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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of

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

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And

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Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about an interesting observation

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Speaker 1: in cognitive psychology that deals with language that starts off

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Speaker 1: as kind of just a funny little quirk about the

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Speaker 1: way we process certain kinds of sentences, but ends up

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Speaker 1: having some some broader and more interesting implications about knowledge

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Speaker 1: and language and thought. But I thought the best way

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Speaker 1: to start here would just be to illustrate the prime

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Speaker 1: example of the effect we're going to be talking about.

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Speaker 1: And to do that, I think we need to do

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Speaker 1: a bit of Bible trivia. Rob Are you ready to

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

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Speaker 1: Sunday School. Okay, if you I'm gonna ask you a

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Speaker 1: few questions about the Bible. If you get one wrong,

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Speaker 1: you are going to get a paddling. WHOA, what the

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Speaker 1: domination is this one of the ones that means business? Okay?

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Speaker 1: So how let's see it? So um in in the

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Speaker 1: garden of Eden, what type of animal is it that

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Speaker 1: tempts Eve to eat from the tree. Oh, that's a snake,

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Speaker 1: that's right, the serpent, it is, uh. Okay. When after

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Speaker 1: God created the world, on which day of the week

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Speaker 1: did he rest? Oh, that was the seventh day. He

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Speaker 1: got that one, right, Okay, next one, How many animals

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Speaker 1: of each kind did Moses take on the arc? Too?

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Speaker 1: Of course? And there you go. That is the prime example. Now, Rob,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: this story of of the arc and in the Book

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Speaker 1: of Genesis, and you do, in fact to know that

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Speaker 1: it was not Moses who did that. It was Noah

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Speaker 1: in the story who took animals on the arc. And

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Speaker 1: yet you thought, after I said the question that the

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Speaker 1: answer is too and didn't even register the fact that

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Speaker 1: the name was wrong. Yeah, it's it's an interesting uh

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Speaker 1: phenomenon to uh, to encounter you others, but also in yourself,

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Speaker 1: because you there's several different ways to look at it,

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Speaker 1: and we'll get into a number of these here. But

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Speaker 1: like even just now, when you ask me those questions

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Speaker 1: like the serpent one, I'm totally firm on that, Like

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Speaker 1: I know that I know that aspect of the story

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Speaker 1: inside and out. Uh, And of course I know it's

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Speaker 1: the seventh day that he rested on the God rested

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Speaker 1: on he. She Yet however you want to look at it,

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Speaker 1: But there was still like this moment of hesitation because

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Speaker 1: I was like, it's seven, right, it is seven. I

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Speaker 1: don't want to come come off with the wrong answer

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Speaker 1: on the podcast. Um. But then when one encountering granted

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Speaker 1: already knew the answer to the third one, but there

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Speaker 1: is this temptation though to like when you when you

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Speaker 1: know why, when you know the answer to something, like

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Speaker 1: you just you can just jump in without hesitation, Like

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Speaker 1: there's a certainty that just propels you. Um, you're excited

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Speaker 1: to get your answer in and then you know, get

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Speaker 1: the acclaim and the praise for getting it right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a certain kind of way in which a question,

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Speaker 1: especially a question posed in quiz format where you feel

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Speaker 1: you are under performance pressure and you're being evaluated for

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Speaker 1: whether or not you're going to get the right answer.

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Speaker 1: It sort of takes away some amount of critical thinking

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Speaker 1: that would normally go into reading a sentence and causes

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Speaker 1: you to focus more exclusively on like, just can I

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Speaker 1: get the right answer? And so it's not hard to

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Speaker 1: see how now, and this of course might not be

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Speaker 1: the only explanation for why this is happening, but it's

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Speaker 1: not hard to see why you could pretty easily miss

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

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Speaker 1: that is not necessarily something that you're fuzzy on to

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Speaker 1: begin with, Like you could know perfectly well that it's

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Speaker 1: Noah in the story, and yet it just goes completely

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Speaker 1: over your head. Yeah, and you know, we've we've been

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Speaker 1: doing this podcast quite a while at this point, and

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Speaker 1: occasionally this this comes up in our data, not so

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Speaker 1: much in things that we've researched for the podcast, because

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Speaker 1: I feel like if we've been crunching the facts or

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Speaker 1: the numbers, you know, or the you know, we're we're

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Speaker 1: more likely to be putting a lot of thought into

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Speaker 1: the situation and we're maybe just a you know, a

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Speaker 1: little hesitant anyway. But the times where I've personally like

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Speaker 1: said something that was absolutely incorrect, it would be something

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Speaker 1: that I felt so sure about that I just belt

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Speaker 1: it out without fact checking it at all. You know, Uh,

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

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Speaker 1: but something that just kind of comes up in organic conversation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: the Biblical story, what is Joshua swallowed by? Of cour

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Speaker 1: that's Jonah that is swallowed by the whale or the

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Speaker 1: great fish, the sea monster. Joshua, of course, is the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: you know, like like fast forward through all this other stuff.

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: question that we're looking at today, that this effect of

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Speaker 1: not noticing that the question says Moses and just barreling

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Speaker 1: right on through to the answer, even if you know

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Speaker 1: that it's actually Noah and the story and not Moses.

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Speaker 1: This effect has a name, and it's known as the

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Speaker 1: Moses illusion. It's a particular type of semantic illusion that

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Speaker 1: occurs when we are trying to process certain kinds of sentences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: just like, it's crazy that we're just constantly throwing together

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: staund unding to me. And so the authors here are

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: gist forms of what somebody's getting at, you know, like

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Speaker 1: like what kind of answer is being requested by a

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

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Speaker 1: that are all, you know, throwing your brain in ten

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Speaker 1: different directions. Yet you can get the gist of the

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

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

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Speaker 1: work on how language processing works in the realm of

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Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, but at the time of this paper, there

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Speaker 1: was still a lot that we didn't know about the

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Speaker 1: globe whole meaning of of a sentence and and how

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Speaker 1: that's constructed in the brain. And so they summarize the

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Speaker 1: way they're starting this paper by saying, uh, it has

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Speaker 1: become widely assumed that sentences are subject to exhaustive analysis

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Speaker 1: and consistency checks during processing, but this is not the case.

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Speaker 1: People do not always understand what is said to them.

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

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Speaker 1: these failures of comprehension are sometimes due to lack of

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Speaker 1: appropriate knowledge or error on the part of the speaker,

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Speaker 1: there are other cases in which such failures occur when

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

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Speaker 1: This paper explores such a phenomenon, and then they give

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: what the authors here found in their original study in

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Speaker 1: eighty one was that the majority of people fail to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: mishearing the question, because people still make the Moses illusion

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Speaker 1: mistake even if they themselves read the question out loud,

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

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Speaker 1: of their own lips and they still might not notice it. Now.

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Speaker 1: In this first study, the authors conclude that what's very

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Speaker 1: important because they're getting at things about the semantics of

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Speaker 1: words and a sentence and how the meanings of sentences

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Speaker 1: are formed. They conclude that shared semantic features of the

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Speaker 1: mix up are probably significantly contributing to the effect. In

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Speaker 1: other words, this effect would probably not be nearly as pronounced,

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Speaker 1: maybe not even maybe totally non existent if the items

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Speaker 1: were not in some way closely related in the way

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Speaker 1: that's a two Bible characters are. If you ask, you know,

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Speaker 1: how many of each kind did Captain Hook take into

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Speaker 1: the arc, the effect probably vanishes. Another study, I was

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Speaker 1: looking at side at an example I found really funny,

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Speaker 1: which was how many animals of each kind did Nixon

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Speaker 1: take on the arc? And yeah, and and I like

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Speaker 1: that because they were saying, Okay, well, what if it's

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Speaker 1: just like phonological similarities, like Nixon and Noah have some similarities.

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Speaker 1: They start with the same sound, they've got the same

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Speaker 1: number of syllables. But clearly when you put Nixon in

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Speaker 1: the sentence, people notice. And so the Moses illusion is

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Speaker 1: just one persistent example from a class of mental phenomena

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Speaker 1: that could be called knowledge neglect act. This is a

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Speaker 1: term used by a couple of authors that will cite

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Speaker 1: later in the episode, But knowledge neglect and simplified terms,

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Speaker 1: is when you behave as if you don't know something

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Speaker 1: even though you definitely do know it, And the Moses

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Speaker 1: illusion is of course an example of knowledge neglect because

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Speaker 1: the problem isn't that people think Moses was the biblical

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Speaker 1: character who built the arc. You can know that it

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Speaker 1: was Noah, not Moses. If you're asked directly, you'll get

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Speaker 1: the answer right, But you don't notice the problem when

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Speaker 1: it's phrased in a question like this. And of course

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

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Speaker 1: other sentences in studies that have shown the same thing.

