Humans are naturallycurious. We seek to explore, learn, and understand. In fact, the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the HAAS School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley,have discoveredthat when the brain searches for information, it accesses the same neural code as when it’s hunting formoney.
“To the brain, information is its own reward,“saidco-author of the study Ming Hsu, Ph.D. According to him, just as we like empty calories from junk food, we can also overvalue data that makes us feel good but may not be useful.
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Many years ago when my little sister and I were between 8-10, we were listening to Christmas music while decorating the tree. The Little Drummer Boy sang about performing for the newborn king, telling us “the ox and lamb kept time” while he played. Little sister asked me to explain what this meant.Very seriously, I informed her that when barn animals hear music, they instinctively tap their feet. This helped the Little Drummer Boy keep the beat while he played for Jesus. She accepted this new piece of wisdom as fact and carried on.A decade later we were sitting at Christmas dinner with the whole family which now included little sister’s fiancé. Little Drummer Boy played on the radio and she looked to her future husband and said, “did you know when barn animals hear music, they instinctively tap their feet?”He laughed hysterically, calamity ensued, and I had to run for cover. Worth it. Pa rum pum pum pum.
My father used to have a “turbo button” in his car that he’d pressed to make the car go faster. Dumb a*s kid me didn’t know it was the ac button, so when the air would hit my face while seeing the car move, I thought we were flying. Coolest s**t ever until I grew older and realized lol.
However, these stories don’t prove that we’re doomed. Yet Mercier, a cognitive scientist at the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris, thinks that in order tofight disinformationmore effectively, we need to stop believing in our own gullibility.“We are skilled at figuring out who to trust and what to believe, and, if anything, we’re too hard rather than too easy to influence,” Merciersaid. He bases those statements on a growing body of research in fields such as neuropsychiatry and evolutionary psychology, and argues that humans are hardwired to balance openness with vigilance.
However, these stories don’t prove that we’re doomed. Yet Mercier, a cognitive scientist at the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris, thinks that in order tofight disinformationmore effectively, we need to stop believing in our own gullibility.
“We are skilled at figuring out who to trust and what to believe, and, if anything, we’re too hard rather than too easy to influence,” Merciersaid. He bases those statements on a growing body of research in fields such as neuropsychiatry and evolutionary psychology, and argues that humans are hardwired to balance openness with vigilance.
I asked my sister what the small brown round things i saw in the fruit aisle were and she told me they were goat balls. Later found out they were kiwis.
To gauge a statement’s accuracy, we instinctively test it from many angles, including: does it jibe with what I already believe? Does the speaker share my interests? Have they demonstrated competence in this area? What’s their reputation for trustworthiness? And, with more complex assertions: does the argument make sense?So there are a few ways of scrolling through the list: you might view the entries as proof that we can be easily persuaded, or you might treat them as evidence that we, eventually, figure things out. After all, the people sharing these anecdotes did.
To gauge a statement’s accuracy, we instinctively test it from many angles, including: does it jibe with what I already believe? Does the speaker share my interests? Have they demonstrated competence in this area? What’s their reputation for trustworthiness? And, with more complex assertions: does the argument make sense?
So there are a few ways of scrolling through the list: you might view the entries as proof that we can be easily persuaded, or you might treat them as evidence that we, eventually, figure things out. After all, the people sharing these anecdotes did.
Yellow tomato sauce.When I was about 8 or 9, mum forgot to order a mcDs plain so she said it was yellow tomato sauce from the tomatoes like my grandad grew. I moved out at 18 and went shopping for the first time. Wanted to make a ‘real’ burger. Couldn’t find it anywhere. Called mum; 22 years later she’s still laughing.
That working hard in corporate America actually gets you anywhere.
When I was a kid we had this brush in the car, the kind for getting snow off the windows in the winter, and I asked my mom what it was.She told me it was an elephant toothbrush, and that we used to have an elephant, for her that was just a silly joke, but my 6 year old brain never questioned the fact that we used to own an elephant.A few years later, I must have been more like 9, I brought it up to my mom; something about it didn’t make sense. How did we feed this thing? Where did we keep it? How did we afford an elephant? Where did it come from? What did we do with it in the winter?My mom, had entirely forgot she ever told me that, and never realized I had been left to believe we owned an elephant.lol.
