked at was just
Speaker 1: study in political communication in twos sixteen by Emily Thorson
Speaker 1: called belief echoes the persistent effects of corrected misinformation, And
Speaker 1: this was a study where they did three experiments. Thorsen
Speaker 1: writes that they showed that exposure to negative political information
Speaker 1: persists even after people are informed that the information was
Speaker 1: not true. So this goes along with some of the
Speaker 1: fake news stuff we were just talking about. And Thorson
Speaker 1: calls these beliefs that persist after being discredited quote belief echoes.
Speaker 1: So she writes, quote belief echoes occur even when the
Speaker 1: misinformation is corrected immediately. The gold standard of journalistic fact
Speaker 1: checking the existence of belief echoes racist ethical concerns about
Speaker 1: journalists and fact checking organization's efforts to publicly correct false
Speaker 1: claims so dang. So even correcting a lie tends to
Speaker 1: increase people's belief in the lie. What can you do then,
Speaker 1: I know, I mean in this on top of the
Speaker 1: reality that in some cases, corrections are not going to
Speaker 1: resonate as as as much as the original, uh lie
Speaker 1: or the original bit of unfactual information. Well, yeah, very
Speaker 1: often a lie is interesting in the correction is not
Speaker 1: interesting the corrections page two, but the the original. That's
Speaker 1: the headline on page one. Yeah. So there was a
Speaker 1: article in the Columbia Journalism Review by the Dartmouth political
Speaker 1: scientists Brendan Nihan. It was called building a Better Correction. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not necessarily responding to the exact same research
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, but it addresses the fact that
Speaker 1: journalistic fact checking, corrections and so forth can be insufficiently
Speaker 1: effective at correcting false beliefs, and it does end up
Speaker 1: coming up with a few recommendations based on Nihand's research
Speaker 1: and other people's research in recent years. Number one is,
Speaker 1: of course, identify sources that speak against their ideological interests.
Speaker 1: So apparently people are more likely to accept a correction
Speaker 1: on a false belief for a widely repeated lie if
Speaker 1: that correction comes from somebody who who it's against their
Speaker 1: political interests to to discredit it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: So in the political sphere, if it is a misconception
Speaker 1: that's widely held on the right, you need to get
Speaker 1: somebody from the right to discredit it. If it's widely
Speaker 1: held on the left, you need to get somebody from
Speaker 1: the left to discredit it. Right. So like if if
Speaker 1: the correction is pandas are not the most awesome animal
Speaker 1: on the planet, it's going to carry more weight if
Speaker 1: Panda weekly runs that correction as opposed to you know,
Speaker 1: Grizzly Bears monthly exactly correct. So the second point coming
Speaker 1: from the research is don't just assert that a false
Speaker 1: claim is false given alternative causal account, So you give
Speaker 1: a different explanation to read a quote from the article
Speaker 1: quote in the fictitious scenario used in one study, For example,
Speaker 1: respondents who were told of the presence of volatile materials
Speaker 1: at the scene of a suspicious fire continued to blame
Speaker 1: the materials even after being told the initial report was mistaken.
Speaker 1: So you tell them there's volatile materials there, there was
Speaker 1: a fire, what caused the fire? Oh, those volatile materials
Speaker 1: weren't actually there. People say, oh, it was caused by
Speaker 1: the volatile materials. So the only way to persuade people
Speaker 1: against that seemed to be to give them another explanation
Speaker 1: of what caused the fire. So you don't say, no,
Speaker 1: those materials weren't actually there. You say they weren't there
Speaker 1: and the fire was caused by arson if that's true. Obviously,
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't want to make up fake alternative accounts,
Speaker 1: but like, this is how you correct a misperception with
Speaker 1: the truth. Is you give them the alternative causal account
Speaker 1: that is true. And then finally, this is a big one,
Speaker 1: don't state the correction is the negation of the lie.
Speaker 1: Instead state the true fact that stands in contradiction of
Speaker 1: the lie. Yeah, if you're having to say I am
Speaker 1: not a cruk, you're kind of saying I have a cruk.
Speaker 1: Instead you say I am a good person. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean the good people don't usually say
Speaker 1: I'm a good person. Yeah. So, but an example would
Speaker 1: be from the thing we used at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the last episode about this widespread belief that crime has
Speaker 1: gone up in the United States since two thousand eight.
Speaker 1: That's not true. At all. Crime has gone down. So
Speaker 1: you shouldn't say it's not true that crime has gone up,
Speaker 1: because a lot of times people are just gonna remember
Speaker 1: crime has gone up. Instead, what you should say and
Speaker 1: that we've been violating this all this time. Here, what
Speaker 1: you should say is crime has gone down since two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. State the true fact, don't negate the lie,
Speaker 1: and we have something we can chant to make this
Speaker 1: really take hold in everybody's mind. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't want to make you uncomfortable. You want to chance.
Speaker 1: Let Okay, So here's here's the way i'd put it.
