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