That the red triangle (hazard lights) in a car is an eject button for the kids in the back seat. Truly believed that was a great call for crashes or whatever. My dad told me that if we were too annoying on long car rides he would eject us via red button.
When I was little my sister told me tofu was koala meat and I believed it for years.
My cousins told me that in the Blackpool Tower kids play area, the Jungle Gym I think it was called, that if you jumped in a specific spot in the ball pool you’d go through a trap door into a secret room. Spent the whole of the time we were in there on a school trip trying to find it and didn’t have time for anything else. Bastards 😂.
Well I didn’t find out until a few years ago that narwhals are real and not mythical. I’m 35.
My older sibling would never let me drink 7up…because I was only 6 years old.
That the black dots on a ladybug tell the number of years they’re old. I was already 15 when I figured it out lol.
Told my kid that the squooshy stuff they felt when picking their nose was brains, worked a treat til they got a bad cold and had a meltdown in class that their brains were falling out. Fun meeting with the teacher.
My mum told me that if you fall down a sewer manhole then you turn into a ninja turtle, I was scared because I did not want to leave home and do ninja turtle stuff and also wanted my body to be human but now it would be nice to be a ninja turtle because I would not have to deal with life.
I thought that if you touched a frog or toad, you’d get warts. This led to an irrational fear of amphibians until high school biology class set me straight.
That my dog went to live on a farm.
When I was in the fourth grade I asked my mom if we were Irish (I think we were celebrating St Patrick’s day at school) and she told me that my grandmother was a leprechaun. So then I proudly told my teacher the next day that I was Irish because my grandmother was a leprechaun and the second I said it out loud I realized how stupid that was and have burned with shame thinking about it ever since.
When I was about 5, my dad told me that if I put salt on a birds tail, I could pick it up and hold it. I ran around throwing salt at birds for years before I realized he had been f*****g with me.
That if someone has red eyes in a photograph, that means there is a demon living inside them.
Told my wife the channel tunnel has a 2 mile middle part which is see through so you can watch the fish as you pass through. Completely forgot until about 5 years later when we used the tunnel and she was gutted she didn’t see any fish.
That if you swallowed a watermelon seed a watermelon would grow inside your stomach.Also, we had a lot of those big black and yellow garden spiders around. They would have these big zig zags of silk down the middle of their web and I was told they were writing spiders, and if you bothered them they would write your name and you would die. The zig zag was them practicing their penmanship.
There is a snail that lives up your nose and it’ll bite off your finger if you try and pick it. Older neighbor kid.I googled it and it’s from a Shel Silverstein poem. This has been in my head for 35 years.
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In my case, it was my mother and it was accidental.In about 2nd grade, I watched an old episode of Little Rascals in which one of the kids uses some “Vanishing Cream” and disappears.I was skeptical that something like this existed. I did not know that vanishing cream was just another name for skin cream and this was a joke.So I asked my mother if vanishing cream existed. To my surprise, she said yes. This was a revelation. I said “So . . . can we get some?” “Um . . . sure, if you want to” she said.As a result of this, I went to school the next day and told my friends I was going to get vanishing cream and disappear. And was embarrassed when I found out the truth.
That beta fish can change colors. My fish kept dying and my dad would replace them and told me they change colors. I had a lot of personal stuff going on and I was a dumb 5 year old so I believed him. He didn’t tell me the truth until I was 11 and my “second” fish had died. I had like 5 Nemo’s. Sorry Nemo.
Thought reindeers weren’t real, basically thought they were the same as unicorns until I went to a farm a few years ago and let me tell, you I was ASTOUNDED.
I grew up thinking that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from the Moon. It sounded so cool until I learned that, from that far away, you can’t see any specific human-made structures at all.
A friend told me that humans only use 10% of their brains and that unlocking the other 90% could give you superhuman abilities. Turns out, we use pretty much all of our brain, just not all at once.
When I was little my parents always told me to never turn the lights on when driving or else the cops will arrest me.I’m turning 24 and I just found out last year that it isn’t true..