Speaker 1: You won't kill a lie by repeating it. Instead, say
Speaker 1: what's true. You won't kill a lie by repeating it? Instead,
Speaker 1: say what's true. You won't kill a lie by repeating it. Instead,
Speaker 1: say what's true? Death to video Drone. No, you won't
Speaker 1: kill a lie by repeating it. Instead, say what's true.
Speaker 1: If I feel like if we could have made it rhyme,
Speaker 1: we would have helped. Oh maybe too light. It does
Speaker 1: feel kind of creepy to chance, And that gets into
Speaker 1: a thing that I did want to talk about at
Speaker 1: the end here. That's frustrating because I wonder if there
Speaker 1: is sometimes a sort of perverse system widely spreading bad beliefs,
Speaker 1: essentially because people who are willing to lie and spread
Speaker 1: malicious misinformation are also more willing to blatantly use proven
Speaker 1: manipulation techniques like repetition and chanting and illusory truth, while
Speaker 1: I feel like more often people who want to spread
Speaker 1: the truth and want to spread true messages are more
Speaker 1: hesitant to use blatantly manipulative types of rhetoric and communication.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to say like I'm so good,
Speaker 1: but like I don't want to give people misinformation. But
Speaker 1: also in trying to help them with that stuff, I
Speaker 1: was just saying, like I felt very uncomfortable, like chanting
Speaker 1: a phrase over and over again, even though I knew
Speaker 1: it would be effective, right. I mean, generally speaking, if
Speaker 1: individuals are are very serious about journalism, they're going to
Speaker 1: want to adhere to the standards of their industry and
Speaker 1: maybe not you know, fall back on you know, tribal
Speaker 1: chance about about something because they feel they feel so
Speaker 1: obviously manipulative, and they feel that way because they work.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is kind of like a whole this
Speaker 1: is a whole other area discussion, but you know, I
Speaker 1: can't help but think in terms of the click bait
Speaker 1: and the ease of publication and distribution. I mean, naturally,
Speaker 1: this isn't something that's going to apply to individuals who,
Speaker 1: via celebrity and or political power, already reach a wide audience.
Speaker 1: But you know, any wild conspiracy theory or accusation can
Speaker 1: can penetrate a lot deeper, seemingly these days than in
Speaker 1: pre internet days. And we talked earlier about some of
Speaker 1: the celebrity urban myths from decades past and about how
Speaker 1: to really get going. They had to you had to
Speaker 1: have just the right celebrity um urban legend, and it
Speaker 1: had to had to spread by word of mouth or
Speaker 1: maybe a you know, a concentrated effort to send facts
Speaker 1: is across Hollywood potentially. I don't even know if that's
Speaker 1: true in the Richard Gear case, but that might be
Speaker 1: a repeated false story exactly. Yeah, that's that's one of
Speaker 1: those situations where I think that correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but out there. But I don't think anyone's ever really
Speaker 1: been able to get to the bottom of like where
Speaker 1: the urban legend even really emerged from UM. But yeah, nowadays,
Speaker 1: like the ease of publication is a lot lower and
Speaker 1: we're we're having we're currently in a time where we
Speaker 1: seem to be correcting and figuring out, well, how do
Speaker 1: we manage this just plethora of of of publications of
Speaker 1: varying uh, you know, you know, ethical solidity. But that's
Speaker 1: just one part of the issue obviously. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: really difficult time. Yeah, our media landscape is is difficult.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to what to do, Like, what
Speaker 1: the best way to address the wide spread of misinformation
Speaker 1: through social media and the internet is. I mean, you can't, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't want to become a sensor and
Speaker 1: lock it down and say, well I will decide what's
Speaker 1: true and false. I'll shut you down. You'd want there
Speaker 1: to be an organic way where people would would I
Speaker 1: don't know, have the tools to tell between truth and
Speaker 1: falsehood themselves. Yeah, you know. And then one of the
Speaker 1: issues too for us is that we we sometimes discuss
Speaker 1: theories and hypotheses that that are not true or I've
Speaker 1: been disproven over time that this is exactly something I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about at the end of the episode today,
Speaker 1: it's a very frustrating takeaway from this conversation we've had,
Speaker 1: Um that there could be negative effects from discussing what's
Speaker 1: wrong with bad ideas and false claims because something we
Speaker 1: love to do, we love to do on this show.