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Speaker 1: Though it is interesting that Moses and Noah are like,

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Speaker 1: sort of the perfect example of it. I think there

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Speaker 1: might be particular characteristics of these two names and characters

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Speaker 1: that make it like that make people especially prone to

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Speaker 1: the mix up in this case, though it is true

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Speaker 1: for lots of other types of you know, words and objects. Well,

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Speaker 1: speaking of that, let's do a quick breakdown. I'm just

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Speaker 1: especially for folks who are not up on Moses and Noah. Uh,

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Speaker 1: just to give a little you know, basic information about

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Speaker 1: each of them, and give me the give me the

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Speaker 1: magic the gathering card on each one. Okay, well, let's start.

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Speaker 1: Let's start with with Noah. Okay, certainly the the older

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Speaker 1: of the two, the first that in the chronological order.

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Speaker 1: So Noah was is written as as A was an

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: so they alone can survive the global flood that's about

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Speaker 1: to happen. Yeah. Now, one interesting variation. I think most

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Speaker 1: people probably wouldn't even their brains wouldn't go this far

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Speaker 1: into the question. Uh, it is actually more complicated than

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Speaker 1: two of every kind, because it also says in the

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Speaker 1: Noah's ark story that I think they're supposed to bring

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Speaker 1: more of every kind of like certain types of animals,

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Speaker 1: like certain clean animals and just two of the unclean

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Speaker 1: animals or something. But but yeah, when you get into

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Speaker 1: the nitty gritty of it, he gets a little more complicated, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's all kinds of animal management, Yeah, which

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

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

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Speaker 1: going into a lot of detail about the you know,

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Speaker 1: the the actual biblical text while still failing. I think

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Speaker 1: that was right. Well it was fourteen of every kind

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Speaker 1: of clean animal. Alright. Well, anyway, Noah strengths megaproject management

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Speaker 1: and animal handling. Obviously weakness, alcoholism. That's a major part

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Speaker 1: of the story. Um. Actors of note who have betrayed him. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is not a complete list, but these are the

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Speaker 1: main main ones. John Houston, Russell Crowe, David thrill Full

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Speaker 1: This is a guy on Shameless. He also played Dr

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Speaker 1: John d and Elizabeth the Golden Age. John Voight, David Rentall. Uh,

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Speaker 1: David Rentall is the guy who played Aries Targarian on

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Speaker 1: the Game of Thrones show. Oh interesting, wait a Aries

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Speaker 1: to the Mad King. I believe. So that's the main areas, right, Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 1: well maybe I guess for some reason I thought there

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Speaker 1: was another one. I am wrong. Um, okay, so the

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Speaker 1: I've got a really funny story about John Voight playing Noah.

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Speaker 1: I remember seeing this one, oh I have. It was

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Speaker 1: made for TV. I think came out when I was

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Speaker 1: in like middle school, and it is not at all

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Speaker 1: faithful to the Bible and to say, very hollywooded up

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Speaker 1: version of the Noah's arks story. John Voight does play

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Speaker 1: Noah and the arc is attacked by pirates. What. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's attacked by like water World pirates. I mean, it

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Speaker 1: might as well be Dennis Hopper and the Smokers, but

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Speaker 1: it's actually I think they get attacked by pirates led

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Speaker 1: by the biblical character Lot. Okay, alright, Well, if that

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Speaker 1: is in the Bible, at least they're they're playing around

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Speaker 1: with it. Was this brought up at all when um Uh,

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Speaker 1: when Darren Arnosky was being criticized for the plot of

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Speaker 1: his Noah movie, which has like um Uh giants and

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Speaker 1: nephelim in it. Oh he I kind of liked his

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Speaker 1: Noah movie. It was way more more faithful to I

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: a while. All right. Let's talk about Moses real quick, Okay.

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: Egyptian captivity and following tim the tin Plegs of Egypt,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: it have made the would would it just destroyed our

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: I think that would actually probably make people even more susceptible. Yeah. Um,

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Speaker 1: I was thinking about this too, Like obviously we've already

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Speaker 1: touched on a few extra examples of this, but I

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Speaker 1: was trying to come up with with other examples that

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Speaker 1: would play on the same energy here, and one that

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Speaker 1: came to mind would be, Uh, if we were to

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

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Speaker 1: how did the Yellow Emperor decide how to order the

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Speaker 1: animals of the zodiac? And you might respond with, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: there's this cool little story about a race for the animals, etcetera. Um,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't the Yellow Emperor. It was the Jade Emperor,

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Speaker 1: who's an even more primordial god ruler than the low Whimperer. Um.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: are we talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well maybe

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Speaker 1: it would. Okay, here's one for Avatar the last Airbender

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Speaker 1: fans out there, Um, we're hearing from several of them,

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Speaker 1: which nation was the Avatar Apa born into. I don't

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Speaker 1: know if that one worked or not, but of course

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Speaker 1: Ang is the last and not the last Avatar. A

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

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Speaker 1: that he rides on. Ah, I see, so I don't know,

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Speaker 1: ang Appa, maybe that works. Not sure? Well that went

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Speaker 1: It was a book called Processing Inaccurate Information published by

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Speaker 1: M I. T. Press inteen. That book sounds like a scream,

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Speaker 1: but their chapter is called knowledge neglect Failures to notice

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Speaker 1: contradictions with stored knowledge will revisit this chapter a few

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Speaker 1: times later in the episode. But but they summarize some

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Speaker 1: things about the Moses solustion. Uh. So they say that

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Speaker 1: most of the time people will fall for the Moses

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Speaker 1: solution even though they actually know the difference between Moses

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Speaker 1: and Noah, as demonstrated with later interrogation. So you can

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Speaker 1: ask people questions like who built the arc or who

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Speaker 1: took the animals into the arc, and they'll get the

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Speaker 1: answer right, but they still fail to notice that it's

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Speaker 1: Moses in the question. And this can be accomplished with

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Speaker 1: other similar switcher Us actually included rob a list for

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Speaker 1: you to look at of questions like this one. I like,

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Speaker 1: is um, what did Goldilocks eat at the Three Little

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Speaker 1: Pigs house? And a lot of people will just answer Porridge,

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Speaker 1: even though you can later ask them like, hey, whose

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Speaker 1: house did Goldilocks go into? The Three Bears or the

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Speaker 1: three Little pigs? And they of course know that it

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Speaker 1: was the bears. Now that one's interesting because for me anyway,

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Speaker 1: there's a there's an associated mental image of the bears

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Speaker 1: or the pigs. Uh. They they look rather different uh

429
00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:00,480
Speaker 1: and and ultimately they have different functions in this stories.

430
00:23:01,280 --> 00:23:04,280
Speaker 1: Whereas Moses and Noah are more interchangeable, and it is

431
00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:06,439
Speaker 1: the same sort of character, and there of course the

432
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:08,879
Speaker 1: same species, because the pigs are there to be the

433
00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:11,600
Speaker 1: victims of the big bad wolf story and to get eaten,

434
00:23:12,280 --> 00:23:14,960
Speaker 1: and the bears are there too. I don't know what

435
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:17,159
Speaker 1: just hang out in their house, I guess right. But

436
00:23:17,200 --> 00:23:20,520
Speaker 1: I can still imagine someone um falling for this or

437
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:24,320
Speaker 1: or you know, having airing in answering this question, because

438
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:26,320
Speaker 1: in a way, again you're you're racing into the finish line,

439
00:23:26,320 --> 00:23:29,439
Speaker 1: you're picking up on the you know, the basics of

440
00:23:29,480 --> 00:23:33,040
Speaker 1: the question, even though you're you're you're skipping over this,

441
00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:37,800
Speaker 1: this this this misinformation that's embedded in the middle of it. Right. Uh.

