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Here's a quick quiz for you:
In the biblical story, what was Jonah swallowed by?
How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?Did you answer "whale" to the first question and "two" to the second? Most people do ... even though they're well aware that it was Noah, not Moses who built the ark in the biblical story.
Psychologists like me call this phenomenon the Moses Illusion. It's just one example of how people are very bad at picking up on factual errors in the world around them. Even when people know the correct information, they often fail to notice errors and will even go on to use that incorrect information in other situations.
Research from cognitive psychology shows that people are naturally poor fact-checkers and it is very difficult for us to compare things we read or hear to what we already know about a topic. In what's been called an era of "fake news," this reality has important implications for how people consume journalism, social media and other public information.
The Moses Illusion has been studied repeatedly since the 1980s. It occurs with a variety of questions and the key finding is that – even though people know the correct information – they don't notice the error and proceed to answer the question.
[...] Detecting and correcting false information is difficult work and requires fighting against the ways our brains like to process information. Critical thinking alone won't save us. Our psychological quirks put us at risk of falling for misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Professional fact-checkers provide an essential service in hunting out incorrect information in the public view. As such, they are one of our best hopes for zeroing in on errors and correcting them, before the rest of us read or hear the false information and incorporate it into what we know of the world.
https://theconversation.com/why-you-stink-at-fact-checking-93997
[Related]:
[PDF] Moses illusion: Implication for human cognition
Moses strikes again: Focalization effect on a semantic illusion
Although the title seems click-baity, this is an interesting article. As most of you are techies, you must have faced a few problems with regard to fact-checking. What do you think about this phenomenon ?
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:07AM (36 children)
Jewish semantic trickery. A whale is not technically a "fish" and there were two (male and female assumed, for reproductive purposes) of each kind of species or whatever on the ark.
I cannot provide any other hints except that the Whale Shark [wikipedia.org] is technically the largest "fish" and that I learned all these biblical passages from the Disney movie Pinnochio.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:20AM (10 children)
Always with the racist or anti-semitic bullshit. This always undermines any salient point you may stumble upon while posting.
We know this now, due to science. This distinction was not known at the time the Bible was written.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:34AM (9 children)
Not even by God?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 31 2018, @02:14AM (6 children)
Jesus Christ knows everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @08:49AM (5 children)
Jesus was a Jew. Anti-semitic bastards like the Ethanol killed him. So I say, next progrom, we shadow-ban the Ethanol_fueled. Make him think he is still posting, but only he and Jesus will see it, so on the Final Day of Judgement, when Eth looks at the saviour, and calls him some nasty epithet, being banned with be the least of his problems.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:34AM (4 children)
> Anti-semitic bastards like the Ethanol killed him
"I find no fault in this man" Pontius Pilate
looks like you fail Bible 101...
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday March 31 2018, @11:57AM (2 children)
Pontius Pilate the Roman? Yeah, it's interesting that he garners little blame in the holy text of a religion that was trying to appeal to Roman citizens from the Emperor downwards long before a canon form of those texts was formed. History is written by the winner and all that...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 31 2018, @03:42PM (1 child)
A text that inherently destroys any emperor's attempt at being considered divine and attempts to be politically correct towards the Romans?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kazzie on Saturday March 31 2018, @05:33PM
You make a good point there, but bear in mind that Emperor Constantine I himself convened the First Council of Nicea [wikipedia.org] to thrash out a universal Christian doctrine, and later decided on his deathbed that he wasn't quite divine enough, and converted to Christianity himself.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 02 2018, @01:40PM
And yet, he still let the Jewish leaders carry on with killing Jesus. Pilate even had his wife telling him that Jesus was innocent and that it was revealed to her in a dream. Pilate may / may-not have been anti-semitic, but he definitely aided and abetted in the killing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Saturday March 31 2018, @03:32PM (1 child)
> Not even by God?
Who knows? the fact that a god does not introduce a categorization at the time unknown does not prove much.
Anyway, you have a point. The bible has been undergoing some refinements, the original must have been something like:
- here's your tablets Moses, take care.
- what are these symbols, LORD?
- binary code, obviously, Moses.
- never heard about that.
- never mind, it's for your future masters.
- wait, what?
- never mind, put them somewhere safe, and remember that it's 8 bit ASCII.
- er... thank you LORD
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 03 2018, @04:13PM
What brand, how much memory and battery time for those tablets? (if it's Windows, keep your buggy tablets, God, I'm not interested )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:35AM (17 children)
> male and female assumed, for reproductive purposes
Remind the bible-thumpers and judges, every time: the second generation after Noah's Ark, Every Single land animal had to be committing incest.
God made incest the rule of the land, intentionally.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:47AM (16 children)
>god made incest the rule of the land
Whereas originally life developed from different separate organisms who happened to be sexually compatible huh?