Speaker 1: For example, we just did an episode about the ancient
Speaker 1: aliens hypothesis, something that I don't want to speak for
Speaker 1: both of us. I think neither of us think there's
Speaker 1: any good evidence to believe is true. I do not
Speaker 1: believe there is, so we we put no stock whatsoever
Speaker 1: in this hypo. Theis it's the belief that ancient aliens
Speaker 1: came to the Earth. All of the evidence is either
Speaker 1: really bad over interpretation or outright fraud. And yet it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to understand this widely held, unfounded belief, to understand
Speaker 1: where it came from, why people believe it, To talk
Speaker 1: about the real facts and the real knowledge that undermine
Speaker 1: the existing claims in this belief structure, uh, to think
Speaker 1: about what good evidence there could be for past alien contact,
Speaker 1: if there, if it did exist. Yeah, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like trying to imagine how a dragon would work
Speaker 1: based on real world biology. Yeah, you know, like you
Speaker 1: don't want to advocate that dragons are real, but it
Speaker 1: is fun to to take it apart and say, well,
Speaker 1: if they were real, this is how it would work,
Speaker 1: and your discussion of that should be based on real biology,
Speaker 1: and so all this stuff. This is all stuff that
Speaker 1: I really enjoy and I think is very valuable. But
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder if even by having that kind
Speaker 1: of discussion, some people are more likely to, you know,
Speaker 1: months years down the road later, remember as true the
Speaker 1: claims that we zamin in order to criticize and understand
Speaker 1: where they come from in the episode. I don't know
Speaker 1: if there's any way around that. Like, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's reasonable to say we should live in a world
Speaker 1: where nobody ever examines or talks about why widely held
Speaker 1: untrue beliefs. That that just doesn't seem reasonable. I think
Speaker 1: we learn almost as much about the world and about
Speaker 1: ourselves from critically studying the false misbeliefs we hold as
Speaker 1: we do from say, reading a list of objectively true
Speaker 1: statements about the world. It's not like studying false beliefs
Speaker 1: is uninformative. It's very informative. Yeah, And in some cases
Speaker 1: it's it's about not not repeating history, right, not being
Speaker 1: doomed to repeat history. Um, when we when we've talked
Speaker 1: about eugenics, for instance, on the show, Uh, you know
Speaker 1: that there's some horrible ideas wrapped up in eugenics, but
Speaker 1: it is it is worth remembering. It's it's it's worth
Speaker 1: knowing how we got there. Yeah, we we had that
Speaker 1: discussion with Karl Zimmer a while back, because that talked
Speaker 1: about that, and that's an important part of the history
Speaker 1: of the study of inheritance. If you just ignore it
Speaker 1: and say we never will talk about that anymore, um,
Speaker 1: you you do a disservice to, like, you know, the
Speaker 1: memory of all the evil that was done in its name.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you like you're saying, you open yourself to
Speaker 1: not being aware of the really bad paths people can
Speaker 1: go down. Now. Now, of course, obviously ancient aliens is
Speaker 1: less high stakes than that. But but still I think
Speaker 1: the same as some of the same principles apply. And
Speaker 1: then then again at the same time, I like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to deny this research. I acknowledge it seems
Speaker 1: very true that bringing up a statement, even to discredit
Speaker 1: the statement or even to criticize the statement, can have
Speaker 1: the negative side effect of many people increasing their belief
Speaker 1: in that statement later on, just because it sticks somewhere
Speaker 1: in the back of their mind. They don't remember the
Speaker 1: original context in which it came up, which was a
Speaker 1: context of criticism or context of debunking, and so people
Speaker 1: just kind of they think, oh, maybe there is something
Speaker 1: to that. I've heard that somewhere before. It feels kind
Speaker 1: of familiar. Yeah, well, and I guess one of one
Speaker 1: argument one could make then would be, Hey, if you're
Speaker 1: going to cover ancient aliens, then you also have to
Speaker 1: make sure that you cover an ancient in an ancient
Speaker 1: aliens free way, like how life actually emerges on Earth,
Speaker 1: which we certainly discussed evolution on the show before. So
Speaker 1: I think we're we're mostly there. Well, I'm not worrying
Speaker 1: that we have a deficiency of saying true things, but
Speaker 1: I wonder what we can do about the fact that
Speaker 1: these types of discussions of bad ideas that are really
Speaker 1: important and interesting to have can also have these negative
Speaker 1: side effects. I don't think I know quite what the
Speaker 1: answer is yet. Obviously it will depend a lot on
Speaker 1: the context of the idea. Oh yes, certainly, and then
Speaker 1: this would actually be a great a great topic to
Speaker 1: hear back from listeners on. Really, yeah, help me out
Speaker 1: of this dilemma. I feel stuck. I don't think I
Speaker 1: can live in a world where false beliefs and bad
Speaker 1: ideas can never be spoken of. That would sort of,
Speaker 1: It would rob intellectual life of so much of its richness,
Speaker 1: you know, ven us from gaining all these insights about
Speaker 1: our culture and our minds. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: don't want to spread bad beliefs. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do about that. Well, remain remains an open question
Speaker 1: for now. Then and in the meantime, If you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mother ship. That's where you will find them,
Speaker 1: as well as links out to our various social media accounts.
Speaker 1: And if you want to help the show, you want
Speaker 1: to support the show, rate and review us wherever you
Speaker 1: have the ability to do so. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our wonderful audio producers Alex Williams and Torry Harrison.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: directly to to get me out of my dilemma from
Speaker 1: this episode, or to suggest a topic for a future episode,
Speaker 1: to give feedback on this episode or any other, just
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