442
00:23:37,800 --> 00:23:40,000
Speaker 1: Though it's interesting that you mentioned racing to get to

443
00:23:40,040 --> 00:23:42,320
Speaker 1: the answer, I do think you're basically right about that,

444
00:23:42,400 --> 00:23:45,840
Speaker 1: Except it doesn't really seem that time is a factor here,

445
00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:49,720
Speaker 1: because giving people extra or even unlimited time to think

446
00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:53,639
Speaker 1: about the question does not eliminate the effect, does it.

447
00:23:53,720 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 1: So it doesn't seem to result from people being in

448
00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:58,240
Speaker 1: a hurry in terms of time, though I think you

449
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:00,600
Speaker 1: could still think about it as people being in a

450
00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:03,439
Speaker 1: hurry in terms of just like wanting to get to

451
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:05,840
Speaker 1: the part where they answer the question I don't know.

452
00:24:05,880 --> 00:24:08,400
Speaker 1: Maybe that could be like self imposed time limits, even

453
00:24:08,400 --> 00:24:12,120
Speaker 1: if they're not imposed by somebody externally trying to rush

454
00:24:12,160 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: you through. Now, Also, in a typical setup for these

455
00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:19,160
Speaker 1: Moses illusion experiments, readers will be warned that some questions

456
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: will contain incorrect presuppositions, so it's not just like a

457
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:24,960
Speaker 1: trick question where they don't know this is coming. They'll

458
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:28,880
Speaker 1: be told, Okay, some of these questions will be valid questions,

459
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:31,720
Speaker 1: in which case you should just answer them, But other

460
00:24:31,840 --> 00:24:35,959
Speaker 1: questions will have incorrect presuppositions, and when you come across

461
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,280
Speaker 1: one of those, you should note that the question is

462
00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:41,520
Speaker 1: not valid. Now, the interesting thing is, I would think

463
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:44,480
Speaker 1: something like that would almost completely erase the effect, because

464
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:47,680
Speaker 1: you're putting people on guard to be like interrogating the questions.

465
00:24:47,880 --> 00:24:50,320
Speaker 1: But it doesn't. You can put people on guard like

466
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:53,959
Speaker 1: that and they still fall for the Moses illusion. In

467
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:57,160
Speaker 1: these experiments, it does seem to be a very robust effect,

468
00:24:57,240 --> 00:24:59,960
Speaker 1: like a substantial number of people will fail to detect

469
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:02,679
Speaker 1: to errors in questions, even though they later showed that

470
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:06,359
Speaker 1: they possessed the knowledge to answer them correctly. Uh. The

471
00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:09,440
Speaker 1: exact percentages of the effect, though very a good bit

472
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:14,600
Speaker 1: uh from that chapter by Martian Umanov the they right quote. Overall,

473
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:18,199
Speaker 1: the Moses ilusion is robust, with readers answering from fourteen

474
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:22,520
Speaker 1: percent to forty percent to fifty two percent to seventy

475
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: seven percent of distorted questions depending on the particular experiments.

476
00:25:26,760 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: So they're citing a number of different results there. The

477
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:35,840
Speaker 1: fourteen percent was by Van Jarsveld Dikstra and Herman's was

478
00:25:35,880 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 1: Hannon and Donovan in two thousand, one percent was Ericson

479
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 1: and Mattson in N one, and seventy seven percent was

480
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:46,880
Speaker 1: Barton and Sandford in three. And I would imagine these

481
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:49,320
Speaker 1: differences have a lot to do with, like, what what

482
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: exactly types of warnings you're giving people ahead of time,

483
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 1: what exactly what exact examples are used? As we've said,

484
00:25:56,480 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's clear that different questions are more

485
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:02,240
Speaker 1: prone than others. So like, I think more people would

486
00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:05,800
Speaker 1: probably fall for the Moses Noah confusion than for the

487
00:26:05,880 --> 00:26:09,000
Speaker 1: three Little Pigs Three Bears confusion. Yeah, I have to

488
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:11,760
Speaker 1: say some of the the examples that you included on

489
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:13,600
Speaker 1: a list here, it's it's interesting to run through this

490
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: because even though I'm not encountering them as actual questions,

491
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:19,800
Speaker 1: like one and someone in one of these studies would

492
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:22,080
Speaker 1: be I can certainly pick up on the ones that

493
00:26:22,119 --> 00:26:26,439
Speaker 1: I feel like would have been more likely to fool me, like,

494
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: for instance, what kind of treated Lincoln chop down? What

495
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 1: kind of treated Washington chop down? Um? Like, I I

496
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:36,480
Speaker 1: can imagine myself sort of this being a story I'm

497
00:26:36,480 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: not tremendously invested in, but have a version off stored away.

498
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:44,160
Speaker 1: I can instantly skip, or even not instantly, but even

499
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: with some thought, would be like I think, yeah, cherry Tree,

500
00:26:46,640 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 1: Cherry Tree, that's the one, you know, even if said Lincoln. Yeah,

501
00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 1: even if it's said Lincoln, because also I don't know Lincoln.

502
00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:56,520
Speaker 1: Something about like their stories about him, you know, we

503
00:26:56,560 --> 00:26:59,080
Speaker 1: also have sort of tall tales about him and his exploits,

504
00:26:59,119 --> 00:27:03,399
Speaker 1: and uh, the one about him, there's one about him

505
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:05,760
Speaker 1: answering a duel. So I challenged him to a duel,

506
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:08,720
Speaker 1: and he says, well, I get to choose the place

507
00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:11,919
Speaker 1: and the weapon. So I choose, Uh, let's sledge hammers

508
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:14,680
Speaker 1: and five ft of water or something. Right there, David,

509
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 1: he's tall and the other person was short, something like that.

510
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 1: I have no idea if that's even a legitimate story,

511
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:21,520
Speaker 1: but I have it in my head. So I have

512
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: an image of Lincoln holding some sort of a long

513
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 1: handled tool. So it fits in nicely into the story,

514
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:32,640
Speaker 1: like I can easily overlay one over the other. Yeah.

515
00:27:32,680 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 1: One of the examples that I feel extremely confident that

516
00:27:36,000 --> 00:27:38,919
Speaker 1: I would not fall for is the one of what

517
00:27:39,119 --> 00:27:42,360
Speaker 1: is the name of the Mexican dip made with mashed artichokes?

518
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:46,840
Speaker 1: I definitely, I mean, I just know artichokes. No, that

519
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:49,879
Speaker 1: is not what it is. You don't mash artichokes, do you?

520
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't seen him match. He could, like

521
00:27:53,080 --> 00:27:58,119
Speaker 1: can make an artichoke paste, but artichoke guacamole. That sounds gross.

522
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: I mean, but yet arti choke death is amazing but

523
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:09,080
Speaker 1: sound right? But anyway, So Marcia and Umanov also note

524
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:12,800
Speaker 1: that um that that error detection is lower when items

525
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 1: uh that items are swapped are similar in a couple

526
00:28:15,760 --> 00:28:18,760
Speaker 1: of ways. We've already mentioned these, but they reiterate that

527
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 1: it helps when there's phonological similarity. So do the words

528
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:26,200
Speaker 1: sound close to each other? I feel like uh, avocados

529
00:28:26,240 --> 00:28:29,040
Speaker 1: and artichokes like they have some similar vowel sounds, and

530
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:31,439
Speaker 1: they start with the same letter, but they sound different

531
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:34,439
Speaker 1: enough to me that I'm immediately strong. I think somehow

532
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:37,119
Speaker 1: like the hard K sound coming towards the end of

533
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:41,080
Speaker 1: the word artichoke, but coming towards the beginning of or

534
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: I guess in the middle of avocado. Somehow that makes

535
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: a big difference in my brain. And then, of course,

536
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: as we've been saying, semantic similarity, are the concept somehow

537
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: similar or related? Would we put them in a kind

538
00:28:53,080 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 1: of meaning next us together in the brain? Uh? And

539
00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 1: and of course it's notable that the Moses versus Noah

540
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: one meets both with the criteria. They sound similar and

541
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:06,040
Speaker 1: they're related. So anyway, it's just this interesting fact about

542
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: our brains, that something about being asked a question like this.

543
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:12,760
Speaker 1: So trying to process a sentence like the questions in

544
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:16,160
Speaker 1: these studies causes us to ignore the fact that the

545
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,000
Speaker 1: contents of the sentence conflict with things that we know

546
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,080
Speaker 1: to be true. And I wanted to mention one other

547
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 1: study I was looking at that. This one is by

548
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: Hadency Bottoms, Andrea N. Slick, and Elizabeth J. Marsh from

549
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:33,200
Speaker 1: published in the journal Memory called Memory and the Moses

550
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 1: illusion failures to detect contradictions with stored knowledge yield negative

551
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 1: memorial consequences. Now we can revisit some of the things

552
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: and this more as we go on, but I just

553
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: wanted to note a few things that they bring up.