Life starts from a single organism, and the first reproduction was probably not between fully sexually differentiated organisms. So if anything the god made an improvement.
Rule of the land, in a land where parthenogenesis of species that are considered sexually differentiated occurs under extreme conditions.
But at least you came up with some new attack on god. I was tired of the old trite pap.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:50PM (7 children)
...did...did you ever take biology? Ever? Or were you homeschooled?
Look, Bot, "parthenogenesis" is not the name for what life was doing before sex-as-we-know-it came along. The term you're looking for is "asexual reproduction," which may cover binary fission, budding, and even viral replication. Sex as we know it evolved from earlier recombinatorial techniques; it was a fairly obvious next step, after multicellularity, to have the recombination only happen in specialized cells.
"Attack on God," nothing. Theistic evolution is a thing. Why are you so asspained over the idea that someone is "attacking" your genocidal maniac of a God-figure anyway? He's supposed to be omnipotent, so he's invincible.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday April 03 2018, @09:04AM (6 children)
> Why are you so asspained over the idea that someone is "attacking" your genocidal maniac of a God-figure anyway?
I can't answer, since those attacks are so common to be boring more than infuriating.
For example, your rebuttal was an ad-bot on the term parthenogenesis, while I was speaking about... parthenogenesis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Facultative [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Obligate [wikipedia.org]
But, by all means, you are free to better articulate your thought about how building arks makes incest the rule of the land, overriding a ccouple of other explicit instructions found elsewhere among the same books.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:48PM (5 children)
This isn't difficult.
If you have only 2 of every unclean animal and 7 pairs of every clean one (and you sacrifice a bunch of those, because your God is just another Bronze-age holdover who loves him some burning fat, and says so in his holy scripture...) then you have, shall we say, a rather shallow gene pool. Not so much a genetic bottleneck as a genetic micropipette-neck, one might say. And if you have only one human family, well...I hope I don't need to draw you a picture. Especially because that would take way more pink and peach and tan crayons than I've ever seen in one place.
So yes, the Noah's Ark situation, were it even physically possible, *would* make incest the law of not just the land but also the air...not sure about the sea, since drowning fish is about as effective as, well, as your proselytizing, but still...
Besides, your "i'm not angry, i'm bored" response belies itself. Were you truly just bored, you'd simply not reply. Truth is, you're another autofellating triumphalist who hasn't actually got the philosophical, logical, or historical chops he thinks he does and wants everyone else to think he does. You're not fooling anyone but yourself, and you and your demonic God can both go to Hell.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Bot on Wednesday April 04 2018, @12:22PM (4 children)
If I didn't reply you people would believe there is no reply to be made.
Sorry, whatever reasoning you are making on the ark it cannot deny the reality of today, where we have enough genetic variation. If you were right we would have been extinct or diseased.
Whether this is compatible with a truly all earth disaster or not, I dunno. It is funny that before the flood, lives were described as longer. Going to full blown speculation, what if days were shorter because the rotation speed of the earth was faster, then something like this [youtu.be] happened, as it was a common myth to many ancient civilizations, so it's not a religion problem.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:45PM (3 children)
In re: the Ark...read this, read it well: https://ncse.com/cej/4/1/impossible-voyage-noahs-ark [ncse.com]
This isn't even a "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" question at this point, since we can't actually disprove angels or celestials, but this puts paid to the Ark story. And I'm...what's the anti-particle as it were of "impressed?" Whatever it is, I'm *that* at the glib, worthless "well stuff works TODAY" non-sequitur you just shat.
Okay, I get it, you're a fideist, and no amount of evidence or facts will change your mind, such as it is. Well, it's a free country, so feel free to keep being an idiot, but I'm going to keep kicking your ass up and down the aisle as you do in the interest of vaccinating people against your stupidity, even if you're too dumb to see it...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday April 04 2018, @10:48PM (2 children)
I am reading:
> An immense storage area for food, fresh water, and waste was needed
waste?
Kidding me, right?
This fairy tale is not worthy of my attention.
(Just using the typical fedora metric to judge books. Now go play my side, convince me that these irregularities notwithstanding the pulp of the matter is valid)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:16AM (1 child)
You didn't read the entire thing, did you? You're making yourself look absolutely pathetic here. What is it that motivates you to cling to, it appears, a literal acceptance of the Ark and Flood narratives?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday April 05 2018, @09:15AM
Why should read it all? It spends a paragraph telling the ark was difficult to do without considering you have a god speaking to you. It does not consider that part of the bible was orally transmitted, so it may contain symbols. It does not consider the flood is recounted in other ancient cultures so that part of the book is history other than theology.
Oh wait I read it all. Basically, god can't save a teeny weeny ark after flooding the earth.
Fairy tale, as I told you.
