0:05

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This

0:08

is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

0:10

and today we're bringing you an episode from the Vault.

0:13

This one it was about a psychological

0:15

effect called the Moses illusion. It

0:17

originally published February.

0:20

All right, let's jump right in Welcome

0:25

to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart

0:28

Radio. Hey,

0:35

welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert

0:37

Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,

0:39

and today we're going to be talking

0:42

about an interesting observation in

0:44

cognitive psychology that deals

0:46

with language that starts off

0:48

as kind of just a funny little quirk about

0:51

the way we process certain kinds of sentences

0:54

but ends up having some some broader and

0:56

more interesting implications about knowledge

0:58

and language and thought both. The best

1:00

way to start here would just be to

1:03

illustrate the prime

1:05

example of the effect we're going to be talking

1:07

about. And to do that, I think we need

1:09

to do a bit of Bible trivia. Rob,

1:11

are you ready to go to Sunday School. Let's

1:17

do it. Let's go to Sunday School. Okay, And if

1:19

you I'm gonna ask you a few questions about

1:21

the Bible. If you get one wrong, you are going to get a

1:23

paddling. Whoa, what the

1:26

domination? Is this one of the ones that means

1:28

business? All right? Okay,

1:30

so how about let's see it

1:33

so, um, in in the garden

1:35

of Eden, what type of animal is it

1:37

that tempts Eve to eat from the tree? Oh,

1:40

that's a snake, that's

1:42

right, the serpent it is? Uh. Okay.

1:45

When after God created the world,

1:47

on which day of the week did he rest? Oh?

1:50

That was the seventh day. You got that

1:52

one, right, Okay, next one, How

1:54

many animals of each kind did Moses

1:56

take on the arc? Oh? Too, of course. And

2:00

there you go. That is the prime

2:02

example. Now, Rob, I know you were playing along because

2:05

you already know the trick in here what I actually

2:07

said when I asked that question. Hopefully you were playing

2:09

along at home as as you're listening, or maybe

2:12

you're not at home, wherever the heck you are. Um,

2:14

you may have thought the same thing, right,

2:16

Moses took two of each animal on the

2:18

arc. But in fact, in the Bible story

2:20

which maybe not everybody knows, but maybe

2:23

you do know this story of of

2:25

the arc and in the Book of Genesis, and

2:27

you do in fact know that it was not Moses

2:30

who did that. It was Noah in the story

2:32

who took animals on the arc. And yet

2:34

you thought after I said the question that the

2:36

answer is too and didn't even register

2:39

the fact that the name was wrong. Yeah,

2:42

It's it's an interesting uh

2:45

phenomenon to uh, to encounter,

2:48

you know, others, but also in yourself because

2:50

you m there's

2:52

several different ways to look at and we'll get into a number of these

2:55

here. But like even just now when you ask me those questions

2:57

like the serpent one, I'm totally firm

2:59

on that, like I of the I know that aspect of the

3:01

story inside and out. Uh. And of course

3:03

I know it's the seventh day that he rested on the

3:05

God rested on he she yet ohever

3:07

you want to look at it. Uh, But

3:10

there was still like this moment of hesitation because

3:12

I was like, it's seven, right, it is seven. I don't

3:14

want to come come off with the wrong

3:16

answer on the podcast. Um.