554
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: Uh So, first of all, they note some other previous

555
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:54,880
Speaker 1: findings in their introduction. One is that um error detection improves,

556
00:29:54,960 --> 00:29:57,320
Speaker 1: so people are less likely to fall for the Moses

557
00:29:57,360 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 1: illusion when the error appears in what they called the

558
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 1: cleft phrase or the main focus of the sentence. So

559
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 1: there are ways that you can basically ask the same

560
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 1: question but just sort of rearrange the words to make

561
00:30:10,080 --> 00:30:13,640
Speaker 1: people more likely to notice the problem. So, if you

562
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: take the sentence how many animals of each kind did

563
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,320
Speaker 1: Moses take on the arc? The word Moses is kind

564
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 1: of syntactically de emphasized in that sentence, you know, it's

565
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: not like the main focus of the way the sentence

566
00:30:25,800 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: is phrased. You can reorient the words to make Moses

567
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: more prominent in the sentence, in which case people are

568
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:34,920
Speaker 1: more likely to catch the problem. Yeah, Like, I also

569
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 1: feel like having the word show up so late in

570
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:41,120
Speaker 1: the sentence. I'm I'm, I'm like you're always predicting where

571
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: sentences are going, you know, so you've kind of already

572
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:45,960
Speaker 1: filled it in to a certain extent, like you know,

573
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:48,480
Speaker 1: you know who we're talking about. Uh, even if you

574
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 1: end up using the wrong name. Um, yeah, I think

575
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 1: you're exactly right about that. Like that, once you've heard

576
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 1: I don't know, you get like four or five words

577
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,080
Speaker 1: into the sentence, you sort of are like you already

578
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: know what it's going to be, and you're just sort

579
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:03,680
Speaker 1: of like okay, you like mostly ignoring the words that

580
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: come after that. Another thing that they point out that's

581
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: interesting is that error detection improves when questions appear in

582
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 1: a difficult to read font and they say this is

583
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:19,080
Speaker 1: because it reduces processing fluency, which in turn makes material

584
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: seem less familiar and less true. And this was found

585
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 1: by Song and Schwartz in two thousand and eight. And this,

586
00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 1: of course, this comes back to our old friend. Processing

587
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: fluency a cognitive factor that I believe is one of

588
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:36,960
Speaker 1: the most underappreciated influences on our thoughts and beliefs and behavior.

589
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: We talked about it in our episode on the Illusory

590
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:44,120
Speaker 1: truth Effect. Basically, processing fluency means how easy is it

591
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: for this stimulus to be processed by the brain. And uh,

592
00:31:48,440 --> 00:31:50,800
Speaker 1: and it came up in the illusory truth effect episode

593
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:54,280
Speaker 1: because I remember. The illusory truth effect is where statements

594
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:58,240
Speaker 1: you've encountered before seem more true than statements that are

595
00:31:58,280 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: new to you. And one possible explanation for this is

596
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,680
Speaker 1: that familiar statements are easier for the brain to process

597
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 1: than unfamiliar ones are, and at some level, the brain

598
00:32:09,520 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: makes an equivalence between that processing fluency, how easy it

599
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: is to process this incoming sentence because it's familiar and

600
00:32:17,760 --> 00:32:21,440
Speaker 1: factual trustworthiness. They actually have nothing to do with one another,

601
00:32:21,480 --> 00:32:24,040
Speaker 1: but the brain maybe uses a little bit of shortcut there.

602
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:28,040
Speaker 1: So are you saying that in the future for our

603
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:31,160
Speaker 1: our shared notes, Joe, we should use chiller font instead

604
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: of whatever we're using now. Yeah, that would that make

605
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,520
Speaker 1: it less like I mean, I think that would generally

606
00:32:37,680 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 1: slow us down and make it harder to do the podcast,

607
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:43,280
Speaker 1: But it also might make it less likely that we

608
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: would just like flub words here and there, because it

609
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: would be a like really effortful, laborious process to get

610
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 1: through every single thought, which you know sometimes it is anyway,

611
00:32:54,720 --> 00:32:58,080
Speaker 1: but that that's on us, um but anyway, so Song

612
00:32:58,160 --> 00:32:59,840
Speaker 1: and Shorts here in two thousand and eight found that

613
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: simply by making statements harder to read, so you put

614
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 1: them in, you said Chiller, I was thinking Papyrus. I

615
00:33:05,600 --> 00:33:08,480
Speaker 1: don't know what what actual thought they used, but it

616
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 1: would just make people more likely to spot errors in

617
00:33:11,200 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 1: the questions instead of just rolling right over them without noticing.

618
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 1: And you know that makes sense to me, Yeah, yeah,

619
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 1: it does. It is interesting that that's how our brains work, though, Yeah,

620
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 1: it is sort of counterintuitive at the same time, like

621
00:33:24,840 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 1: you might just assume that if something's harder to read,

622
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: you would be less likely to catch errors in it.

623
00:33:30,560 --> 00:33:32,720
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think there's some kind of process where

624
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:35,280
Speaker 1: it's like slowing you down. It's not allowing you to

625
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:39,120
Speaker 1: just like skip over the parts that that seemed like yeah, yeah, okay,

626
00:33:39,280 --> 00:33:41,600
Speaker 1: Moses whatever. Yeah, it's like like a bit of food

627
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:44,320
Speaker 1: that's extra chewy, so you're going to really taste this,

628
00:33:44,520 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 1: You're really going to get a feel for the text here.

629
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: There's no just wolf in this down. Yeah. Now. In

630
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:51,400
Speaker 1: the study by Bottoms at All, they were looking at

631
00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 1: the question of whether participants can detect errors in questions

632
00:33:55,320 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 1: better if there are just more errors overall in the

633
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: sample of quest gens. So, if I give you a

634
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 1: bunch of questions and like, I don't know, seventy of

635
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:07,320
Speaker 1: them contain errors of this kind in them, are people

636
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:09,680
Speaker 1: more likely to catch them? And it looks like the

637
00:34:09,719 --> 00:34:11,920
Speaker 1: answer is yes. Like if you if you've got people

638
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:15,560
Speaker 1: on guard because they were just constantly problems with these questions,

639
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:17,879
Speaker 1: their guard goes up, and they do seem to make

640
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 1: the Moses illusion mistake less often. And it strikes me

641
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 1: that that could be possibly, or at least partially because

642
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:29,240
Speaker 1: once you start, you know, showing people questions where most

643
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: of them contain a problem, or even just a large

644
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:36,240
Speaker 1: minority of them contain a problem, people probably start uh

645
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:40,719
Speaker 1: interacting with the questions less as questions and becoming less

646
00:34:40,760 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 1: focused on just getting the answer and start looking at

647
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:46,680
Speaker 1: them more like a puzzle where you're you're trying to

648
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 1: parse the sentence very clearly. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, how

649
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: is this trying to trick me? Yeah? But then there's

650
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:57,720
Speaker 1: one kind of scary implication from this paper the author's

651
00:34:57,840 --> 00:35:01,040
Speaker 1: right quote. More generally, the failure of detect errors had

652
00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: negative memorial consequences, increasing the likelihood that errors were used

653
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: to answer later general knowledge questions. Methodological implications of this

654
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,720
Speaker 1: finding are discussed, as it suggests that typical analyzes likely

655
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 1: underestimate the size of the Moses illusion. Overall, answering distorted

656
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 1: questions can yield errors in the knowledge base. More importantly,

657
00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:28,520
Speaker 1: prior knowledge does not protect against these negative memorial consequences.

658
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 1: And Robert, I think you had a note about that.

659
00:35:30,640 --> 00:35:32,319
Speaker 1: We can talk a little bit more about that in

660
00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:35,400
Speaker 1: a bit, but yeah, basically, there there is some evidence

661
00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 1: that just steamrolling over an incorrect fact in a sentence,

662
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: even when you know otherwise, can can later damage your

663
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:48,080
Speaker 1: ability to recall that fact correctly. Yeah, yeah, so it

664
00:35:49,120 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 1: yeahs as we'll discuss here. It's it's not just a

665
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:54,800
Speaker 1: situation where oh, well this is a quirk, this is interesting.