The sun doesn’t actually heat up the earth, it’s actually the earth’s molten core that heats us up.So, in sixth grade, I overheard a partial conversation with my teacher and a fellow student. At some point, my teacher said something along the lines of ‘if the sun is what heats up the earth, why do mountains, which are closer to the sun, keep snow on them for longer than valleys?‘Now, that’s the only part of the conversation I remember and it left me wondering for a very long time(years, I don’t remember when I figured it out) about how it is that snow stayed around on mountain peaks for so much longer than everywhere else. They’re closer to the sun and proximity to heat makes things hotter, right? And when you stand on a road in the middle of the summer, you can feel the heat radiating off of it, right? And the hottest place on earth is Death Valley, which just so happens to be below sea level. So, obviously, if the sun is what heats up the planet, then the snow should melt faster the closer you are to the heat source, right? And if the earth has a molten core, clearly that should be radiating heat like mad and thus, that’s what’s keeping the earth warm, not the sun.It didn’t sound right, but I didn’t know why it didn’t sound right. I just lived with this giant question mark in my mind surrounding what is actually warming up the planet.I’m sure there are many reasons why this is obviously wrong, but for a 12 year old autistic kid, it was the head scratcher of head scratchers.Then I learned more about thermo-dynamics and air density and the fact that it gets warmer during the day which just so happens to coincide with the sun being out.I don’t like talking about it, because I’m certain you can get flat earthers to believe it and I don’t want that nonsense on my conscience.
Swallowing gum again and again would eventually create a giant gum mass in my gut that would need to be surgically removed , i wonder when ill have to schedule that procedure.
The cartilage that covers the larynx that usually protrudes on men’s throats is known as the Adam’s apple. My wife convinced me that the more hidden cartilage over women’s throats was called the Eve’s pear. Never questioned her about it bc she said it so often. One day I said it back to her and she had the biggest laugh I have ever heard, lasted about 10-15 minutes, and that was the day I learned that my wife came up with Eve’s pear.
In elementary school, a friend had me believe that if you kept a face like crossing your eyes or sticking out your tongue for too long, it would freeze that way. I was terrified of making faces for a while until I realized it was all a big joke.
I actually convinced my wife that the bump strips on the road were so blind people could drive too.She was quiet till we got on the offramp.“How do they know when to stop?”.
When I was 4, my (older) playmate cut my hair. I let her because she said we’d stick them back on after shower. The end result was so bad my mom had to shave my head. I remember going out of town with my family and people thought I had leukemia…
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I used to believe my uncle was actually a part of the Village People after my Dad said it in jest once. It was an awkward family gathering when I found out it was not true.
My dad told me in a car accident, a monkey under the hood was trained to push a button that inflated the air bag. I always tried to peek into any opened engine bay to see the monkey cause I wanted to pet it.
My dad told me it was illegal for kids to drink coffee and I didn’t question it until I was 16.
Kind of a different situation but my sister thought the “Blind Factory” was a store for blind people. My dad and I went along with it for years until finally telling her when she was around 30 years old that it was for windows….
That we were pennies away from being homeless and living on the streets- I think my dad was okay with me believing that because I stopped asking for things. Looking back now, both of my parents smoked, dad drank and would hang out at the bar all the time, he was also constantly giving his brothers money and buying them groceries and clothes for their kids. My brother used to think chocolate covered raisins were chocolate covered ants until he was like 14 but none of us, including him know why he thought/believed that….
When I was a kid, I was looking through a family album with my mom. There were some pictures with a giant dinosaur balloon wearing a hijab and a traditional dress.My mom said she was a relative (grandma I believe) I was so sad that I never got to meet her.
When I was about 6 my dad told me that the pumice I found washed up on the beach was in fact whale poo. I took it to school for show and tell the next day… thanks dad.
When I was a little girl my dad told me before he had his double knee surgery when he was in his 20s he was 6ft tall. After the surgery he was 5”9. I proceeded to tell people this story when I was younger until one day he overheard me and was like holy s**t you believed that?? He thought it was funny ..
Mustard came from wasps.
When I was young my mum told me that if I put live worms in milk they’d turn into gummy worms and I put a bowl of worm milk in my cupboard for weeks and it smelt HORRIFIC.
That carrots help your eyesight.
As a kid, my father told me Tapioca was fish eggs.