3:18

But then when one encount and granted already knew

3:20

the answer to the third one, but there is

3:22

this temptation though too, like when you when you

3:24

know why, when you know the

3:27

answer to something like you just you can just

3:29

jump in without hesitation, Like there's a certainty

3:31

that just propels you. Um,

3:33

you're excited to get your answer in

3:36

and then you know, get the acclaim and

3:38

the praise for getting it right. Yeah, there's

3:40

a certain kind of way in which a question, especially

3:43

a question posed in quiz format,

3:45

where you feel you are under performance

3:47

pressure and you're being evaluated

3:49

for whether or not you're going to get the right answer. It

3:52

sort of takes away some amount

3:54

of critical thinking that would normally go into

3:56

reading a sentence and causes you to

3:58

focus more exclusive lee on like just

4:01

can I get the right answer? And

4:03

so it's not hard to see how now, and this of

4:05

course might not be the only explanation for why this

4:07

is happening, but it's not hard to see

4:09

why you could pretty easily miss a

4:11

major error in a question that

4:14

is not you know, that is not necessarily

4:16

something that you're fuzzy on to begin

4:18

with, Like you could know perfectly well

4:20

that it's Noah in the story, and yet

4:22

it just goes completely over your head. Yeah,

4:25

and you know, we've we've been doing this podcast quite a

4:27

while at this point, and occasionally this this comes

4:29

up in our data, not so much in things

4:31

that we've researched for the podcast, because

4:33

I feel like if we've been crunching

4:36

the facts or the numbers, you know, or the you

4:38

know, we're we're more likely to be putting a lot

4:41

of thought into the situation and

4:43

we're maybe just a you know, a little hesitant

4:45

anyway. But the times where I've personally

4:48

like said something that was absolutely incorrect,

4:50

it would be something that I felt so sure about

4:52

that I just belt it out without fact checking

4:54

it at all. You know, Uh, something you generally

4:56

it's something not directly related to the episode,

4:58

but something that just kind of comes up in organic

5:00

conversation. That's exactly right. Yeah,

5:03

it's when you feel so confident that you're

5:05

not even being careful, you know that

5:07

that you can really make some big blunders.

5:10

Uh. There were some other questions I was reading about

5:12

in one of the I think the earliest

5:15

study on this phenomenon we're talking about today.

5:17

Some of the other questions were in the biblical

5:19

story, what is Joshua swallowed by?

5:21

Of course, that's Jonah that is swallowed

5:24

by the whale or the great fish, the sea monster.

5:27

Joshua of course is the the conquering

5:29

leader of the Israelites as they go about Kanaan.

5:31

Another one I really liked was in the novel

5:33

Moby Dick. What color was the whale

5:35

that Captain Nemo was after? I

5:38

think I think I might have fallen for that one. Yeah,

5:40

I mean, I wonder how much of the ego is

5:42

involved here, because it's like, you're kind of like, all

5:45

right, let's get to the part of this where I get to talk

5:47

and get to be the one is correct, like

5:49

like fast followers through all this other stuff. I don't care.

5:52

I have an answer and it is the correct one.

5:55

Yeah. Um, that's that's

5:57

quite perceptive, and I think that's right. Um.

6:00

But anyway, so this question that we're

6:02

looking at today, that this effect of not

6:04

noticing that the question says Moses

6:07

and just barreling right on through to the answer,

6:10

even if you know that it's actually Noah

6:12

in the story and not Moses. This

6:14

effect has a name, and it's known as the

6:16

Moses illusion. It's a particular

6:18

type of semantic illusion that

6:21

occurs when we are trying to process

6:23

certain kinds of sentences,

6:25

and this was first explored in a classic study

6:27

in psychology. It was a study called from

6:30

Words to Meaning a Semantic Illusion,

6:32

published in the Journal of Verbal

6:35

Learning and Verbal Behavior in nineteen eighty one

6:37

by Thomas D. Ericsson and Mark E. Mattson.

6:40

And I think it's interesting that this original observation

6:43

about this, this question about Moses, it

6:45

comes out of a mysterious question

6:48

about how we process the

6:50

meaning of sentences. Uh. The

6:52

authors of this study ask, quote, how

6:54

are the meanings of individual words

6:57

combined to form a more global

7:00

description of meaning? And

7:02

if you start to think hard about this

7:04

question about the human capacity for language,

7:07

I would argue it is absolutely astonishing.

7:10

It's almost baffling the way

7:12

that we're not only able to associate

7:15

symbolic meaning with certain sounds

7:17

coming out of our mouths or glyphs on a page,

7:20

but you're able to combine those

7:22

things endlessly to form and comprehend

7:25

infinite variations of combinations

7:28

of those sounds, to create sentences

7:30

that actually means something and other people can understand

7:33

what you mean when you say them. Like,

7:35

I think this type of capacity for language

7:38

is one of the features of the natural world

7:40

that to me seems closest to magic.

