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