666
00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 1: The brain does this. I mean, it is that, but

667
00:35:57,200 --> 00:36:01,440
Speaker 1: it it has it has greater implications. Yeah. Now, I

668
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:04,120
Speaker 1: want to go back on the other side and say that, uh,

669
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 1: when we encounter things like this, you know, illusions that

670
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:10,400
Speaker 1: humans often fall for when you read about a certain

671
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:14,280
Speaker 1: type of I don't know, cognitive bias or or something.

672
00:36:14,760 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: I think our tendency is often to at first react

673
00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 1: like wow, our dumb brains were so stupid. But but

674
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:24,440
Speaker 1: I think there's another way to think about it, and

675
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: that's this, How amazing is it that we have such

676
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:32,359
Speaker 1: a powerful command of language based reasoning that we can

677
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:37,239
Speaker 1: answer questions even though key elements of the sentence do

678
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:39,840
Speaker 1: not match with our knowledge base. I mean, think about

679
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:43,880
Speaker 1: the trouble that a computer would run into trying to

680
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 1: do the same thing. Like, While it's an interesting case

681
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: of an illusion failing to notice facts that conflict with

682
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 1: our existing knowledge, it's also a demonstration of an absolutely

683
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:59,880
Speaker 1: amazing capacity for language comprehension, even when there are severe

684
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 1: errors in the questions or sentences that we're trying to comprehend.

685
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: Like somehow our brains are so good at getting what

686
00:37:07,560 --> 00:37:11,000
Speaker 1: seems to be the gist the intended global meaning of

687
00:37:11,040 --> 00:37:14,560
Speaker 1: a sentence, even when pivotal items in that sentence are

688
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 1: wrong and should be pointing you off in the wrong

689
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:22,000
Speaker 1: direction and make you totally confused. Yeah, yeah, um, you know.

690
00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:24,160
Speaker 1: I can't help but be reminded in all this about

691
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: the drawing of the bicycle that we've touched on before

692
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: about often, I mean, it's different. We're not dealing with language,

693
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 1: We're dealing with a uh, like a mental image. Like

694
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:34,799
Speaker 1: we all think we have the mental image of a

695
00:37:34,800 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 1: bicycle pretty firm in our heads, and yet when put

696
00:37:37,560 --> 00:37:40,560
Speaker 1: to the test, when acts asked to draw a bicycle, um,

697
00:37:40,800 --> 00:37:44,120
Speaker 1: we're often floored. Yeah. That was a different one of

698
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:47,120
Speaker 1: our cognitive Allusions episodes. That was the the illusion of

699
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 1: explanatory depth. Yeah, the issue where people they tend to

700
00:37:51,680 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: think like that they understand how something works until they're

701
00:37:55,160 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: asked to explain it. So somehow the brain has a

702
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 1: way of representing a sort of pat Tempken comprehension. You

703
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:04,839
Speaker 1: know that it puts up this facade of yeah, you

704
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 1: know how that works. Yeah, I I I know how

705
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: I know the parts of a bicycle. I know all

706
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:11,600
Speaker 1: the parts of a can opener. I could make one basically.

707
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:14,080
Speaker 1: But then if you are asked to like explain the

708
00:38:14,120 --> 00:38:16,400
Speaker 1: steps of how it works or draw all the parts,

709
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:20,399
Speaker 1: you're like, uh, yeah. I thought about this a lot

710
00:38:20,520 --> 00:38:24,040
Speaker 1: watching the Outlander TV show about the time traveler goes

711
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 1: back in time and she's recreating various things that she

712
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: knows about from the future, and I'm like, God, like,

713
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:30,680
Speaker 1: how many of us, you know, we go if we

714
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 1: were to do that, if we were to go back

715
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:34,800
Speaker 1: in time, we might tell somebody about all these marvelous

716
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: things like oh yeah, penicillin and uh, you know, bicycles

717
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:39,799
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and they'd be like, oh great, how does

718
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:41,800
Speaker 1: it work? And be like, um, yeah, no, no idea.

719
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: I have some some vague So I have some of

720
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:46,319
Speaker 1: the facts in my head, but not near enough to

721
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:55,279
Speaker 1: reproduce anything that I'm talking about. Thank thank Coming back

722
00:38:55,320 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 1: to this thing about how the Moses solution is, it

723
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 1: is and could be looked at as an example of

724
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:06,680
Speaker 1: how amazingly adaptive at comprehension our brains are actually found

725
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,800
Speaker 1: a book chapter discussing this very aspect of the effect.

726
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: So the authors here were hik Young Park and Lynn M.

727
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:17,840
Speaker 1: Rader uh And this was a chapter in a book,

728
00:39:18,200 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 1: and the chapter was called the Moses Illusion. I think

729
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:22,919
Speaker 1: it was published in two thousand four. And so they're

730
00:39:22,960 --> 00:39:26,560
Speaker 1: talking about different potential explanations for the Moses illusion, what's

731
00:39:26,600 --> 00:39:29,080
Speaker 1: going on in the brain, and they conclude that they

732
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: or at least they argue that the most likely explanation

733
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:35,040
Speaker 1: for what's going on when we fall for this is

734
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,640
Speaker 1: something they call the partial match hypothesis. So I just

735
00:39:38,680 --> 00:39:41,239
Speaker 1: want to read from their conclusion that's along the lines

736
00:39:41,280 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: of what we've just been talking about. Quote. Research on

737
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: the moses ilusion demonstrates that people have difficulty in detecting

738
00:39:48,120 --> 00:39:52,240
Speaker 1: distortions or inaccuracies when a distorted element is semantically related

739
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 1: to the theme of the sentence. Why should our cognitive

740
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:59,000
Speaker 1: system be so tolerant of distortions and find it so

741
00:39:59,080 --> 00:40:02,720
Speaker 1: difficult to do careful matches to memory. It might seem

742
00:40:02,760 --> 00:40:05,360
Speaker 1: that partial matching is a less than ideal way to

743
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:09,879
Speaker 1: process information. However, the partial match process is not only

744
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:13,440
Speaker 1: common and normal, but also a necessary mechanism of our

745
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:18,879
Speaker 1: cognitive system. This partial match process enables useful communication and comprehension.

746
00:40:19,320 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 1: Very few things that we see or here will perfectly

747
00:40:22,560 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 1: match the representation that we already have stored in memory.

748
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:29,400
Speaker 1: In order to answer questions, we need to be able

749
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: to use an acceptable match. In order to understand a

750
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:35,880
Speaker 1: new situation and map it onto something we have already

751
00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 1: seen or done, we must accept slight variations every day.

752
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:44,280
Speaker 1: At many levels, we accept slight distortions without even noticing

753
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:47,960
Speaker 1: the process. Occasionally we notice a distortion and choose to

754
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:52,080
Speaker 1: ignore it, but more frequently we do not even realize

755
00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:56,759
Speaker 1: that distortions have occurred, a rigid comprehension system would have

756
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,400
Speaker 1: a difficult time. Indeed, many of our cognitive operations are

757
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:05,360
Speaker 1: driven by familiarity based heuristics rather than careful matching operations.

758
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: The Moses illusion is an example of how the adaptive

759
00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 1: human cognitive system works. Everyday, cognitive processing must be based

760
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:17,439
Speaker 1: on simple heuristics, such as matching sets of features, rather

761
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:22,160
Speaker 1: than exact matches, as very few tasks require exact matches.

762
00:41:22,640 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 1: Sentences do not match stored information, faces change, voices may

763
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 1: change slightly, even our pets and friends change over time. Therefore,

764
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 1: it makes sense that people do use partial matches in

765
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 1: the normal course of matching to memory. Partial matching is

766
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:42,000
Speaker 1: immutable because it is the most efficient way for memory

767
00:41:42,000 --> 00:41:44,839
Speaker 1: to operate given the nature of the environment in which

768
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:47,600
Speaker 1: we live. And so, yeah, this really makes me think

769
00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:50,000
Speaker 1: along the lines of what we were just saying a

770
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 1: few minutes ago. Like the Moses illusion is kind of

771
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: funny when you notice yourself doing it, but it's also

772
00:41:56,360 --> 00:42:01,120
Speaker 1: it's also kind of a superpower. Like I'm imagine if

773
00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:03,440
Speaker 1: you went to a video store, which we still have

774
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:05,799
Speaker 1: one in Atlanta. Imagine you went there and you were

775
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: to say, um, yeah, I'm looking for a particular movie. Um,

776
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 1: it started Anthony Hopkins and it had a puppet in it.