7:43

Yeah. Absolutely, And I feel like that the mostest illusion

7:45

is one of those things that that reveals the magic

7:48

that makes you more aware of

7:50

the magic trick that is

7:53

inherent to your just everyday perception

7:55

of reality and how you engage with facts

7:57

and information and the fact that you're just

7:59

like it. It's crazy that we're

8:01

just constantly throwing together sentences,

8:04

almost effortlessly, that are combining

8:07

all these words together. Each word has

8:09

a huge range of of possible

8:11

meanings and associations, and and

8:13

that we are able to do this with such fluency,

8:16

I mean, sometimes with more fluency than

8:18

other times. But uh, but yeah, it is

8:21

truly astounding to me. And so

8:23

the authors here are sort of talking about this

8:25

process and some of the question marks

8:28

that existed at the time in science about

8:31

how we form sentences and how we comprehend

8:33

sentences. So they start in their introduction

8:35

by talking about how quote a central process

8:37

in language comprehension is the construction

8:40

of a global description of the sentence

8:43

meaning from the meanings of individual

8:45

words which make up the sentence. Right,

8:47

So you know what individual words mean,

8:49

but somehow, like we're just talking about, you can combine

8:52

them into these overall gist

8:54

forms of what somebody is getting

8:56

at. You know, like, like, what kind

8:58

of answer is being quested by a question

9:01

that might be made up of ten different words

9:03

that are all you know, throwing your brain in ten different

9:05

directions. Yet you can get the gist

9:08

of the question and figure out what is getting

9:10

at pretty quickly actually, And they

9:12

talk about how there's been a lot of work on how

9:14

language processing works in the realm of

9:16

artificial intelligence, but at the time of this paper,

9:19

there was still a lot that we didn't know about

9:21

the global meaning of

9:23

of a sentence and and how that's constructed

9:26

in the brain. And so they summarize

9:28

the way they're starting this paper by saying, uh,

9:31

it has become widely assumed that sentences

9:33

are subject to exhaustive analysis

9:35

and consistency checks during

9:37

processing, but this is not

9:39

the case. People do not always

9:41

understand what is said to them. Sometimes

9:43

they fail to understand, sometimes they

9:46

misunderstand. And while these failures

9:48

of comprehension are sometimes due to lack

9:50

of appropriate knowledge or error on the part

9:52

of the speaker, there are other cases

9:54

in which such failures occur when the

9:57

understander possesses all the knowledge

9:59

necessary for correct understanding.

10:02

This paper explores such a phenomenon

10:05

and then they give the example of the Moses

10:07

illusion that we already talked about. The question

10:09

that they pose is how many animals

10:11

of each kind did Moses take on the

10:14

arc? And so what the authors here found in their

10:16

original study and eighty one was that the

10:18

majority of people failed to notice

10:20

a problem with the question and simply

10:23

answer to despite later

10:25

displaying knowledge that it was in fact

10:28

Noah and the story and not Moses.

10:31

And so that it's not that they just

10:33

don't know that much about the Bible, like they can

10:35

answer the question correctly when it's posed,

10:37

like, hey, was it Noah or Moses

10:39

who took animals onto the ark? They can

10:42

answer that correctly and yet still fail

10:44

to notice a problem in the question. And

10:46

studies find that people do this even when they're

10:48

not rushed. They still make the mistake

10:50

when they are given unlimited time to think

10:53

about it. Another interesting thing here

10:55

they found was that the the effect is

10:57

not caused by people misreading

10:59

or miss hearing the question, because people

11:02

still make the Moses illusion mistake

11:04

even if they themselves read the

11:06

question out loud, including the name

11:08

Moses, so they are saying Moses out

11:10

of their own lips, and they still might not

11:12

notice it now. In this first study,

11:14

the authors conclude that what's

11:17

very important, because they're getting at things about

11:19

the semantics of words and a sentence

11:21

and how the meanings of sentences are formed. They

11:23

conclude that shared semantic features

11:26

of the mix up are probably significantly

11:29

contributing to the effect. In other words,

11:31

this effect would probably not be nearly

11:33

as pronounced, maybe not even maybe totally

11:36

non existent if the items were not

11:38

in some way closely related

11:40

in the way that's a two Bible characters

11:43

are. If you ask, you know, how

11:45

many of each kind did Captain Hook take

11:47

into the arc, the effect probably vanishes.