My older sister let me believe the dumbest things. For example: At the beginning of Lady Gaga’s song “Born This Way” she says “It doesn’t matter if you love him or capital HIM” and because I was like 10, I asked my sister if she meant HIM from the Powerpuff Girls. My sister said yes. I believed that until like 2 years ago, when I brought it up and my sister about died laughing. She’d forgotten she told me that, and found it hilarious that I was 18 and still thought that. Apparently, Lady Gaga meant God, not HIM 🤦🏼♀️
Not me, but my grandfather convinced my dad when he was a kid that the olive grows on the tree with the pimento inside.My dad had quite the uninformed argument with his second grade teacher over that one.
That the kid who played Mikey in the Life cereal commercials died from Pop Rocks and soda.
I’m allergic to dogs. When I was little, my dad told me that in the “olden days” rib restaurants (as in restaurants specializing in ribs), instead of napkins, had dogs under the table you would wipe your hands on. I don’t know when I finally thought it may have been a joke, but I was over 40 when I finally called him on it. His answer was that he “must have had a couple martinis that night.” Bravo, dad. Ya got me.
When i was about 5, my dad convinced me that i was born in china, and that him and my mom lived there when they had me (we were white mormons from the suburbs for context). i didn’t believe him at first, but he said “it’s true, that’s why you can speak chinese so well”. i proceeded to babble in gibberish and he said “see? that was like perfect cantonese”. i told the rest of the family what i had found out and they still hold it over my head lol.
That I’d get electrocuted if I showered during a lightening storm.
When I was about four or five, my cousins convinced me that the little white marks on fingernails occur whenever you lie.When I was about nine, my dad convinced me that a plastic cross glowed in the dark. I spent a few minutes in a closet trying to see it glow before I realized he tricked me. He was laughing when I exited the closet.He got me years later with his best one. When I came home from school, he was cooking stew on the stove. He asked me if I wanted any. After taking a couple of bites, he said, “You can’t even tell that it’s dogfood, huh?” I started to spit out until saw my dad start laughing.
When I was little my mother had a boyfriend who had a teenaged son that convinced me ketchup was brain matter. I didn’t touch it for years.
The blood in your veins is blue.
A friend in elementary school convinced me that if you buy everything from the Frog Coin shop in Super Mario RPG it unlocks the ‘Swamp Stick”, which is the most powerful weapon in the game. A timed hit instantly kills anything it hits. Over 20 years later, beaten the game numerous times, bought out the Frog Shop, and I’m still convinced this item exists and I just haven’t figured out how to unlock it properly.
One of my “friends” told me at MY birthday party when I was around 11 that she overheard my parents talking about how I was adopted. I knew it couldn’t be true, but I honestly never 100% believed that I wasn’t until I had an Ancestry test taken as a teenager and it showed my mom as a family member.
My husband convinced me the words to Hail to the Chief were- Hail to the chief, he’s the one we all say hail to, hail to the chief because he’s the chief and we say hail. I believed it for years and then was talking about it to mutual friends and knew it was wrong when I saw the amused looks on their faces.
A college education is the key to a good future.
My mother didnt like me drinking out of bottles, so she gas lit me into thinking there was a poison gas that would kill me at the bottom of the bottle…. strangely, she pulls the shocked Pikachu face when i dont trust her stories now.
My husband recently convinced me that spoons were invented in 1930.
That the policeman will shoot both me and my dad in the head if they saw me standing on the seat while he was driving.
I believed my dad was Jewish until I was 17 due to a joke he made when I was about 3 or 4.
A kid in school told me Nelly always had a plaster on his face because he tripped and fell on a birds beak and he was embarrassed of the scar.
A friend of mine once convinced his kid brother that mashed potato flakes came from trees, and that they’d put a big tarp underneath and shake it like they do some fruit trees and that the flakes would fall down like snow.The dummy believed it for the longest time lol.
When we first started dating, I convinced my then-girlfriend-now-wife (who is, in most cases, much much smarter than I am), that a female pro wrestler had to take a several months-long break because she could only afford an implant for one breast, and had to save up before getting the other one done.
There used to be this website called Peter Answers (it might still be up idk) and basically, it was like a fortune teller/tarot website where the person typing asks Peter a question but if they pressed a special key, they could type an invisible answer so when Peter “answers” it’s the text that the person typed. All for pranks, targeted to people who didn’t know this. So when I was a kid, my friend asked Peter how I would die and it answered"lung cancer” I couldn’t sleep for a week after and begged my dad to not smoke around me. I felt so stupid when I learned the trick.
My mom convinced me that tarantulas aren’t really spiders, they just look like them.
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