777
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:15,759
Speaker 1: And instead of being able to piece that together and

778
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:18,359
Speaker 1: tell you which movie you're talking about, what if they

779
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:20,440
Speaker 1: were to say, Okay, keep listening, I need you to

780
00:42:20,480 --> 00:42:23,120
Speaker 1: list the entire cast. I need all of the details.

781
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: We have to make a match here. Or yeah. Imagine

782
00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: somebody comes into the video store and they say, I'm

783
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:31,880
Speaker 1: looking for The Godfather too, and they say, sorry, we

784
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:35,320
Speaker 1: don't have that. What they actually have is The Godfather

785
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 1: col In part two. Oh man, that that's not completely unbelievable,

786
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: not with our video store, but just sort of like

787
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:49,319
Speaker 1: the cliche video store. You mean, the Godfather Part two? Philistine.

788
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:52,600
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a kind of silly example. But I

789
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:54,840
Speaker 1: think the authors of this chapter are exactly right that

790
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 1: every basically every single moment of our lives, we are

791
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 1: testing reality against our memories, and we have to do

792
00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 1: so in a fast and loose way, And our ability

793
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:07,800
Speaker 1: to do so in a fast and loose way, without

794
00:43:07,840 --> 00:43:11,200
Speaker 1: relying on every detail to be an exact correct match

795
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:15,719
Speaker 1: is is what allows us to live adaptively, to sort

796
00:43:15,719 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 1: of like be thinking creatures. Looking for exact matches between

797
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:24,280
Speaker 1: the current case you're observing and what's stored in your memory.

798
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:27,960
Speaker 1: Like I made the comparison to a computer earlier. Today,

799
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:30,680
Speaker 1: I guess we're more familiar with more adaptive types of

800
00:43:30,719 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 1: computer functions that are based on like AI or like

801
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:35,840
Speaker 1: huge amounts of machine learning or something like that. It

802
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:39,000
Speaker 1: makes me think about like the early old days of

803
00:43:39,520 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 1: dealing with the you know, computer programming, where like if

804
00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:46,280
Speaker 1: you slightly misspelled, like you know, um, you're you're playing

805
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:49,560
Speaker 1: Zork or something and you type will like woolke north

806
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:51,799
Speaker 1: the w o l K, it's not is to be

807
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:54,560
Speaker 1: like that is not a valid action, Like, yeah, it's

808
00:43:54,560 --> 00:43:58,600
Speaker 1: amazing nowadays, how just like how much thumb fumbling I

809
00:43:58,600 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: can put into typing something in search and it still

810
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:03,920
Speaker 1: knows what I'm talking about. I still um able to

811
00:44:03,920 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: floor it every now and then because I'll get really

812
00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:09,319
Speaker 1: reckless and u and it'll just have no clue. But

813
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:12,319
Speaker 1: but more often than not, it'll it'll guess what I'm

814
00:44:12,320 --> 00:44:15,400
Speaker 1: going for. But that is amazing because that is the

815
00:44:15,400 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 1: the the the input receiver whatever, you know, this piece

816
00:44:18,719 --> 00:44:22,040
Speaker 1: of technology it's called AI. Because it's becoming more like

817
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:25,719
Speaker 1: our brains. It's becoming usefully sloppy and and loose in

818
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:28,759
Speaker 1: the way our brains are. Now, I guess we could

819
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 1: talk about a couple of other possible examples of knowledge

820
00:44:31,440 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 1: neglect or implications of knowledge neglect. One that I came

821
00:44:35,040 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 1: across that I thought was pretty funny is something that

822
00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:42,480
Speaker 1: is seems fairly narrow. But it's known as the yolk phenomenon. Uh,

823
00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:45,400
Speaker 1: So it goes like this apparently was originally described in

824
00:44:45,440 --> 00:44:49,880
Speaker 1: an article in the Psychological Review by Gregory Kimball and

825
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:53,240
Speaker 1: Lawrence Pearl Mutter. Uh. This was in the year nineteen seventy,

826
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 1: if I didn't already say that. But it consists of

827
00:44:56,719 --> 00:45:00,480
Speaker 1: asking somebody a list of questions and and it's designed

828
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:03,360
Speaker 1: to produce a certain answer. So you say, what do

829
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:06,120
Speaker 1: we call the tree that grows from acorns? And you

830
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 1: say an oak? And then you say, what do you

831
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: call a funny story joke? What's the sound made by

832
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:15,320
Speaker 1: a frog croak? What's another word for a cape cloak?

833
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:18,040
Speaker 1: What do we call the white of an egg? And

834
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: most people say yolk um, which is obviously wrong. And

835
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:25,319
Speaker 1: people are not confused about the white of an egg

836
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:27,759
Speaker 1: being called the yolk, But it seems like instead, the

837
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:30,720
Speaker 1: implication is that there's a certain kind of pattern seeking

838
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:35,239
Speaker 1: that overtakes semantic processing here, like the brain starts to

839
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:39,520
Speaker 1: conclude while you're answering these questions because of the established

840
00:45:39,560 --> 00:45:43,480
Speaker 1: pattern that rhyming is more important than the actual meaning

841
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:47,400
Speaker 1: of the word that rhymes and you know it rhymes march. Yeah, exactly,

842
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: it's the rhyme as reason effects sort of. I mean, uh,

843
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 1: which I think we talked with that in our episode

844
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:56,879
Speaker 1: on anti metaboli. But I was wondering, I wonder how

845
00:45:56,920 --> 00:45:59,720
Speaker 1: many items in a list like this it takes before

846
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:03,480
Speaker 1: the majority of respondents will give the yolk type answer,

847
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:05,560
Speaker 1: will ignore the known meaning of a word and just

848
00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 1: supply the nonsensical rhyming match. I don't know. I feel

849
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 1: like I'm very susceptible to this one because I I

850
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:15,520
Speaker 1: recently was trying to do a recipe and it got

851
00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 1: kind of confusing, and I had a moment where I

852
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:20,600
Speaker 1: had to ask myself, wait, which part is the yolk

853
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:24,359
Speaker 1: and which is eg white. Um. It was only a

854
00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:26,759
Speaker 1: momentary lapse, but there were a lot of things going on.

855
00:46:26,800 --> 00:46:28,560
Speaker 1: There was a lot I was like having to take

856
00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:30,000
Speaker 1: them apart, you know, as one of those we have

857
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 1: to have the egg white and one bowl and the

858
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:34,200
Speaker 1: yolks and the other. And it was I was making

859
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 1: a suflat, That's what it was. And yeah, and I

860
00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:40,640
Speaker 1: did had I had not had coffee yet either, so

861
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 1: I had that going for me. Um. It was successful.

862
00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: But yeah, there was that moment where I'm like, okay,

863
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:47,640
Speaker 1: I have to have so many egg whites and then

864
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:51,279
Speaker 1: a different number of yolks and which ones which now,

865
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:54,719
Speaker 1: so I would totally fall for this, I mean, did

866
00:46:54,760 --> 00:46:57,360
Speaker 1: you succeed? Did it rise? Yeah? I had rise. It

867
00:46:57,400 --> 00:46:59,279
Speaker 1: was good. Yeah, I don't think I want to put

868
00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: it in regular their weekly rotation, but it was. It

869
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 1: was good for a special treat. I feel like the

870
00:47:03,719 --> 00:47:07,000
Speaker 1: soufle a that is just one of the most notorious, tricky,

871
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:09,760
Speaker 1: tricky dishes for people who aren't I guess, like working

872
00:47:09,760 --> 00:47:12,360
Speaker 1: in you know, kitchens or bakeries every day. Yeah, it

873
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: was still it was tricky. It was tricky for me,

874
00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:16,160
Speaker 1: even though I went with a very what seemed like

875
00:47:16,160 --> 00:47:19,319
Speaker 1: a very simple recipe that that didn't steer me too wrong,

876
00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:23,399
Speaker 1: but still I got lost a little bit for a moment. Well,

877
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: I'm impressed, So I was. I was reading through this

878
00:47:25,960 --> 00:47:29,320
Speaker 1: book chapter as well, um on knowledge neglect by marsh

879
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 1: and Humana, and uh yeah, this was this was very interesting.