11:50

Another study, I was looking at side at an example

11:52

I found really funny, which was how

11:54

many animals of each kind did Nixon

11:57

take on the arc? And yeah,

11:59

and and I like that because they were saying,

12:01

Okay, well, what if it's just like phonological

12:04

similarities, like Nixon and Noah have

12:06

some similarities. They start with the same sound,

12:08

they've got the same number of syllables. But

12:10

clearly when you put Nixon in the sentence,

12:12

people notice. And so

12:14

the Moses illusion is just one

12:17

persistent example from a class

12:19

of mental phenomena that could be called

12:21

knowledge neglect. This is a term

12:23

used by a couple of authors that will cite

12:25

later in the episode. But knowledge

12:27

neglect and simplified terms, is when

12:30

you behave as if you don't

12:32

know something even though you definitely

12:34

do know it. And the Moses

12:36

illusion is of course an example of knowledge

12:38

neglect, because the problem isn't that people

12:41

think Moses was the biblical character

12:43

who built the arc. You can know that it was Noah,

12:45

not Moses. If you're asked directly,

12:47

you'll get the answer right, but you don't

12:50

notice the problem when it's phrased in

12:52

a question like this. And of course

12:54

it's not just Moses and Noah. There are plenty of other

12:56

sentences in studies that have shown the same

12:58

thing. Though it is interesting that

13:01

Moses and Noah are like sort of the perfect

13:04

example of it. I think there might be particular

13:06

characteristics of these two names and characters

13:09

that make it like that make people especially

13:12

prone to the mix up in this case, though it is

13:14

true for lots of other types of you know,

13:16

words and objects. Well, speaking

13:18

of that, let's do a quick breakdown and just

13:20

especially for folks who are not that up on Moses

13:23

and Noah. Uh, just to give

13:26

a little you know, basic information about each of

13:28

them, and give me, give me the magic the

13:30

gathering card on each one. Okay, well let's

13:32

start. Let's start with with Noah. Okay,

13:35

certainly the the older of the two, the first

13:37

that in the chronological order. So

13:39

Noah was h is

13:41

written as as a was an antediluvian

13:44

patriarch in Jewish, Christian, and

13:46

Islamic traditions. The basic story,

13:48

God grows sick of humanity, so he tells Noah to round

13:51

up his family and two of every animal and get them

13:53

on a big old boat the arc, uh,

13:56

the first of two arcs we're going to discuss here, so

13:58

they alone can survive the noble flood

14:00

that's about to happen. Yeah. Now,

14:02

one interesting variation. I think most people

14:05

probably wouldn't even their brains wouldn't go this

14:07

far into the question. Uh.

14:09

It is actually more complicated than two of

14:11

every kind, because it also says in the

14:13

Noah's ark story that I think

14:15

they're supposed to bring more of every

14:18

kind of like certain types of animals, like

14:20

certain clean animals and just

14:22

two of the unclean animals or something. But

14:25

but yeah, when you get it gets

14:27

a little more complicated right, I mean it's all kinds

14:29

of animal management. Yeah, which

14:31

I would love to see somebody fail the

14:34

test of of the the Noah illusion

14:38

the Moses illusion here by by

14:40

going into a lot of detail about the you

14:42

know, the the actual biblical text while still

14:45

failing. I think that right. Well, it was fourteen

14:47

of every kind of clean animal alright.

14:51

Well, anyway, Noah strengths megaproject

14:54

management and animal handling. Obviously

14:56

weakness, alcoholism, that's

14:59

a major part of the store, right. Um. Actors

15:01

of note who have betrayed him. Uh,

15:03

this is not a complete list, but

15:05

these are the main main ones. John Houston, Russell

15:08

Crowe, David Thrillful.

15:11

This is a guy on Shameless. He also played Dr

15:13

John d and Elizabeth the Golden Age. John

15:16

Voight, David Rentall. Uh,

15:18

David Rentall is the guy who played Aries

15:20

Targarian on the Game of Thrones

15:23

show. Oh interesting, wait a Aries

15:25

to the Mad King. I believe.

15:28

So that's the main areas, right, Okay,

15:30

yeah, well maybe I guess for

15:32

some reason I thought there was another one. I am wrong.

15:34

Um, okay, So the I've got a

15:36

really funny story about John Voight playing

15:38

Noah. I remember seeing this one, oh,

15:41

I have. It was made for TV. I think

15:44

came out when I was in like middle school, and

15:46

it is not at all faithful

15:48

to the Bible, and to say, very

15:51

hollywooded up version of

15:53

the Noah's Arks story. John Voight

15:55

does play Noah and the arc is attacked by pirates.

15:58

What. Yeah, it's attacked

16:00

by like water World pirates. I mean, it

16:02

might as well be Dennis Hopper and the Smokers,

16:04

but it's actually I think they get attacked

16:06

by pirates led by the biblical character

16:09

Lot. Okay, alright,

16:11

well, if that is in the Bible, at least

16:13

they're they're playing around with it. Was this

16:15

brought up at all when um Uh,

16:19

when Darren Aronofsky was being

16:21

criticized for the plot of

16:23

his Noah movie, which has like um

16:25

Uh giants and Nephelim

16:27

in it. Oh, I kind of liked his Noah

16:30

movie. It was way more more

16:32

faithful to I think it included

16:35

stuff from non canonical ancient texts,

16:37

but was actually inspired by ancient texts.

16:40

Okay, alright, I still haven't seen it. It's it's

16:42

been on the list for a while. All Right,

16:44

let's talk about Moses real quick. Okay, So Moses

16:46

comes later. He's an Old Testament prophet

16:49

um central figure in the narrative

16:51

of the Exodus. In the account,

16:53

he helps the Jewish people in their liberation from

16:55

Egypt Egyptian captivity and following

16:58

Tim the tin Plegs of Egypt. He assists him

17:00

in the Exodus, and he also is involved

17:02

with an arc. But it's the Ark of the Covenant,

17:05

which we've discussed on the show before. Not a

17:07

boat, but a golden vessel

17:10

that contains sacred items. Yeah.