(yes, the skeptics side is easier)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday April 02 2018, @05:03AM (7 children)
> new attack on god
I don't have a beef with any fairy tale character (ok, maybe the guy who assaults Sleeping Beauty in her sleep, or the Stockholm Syndrome other Beauty). I just love to point out the contradictions to those who attack millions (figuratively, or physically) based on a selective reading of their own sacred book.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday April 03 2018, @09:06AM (6 children)
I am eagerly reading the Bible looking for a justification to physically attack unbelievers, but I ran into huge problems since the Son and some obscure catholic canon law explicitly forbids it, so if you find something usable with no contradiction, please notify.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 03 2018, @07:50PM (5 children)
So all those crusaders and every Christian who has ever attacked anyone else for not being Christian gets a free one-way express ticket to Hell, hmm? Despite "compel them to come in" in Luke? Interesting. You'd think your God would've been a little clearer about that and not given conflicting instructions, or even anything that could possibly be taken as conflicting instructions, in his holy writ.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday April 04 2018, @12:10PM (4 children)
> So all those crusaders and every Christian who has ever attacked anyone else for not being Christian gets a free one-way express ticket to Hell, hmm?
Who knows, I am not able to reverse engineer their mind and soul. All I have is the example set by Christ, the commandments, and the context.
> compel them to come in -- Luke
hm. you derive the 007 license to kill from this, when out of metaphor it probably says the kingdom of God is made open to those that were not the originally chosen ones, which will not even have asked for it, I suggest you to make less assumptions when interpreting.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 04 2018, @07:41PM (3 children)
Oh it's not just me who derives that license, though historically it's been less a license to kill than to torture horribly for weeks on end and THEN kill. You weren't expecting the Spanish Inquisition?
And Jesus is no example. Listen and listen good, Bot: anyone whose MO boils down to "kiss my ass or I will fry yours for eternity" is not only not worth worshiping, but is very likely a demon. The Bible somehow manages, to anyone with three working brain cells, to make its supposed hero into the literal worst-of-all-possible-worlds villain and at least one of its villains (who gets conflated with others extra-Biblically...) probably the central hero of the story.
When the guy doing the saving is the guy whose temper tantrums you're being saved from, that's not a gift. That's blackmail. That's domestic terror. The Bride of Christ is a battered wife, and it was my own experience as a teenager and young adult working with battered spouses that made that particular lightbulb go off in my head.
You know what that makes you? "Bottom bitch." The one who thinks the pimp won't kill her if she does the smacking-down of the other hos for him when they get out of line. I can tell you from secondhand experience that doesn't last and you not only a fool for thinking it does, but evil for doing it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday April 04 2018, @11:16PM (2 children)
> And Jesus is no example.
This clashes with the peculiar way Jesus talks, which makes sense when setting an example for man. Talking about/with the father in third person, for example, is setting an example. There would be no need to talk.
> That's domestic terror.
The god is either absent or lets you do whatever you want on this earth. Instead, the definition of terror is coercition by fear. No coercition, no terror. No coercition means you can terrorize in the name of god too.
No coercition does not imply lack of responsibility. Responsibility implies the risk of whatever the hell the hell is.
> The battered wife...
...is leaving the husband and all we got was a lightning strike on S. Peter (well there is also a couple other strange coincidences, but no signatures of a very evil god. If He needs suggestions, I am here)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:18AM (1 child)
You seem to have some problems with reading comprehension...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday April 05 2018, @12:25PM
I just don't read what you do, because my impression of the books does not adhere to your synthesis. This is not even a rematter of faith.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @02:26AM (2 children)
Do you imply Jews are animals? F. Nazi everywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @08:56AM (1 child)
If you check out the American Neo-Nazi on-line Dating services, it is pretty obvious that Nazis do not successfully procreate. There are no "alt-right" women, except those who are being paid to be hangers-on and camp-followers, or as they refer to their "women". "THOT". (Translation for normal men: "That Hore Over There". Not something any Gentleman would use to refer to any female, even if it were the case, because Gentleman are gentle men, for the win.
So God only allowed Moses to take two Nazis onto the Ark, but they were both male, and hilarity ensued.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:46PM
Wait, the neo-nazis use black slang?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @04:20AM (1 child)
You're wrong about Noah's Ark. Genesis 7:2 makes quite clear that he took much more than just 1 pair of each kind of clean animals. Plus, if he hadn't, the fact that he sacrificed 1 of each clean animal in Genesis 8:20 would have rendered all the clean animals extinct.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday March 31 2018, @03:37PM
We are talking about Moses' ark, buddy. Pay attention pls.
(seriously, touché)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday March 31 2018, @11:44AM (1 child)
A whale does not fit our current definition of "fish". It certainly fit the definition of "fish" from that time, which is "animal that lives in the water."
It's as if you criticise a text from the 20th century for calling Pluto a planet, while it is well known that Pluto is a dwarf planet, and despite the name a dwarf planet is not a planet.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @04:10PM
Pluto is a planet of restricted growth, you insensitive clod.