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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: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:03AM (2 children)
khallow, just admit it, you have lost again. You have equated informed opinion to bizarre right-wing ideological positions such as your own. So by your own petard, you are hoist. Your opinion is your opinion, only your opinion, supported by no facts or evidence, and you expect us to accept that as any thing more than the more refined and ethereal kind of bullshit?
The better part of Valor, my dear and Fluffy khallow, is to admit when you are fairly bested. To continue on like this bespeaks bad faith, and a lack of rational awareness. Please, Soylentils deserve better from you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @01:55PM (1 child)
Where is the AC complaining about pejorative turns of speech and the much less polished attempts at eloquence now?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @03:25PM
Here I am
Rock you like a hurricane (Are you ready, baby?)