880
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:36,440
Speaker 1: Um So yeah, they point to a couple of other misconceptions.

881
00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 1: I don't think we've mentioned these on on the episode

882
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:42,719
Speaker 1: thus far, but one of them was Toronto is the

883
00:47:42,760 --> 00:47:46,800
Speaker 1: capital of Canada, and a blow to the head cures amnesia,

884
00:47:46,920 --> 00:47:49,000
Speaker 1: which I guess is like a TV you know, cartoon

885
00:47:49,080 --> 00:47:51,800
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. But these are all like examples

886
00:47:51,880 --> 00:47:53,960
Speaker 1: of misconceptions that you might have in your head that

887
00:47:54,040 --> 00:47:56,799
Speaker 1: are are not true. They point out that you know

888
00:47:56,840 --> 00:48:01,080
Speaker 1: it tries we might misconceptions are impossible to ignore, and uh,

889
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:05,320
Speaker 1: your best hope if you can't avoid hearing misconceptions altogether,

890
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:08,200
Speaker 1: which again is probably impossible, uh, is to have them

891
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:12,040
Speaker 1: immediately corrected. But that would be difficult, Like you'd have

892
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 1: to have like a standing conversation with somebody who would

893
00:48:16,160 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: not fall for your miscommunication, you know, or you'd have

894
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:22,920
Speaker 1: to just be constantly, uh, like with with paranoia, just

895
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:26,600
Speaker 1: fact checking everything you come across. Otherwise, some of them

896
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:29,680
Speaker 1: are going to get past your your guard and they're

897
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: not going to be instantly corrected, and then they're just

898
00:48:32,719 --> 00:48:34,920
Speaker 1: kinda they're just kind of in there, like even if

899
00:48:34,920 --> 00:48:37,799
Speaker 1: you hear otherwise later, you might still fall back to

900
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:41,000
Speaker 1: the earlier misconception. Yeah, or it's just or it's something

901
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:43,319
Speaker 1: that doesn't come up in daily life, you know, so

902
00:48:43,360 --> 00:48:45,239
Speaker 1: you just there's never been an opportunity for it to

903
00:48:45,239 --> 00:48:49,240
Speaker 1: be corrected. I'm reminded of that episode of This American

904
00:48:49,280 --> 00:48:52,000
Speaker 1: Life where they started off by talking about this, uh,

905
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:55,640
Speaker 1: this this particular individual who had just grown up thinking

906
00:48:55,680 --> 00:48:59,160
Speaker 1: that unicorns existed, like it had never been corrected for,

907
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,360
Speaker 1: and so just had that misconception in her head until

908
00:49:02,400 --> 00:49:05,719
Speaker 1: finally she's at a party and there in a conversation,

909
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:08,200
Speaker 1: like just a random chatter about hey, what are your

910
00:49:08,200 --> 00:49:11,240
Speaker 1: favorite animals or something, and she she mentions the unicorn,

911
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:15,080
Speaker 1: and there's like this awkward silence. So why would that

912
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:18,120
Speaker 1: be all that awkward? I mean, would she like the unicorn?

913
00:49:18,200 --> 00:49:20,840
Speaker 1: Which is real? Well, I think it was. It was

914
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:23,480
Speaker 1: probably why, if I'm remembering it correctly, it was. There's

915
00:49:23,480 --> 00:49:25,480
Speaker 1: a certain bit of ambiguity where people are like if

916
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:28,359
Speaker 1: she joking or oh my goodness, she's not joking, she thinks,

917
00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:31,280
Speaker 1: But it also makes all of us I think wonder,

918
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:35,680
Speaker 1: which what what misconceptions do we have just rattling around

919
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:38,239
Speaker 1: in our brain right now, we have no idea, but

920
00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: they're just they're ready to go at any moment, you know,

921
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: they can be loaded into the torpedo tube of conversation

922
00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: or podcasting or the next job interview, just just just

923
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:49,560
Speaker 1: ready to go when you have no idea. I'd say

924
00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:51,719
Speaker 1: one of the most common edits I have to make

925
00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:54,080
Speaker 1: to this show before we release it as I realized

926
00:49:54,120 --> 00:49:56,439
Speaker 1: that I just sort of said something that I knew

927
00:49:56,560 --> 00:49:59,200
Speaker 1: was true, And then later I'm listening back to it,

928
00:49:59,239 --> 00:50:02,640
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait a minute, it I don't think that's right. Yeah, yeah,

929
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:05,440
Speaker 1: I've definitely definitely done that before. But well, I mean

930
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:07,360
Speaker 1: when I said it, I wasn't even wondering, you know,

931
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:11,000
Speaker 1: just now now. The authors here they they touch on,

932
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:13,520
Speaker 1: of course, the fact that the prior knowledge seems like

933
00:50:13,560 --> 00:50:15,839
Speaker 1: it should be able to protect us, uh, you know,

934
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 1: and and yet quote surprisingly, the effects of exposure to

935
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:21,840
Speaker 1: misconceptions are not limited to cases where people are ignorant

936
00:50:21,840 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: of the true state of the world. We touched on

937
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:27,680
Speaker 1: that already. Um. Another great example they bring bring out

938
00:50:27,840 --> 00:50:32,280
Speaker 1: is a plane crashed, where did they bury the survivors? Okay,

939
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:35,360
Speaker 1: which you know obviously you're not going to bury survivors.

940
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 1: You were going to bury the dead. But again, this

941
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 1: is another question where you've kind of filled in all

942
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:42,640
Speaker 1: the blanks, you know. Uh, they by the time the

943
00:50:42,680 --> 00:50:45,840
Speaker 1: survivors is the last word in the sentence. Uh, and

944
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 1: you fall for it, right, So it's not like you

945
00:50:48,239 --> 00:50:50,600
Speaker 1: think that the survivors get buried, but you could be

946
00:50:50,640 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 1: trying to answer the questions just because like that's gone

947
00:50:53,160 --> 00:50:56,279
Speaker 1: straight past you. Yeah, And they really drive home in

948
00:50:56,280 --> 00:50:59,320
Speaker 1: this that knowledge neglect isn't just a momentary lapse in memory,

949
00:50:59,360 --> 00:51:02,600
Speaker 1: but rather something with real consequences for memory. If you

950
00:51:02,600 --> 00:51:06,320
Speaker 1: don't recognize the error, the error can become coded into

951
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 1: your memory, into your worldview as fact. Uh. And because

952
00:51:10,600 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 1: that error was recently encountered, it's more easily accessed. So

953
00:51:15,560 --> 00:51:18,040
Speaker 1: again we have to remember that items in our memory

954
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:21,120
Speaker 1: are not made of stone, they're made of clay. Merely

955
00:51:21,160 --> 00:51:25,000
Speaker 1: accessing them can change them. And our most accessed memories

956
00:51:25,200 --> 00:51:27,920
Speaker 1: are the most changed memories of all are the ones

957
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:30,520
Speaker 1: we can trust the least. Um. So an air that

958
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: pops to mind quickly is more likely to be thought

959
00:51:33,640 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 1: of it as fact, not oh I heard once that X,

960
00:51:37,040 --> 00:51:39,400
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about X, but I think X, but

961
00:51:39,520 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: rather just X is true. X is the answer yes,

962
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:44,040
Speaker 1: So I guess this is this is connecting back to

963
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:46,839
Speaker 1: that finding we talked about earlier that you know, um

964
00:51:47,200 --> 00:51:52,680
Speaker 1: that even against your existing prior knowledge, like misconceptions or

965
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 1: errors that get by you unnoticed in one of these

966
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:59,080
Speaker 1: Moses solution type sentences can later damage your ability to

967
00:51:59,120 --> 00:52:03,000
Speaker 1: remember the actual fact of that sentence correctly. Um, it

968
00:52:03,040 --> 00:52:06,480
Speaker 1: can undermine your knowledge that it was in fact Noah, potentially,

969
00:52:06,960 --> 00:52:09,200
Speaker 1: And this makes me think about the broader phenomenon of

970
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:12,279
Speaker 1: people who are really trying to argue a point will

971
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:18,120
Speaker 1: often structure sentences to try to get something past you

972
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 1: really quickly. In the non pivotal part of the sentence.

973
00:52:21,719 --> 00:52:23,920
Speaker 1: It's almost like we have an intuitive grasp of the

974
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:28,360
Speaker 1: Moses illusion type thing, where like a, I don't know,

975
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:30,960
Speaker 1: you see people like like arguing about politics on TV

976
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:33,640
Speaker 1: or something, and like so one person will pose a

977
00:52:33,719 --> 00:52:37,520
Speaker 1: question to the other person, and the the pivotal part

978
00:52:37,520 --> 00:52:39,880
Speaker 1: of the sentence that's supposed to be in dispute maybe

979
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:42,279
Speaker 1: is is one part of the sentence, But then in

980
00:52:42,320 --> 00:52:44,799
Speaker 1: a different part of the sentence, there's also like a

981
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: disputable claim that's just like shoved in there and goes

982
00:52:48,560 --> 00:52:51,120
Speaker 1: by real quick, right right, Yeah, If you end up

983
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 1: with a statement that has some some mistruths sort of

984
00:52:54,320 --> 00:52:57,399
Speaker 1: sprinkled in there, they're not key to the like the

985
00:52:57,440 --> 00:53:00,560
Speaker 1: main you know, talking point, or even the main untruth.

986
00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:03,200
Speaker 1: You know, that's that can oft often be the nefarious

987
00:53:03,239 --> 00:53:07,640
Speaker 1: thing too. It's like you catch the larger um misconception

988
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:09,759
Speaker 1: or lie in the statement, but then there are other

989
00:53:09,800 --> 00:53:12,000
Speaker 1: lies in there that you're not paying attention to because

990
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:13,960
Speaker 1: of the big one. Now, the authors here they point

991
00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:16,680
Speaker 1: out that improved monitoring can help you know, this is

992
00:53:16,680 --> 00:53:18,880
Speaker 1: stuff like we're talking about, like putting things into a

993
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:23,719
Speaker 1: different font, etcetera. Um, But drawing attention to errors can

994
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:28,399
Speaker 1: have the opposite effect, increasing suggestibility, which is is weird

995
00:53:28,440 --> 00:53:32,080
Speaker 1: therefore to it as an ironic effect. Um. Plus, many

996
00:53:32,120 --> 00:53:36,239
Speaker 1: manipulations designed to promote monitoring may actually fail to do so,

997
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 1: and they say it's difficult to predict which manipulations will

998
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:42,279
Speaker 1: actually work. So again there's no there's no like one

999
00:53:42,360 --> 00:53:44,480
Speaker 1: guy like, here are the three steps you need to

1000
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:47,960
Speaker 1: take to uh to keep this misinformation from leaking into

1001
00:53:48,000 --> 00:53:49,920
Speaker 1: your brain. I think a lot of what I take

1002
00:53:49,960 --> 00:53:52,960
Speaker 1: away from this is that, uh, I don't know, being

1003
00:53:53,040 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 1: well informed is an ongoing process that last your entire life.

1004
00:53:57,680 --> 00:54:00,040
Speaker 1: And it's not a question of like just getting the

1005
00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:03,120
Speaker 1: right facts in the bank one time and then you're set,

1006
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:07,200
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, there's a lot of upkeep involved and

1007
00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:10,280
Speaker 1: a lot of just continual pruning and not just new weeds,

1008
00:54:10,320 --> 00:54:13,279
Speaker 1: weeds that have been in there your whole life sometimes

1009
00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:17,399
Speaker 1: or seeing right they happen, and the very least um, yeah,

1010
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 1: the authors who they also drive home that ultimately we

1011
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:23,200
Speaker 1: know a lot more about how people come to misremember

1012
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:28,680
Speaker 1: events versus misremember facts, especially when errors are are the

1013
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:32,880
Speaker 1: errors involved contradict stored knowledge. So uh you know, you know,

1014
00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:35,880
Speaker 1: again we get into the complexity of memory, the different

1015
00:54:35,880 --> 00:54:39,120
Speaker 1: types of memory that we have going on in the brain. Um,

1016
00:54:39,200 --> 00:54:41,600
Speaker 1: and we we still have a lot more to learn

1017
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:45,400
Speaker 1: about just how this all comes together. Yeah. Now, you know,

1018
00:54:45,440 --> 00:54:47,440
Speaker 1: here's a question that comes to mind. Um, I wonder

1019
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:51,040
Speaker 1: if anyone has constructed a Moses illusion statement using Bilbo

1020
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:55,600
Speaker 1: and frodo. Oh, yes, that might work. So, um, like

1021
00:54:55,719 --> 00:54:59,680
Speaker 1: what was Bilbo carrying into the fires of Mountain Doom? Yeah,

1022
00:54:59,760 --> 00:55:01,160
Speaker 1: that's sort of thing I don't know, of course, I

1023
00:55:01,200 --> 00:55:03,319
Speaker 1: guess you would want to. You'd want to try and

1024
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:05,480
Speaker 1: construct it right so that you get Bilbo there at

1025
00:55:05,480 --> 00:55:08,160
Speaker 1: the very end or Frodo at the very end, depending

1026
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:11,520
Speaker 1: on how you're you're you're messing around with it. Um,

1027
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:15,520
Speaker 1: who was who was the dragon whose lair was infiltrated

1028
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:18,560
Speaker 1: by Frodo Baggins. Yeah, yeah, that sort of thing that

1029
00:55:18,640 --> 00:55:21,279
Speaker 1: might work. Yeah, I said, Bilbo and Frodo or even

1030
00:55:21,280 --> 00:55:24,080
Speaker 1: closer together than Noah and Moses. Yeah, I mean they

1031
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:28,960
Speaker 1: are certainly that they actually overlap, as opposed to being

1032
00:55:29,000 --> 00:55:33,360
Speaker 1: separated by by long stretches of time. Very very similar characters,

1033
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:39,440
Speaker 1: actually related, right, they are related? Yeah? Um? Yeah, what uncle,

1034
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:43,480
Speaker 1: great uncle Uncle? I always forget what happened to Frodo's parents.

1035
00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:47,239
Speaker 1: I've read it and I still forget it. I'm gonna say, uncle,

1036
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: all the all the Hobbits are cousins. Yeah, they're all related. Actually, yes,

1037
00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:54,000
Speaker 1: all right, Well, there you have it. We'd love to

1038
00:55:54,040 --> 00:55:55,840
Speaker 1: hear from everybody about this, because, of course, this just

1039
00:55:55,920 --> 00:55:58,120
Speaker 1: touches on how our brains work and how it now

1040
00:55:58,239 --> 00:56:01,759
Speaker 1: they are brains work with with new information, be it

1041
00:56:02,120 --> 00:56:06,640
Speaker 1: accurate or or or or a misconception. Uh so, I

1042
00:56:06,640 --> 00:56:09,600
Speaker 1: think everybody out there has something to share. Which of

1043
00:56:09,640 --> 00:56:13,520
Speaker 1: these Moses illusions worked the most on you? Which ones

1044
00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:15,799
Speaker 1: I've worked on you in the past. Uh, we'd love

1045
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:18,200
Speaker 1: to hear from you, all right. If you want to

1046
00:56:18,239 --> 00:56:20,200
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,

1047
00:56:20,480 --> 00:56:22,120
Speaker 1: you know where to find it. You can find the

1048
00:56:22,120 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever you get

1049
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:27,080
Speaker 1: your your podcast, and we'll have core episodes of Stuff

1050
00:56:27,080 --> 00:56:29,520
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You've got

1051
00:56:29,560 --> 00:56:32,080
Speaker 1: listener mail on Monday's, you've got them, We've got the

1052
00:56:32,160 --> 00:56:35,280
Speaker 1: Artifact on Wednesdays. You've got Weird House Cinema on Fridays

1053
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:38,480
Speaker 1: in a vault episode on the weekends. Huge things. As

1054
00:56:38,480 --> 00:56:41,920
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If

1055
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:43,600
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with

1056
00:56:43,719 --> 00:56:46,360
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a

1057
00:56:46,440 --> 00:56:48,480
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

1058
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:51,080
Speaker 1: can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your

1059
00:56:51,080 --> 00:57:01,200
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

1060
00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:04,000
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

1061
00:57:04,200 --> 00:57:06,560
Speaker 1: this is the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or

1062
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:20,880
Speaker 1: wherever you listening to your favorite shows,