17:12

I would assume that the words are related

17:14

because they're both like a container of kinds,

17:16

like a big box. Okay,

17:19

So Moses his strength community

17:21

organizing of course, and sorcery his

17:23

weaknesses. This is this

17:25

is kind of interesting, I guess, because it's either not obeying

17:28

God and everything or obeying God and

17:30

everything, depending on who you ask, right, uh,

17:33

I mean, if you ask God, he would say, well, he

17:35

didn't obey me and everything. That's why I didn't get to

17:37

go into the Promised Land. But especially

17:40

modern critics are like, it seems like he he may

17:42

be followed the letter of the law a little

17:44

bit too. Um uh too.

17:46

Seriously, I seem

17:48

to recall at one point him commanding the

17:50

death penalty for a dude who was working on the

17:52

Sabbath. That seems a little harsh. Yeah, it seems

17:54

seems a little harsh. Um.

17:56

Okay, So actors of note who have betrayed Moses,

17:59

well, Charlton has obviously, Burt

18:01

Lancaster, mel Brooks, Ben

18:03

Kingsley, Val Kilmer, though

18:05

that that may have just been a voice role.

18:08

And Christian Bale. Now, the

18:10

last one is interesting because as I

18:12

was looking at these actors was one of the interesting things

18:14

is even though they're basically interchangeable, like

18:16

the same, Um, you

18:18

know, in most of these cases, you're dealing with

18:20

the same white dude that could play either of these

18:23

characters in a big Hollywood production. Um.

18:25

But it's interesting that I

18:27

don't think anyone has actually played

18:30

both Moses and Noah, though

18:32

Christian Bale reportedly

18:34

came very close because Darren Aronofsky originally

18:37

wanted Christian Bale to play the title

18:39

role in his Noah film, but scheduling

18:42

conflicts prohibited that from happening. Oh

18:44

he couldn't because he was filming like terminator

18:47

Mick g or whatever. Yeah. I

18:49

don't know, but um, but imagine

18:51

if if Bale had played both Noah

18:54

and Moses. What would that have meant for

18:56

the Moses illusion? Would it have made

18:58

the would would it just destroy are semantic

19:00

understanding of reality? Maybe

19:03

there's a secret counsel. There's like no Hollywood,

19:05

no actor can play both of these roles

19:08

because it will totally tear our understanding

19:10

of of of facts and fiction apart.

19:13

I could see that. I mean, so, I

19:15

think what some of the authors here are proposing is

19:17

that the the fact that it's

19:19

not just that Moses and Noah are words

19:22

that kind of sound similar. They've got some similar

19:24

consonants and uh in the same number

19:26

of syllables, similar vowel sounds.

19:28

That's all true, and that does seem to matter, But

19:31

it's also very important that they are semantically

19:34

related, that they are both characters from

19:36

the Torah, from the Old Testament, and

19:39

that sort of links them together. And I think the more

19:41

you could do to link them even further together

19:43

and associate them in in our minds, like

19:46

yes, having one actor play both, I think that

19:48

would actually probably make people even more

19:50

susceptible. Yeah, um,

19:52

I was thinking about this too, Like obviously we've

19:54

already touched on a few extra examples of

19:56

this. But I was trying to come up with with other

19:59

examples that would play on the same energy here,

20:01

and one that came to mind would be, uh,

20:03

if we were to look to Chinese mythology, if we

20:05

were to say, hey, how did the Yellow Emperor

20:08

decide how to order the animals of the zodiac?

20:10

And you might respond with, oh, well, there's this cool

20:12

little story about a race for the animals,

20:15

etcetera. Um, but it wasn't the Yellow

20:17

Emperor. It was the Jade Emperor, who's an even more

20:19

primordial god ruler than

20:21

the Yellow Emperor. Um. So I don't

20:24

know that seems like it could be could play in

20:26

the similar could

20:28

work in a similar way to the Moses and

20:31

Noah illusion. Or how

20:33

about this in Return of the Jedi, what was Django

20:35

fet swallowed by? Oh? I just see.

20:37

For some reason, I feel like that one doesn't work because

20:40

then learn as you as soon as you say the word

20:42

django, like people's alarms

20:44

go off and like, wait a minute, what are we talking about?

20:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well I don't maybe

20:48

it would. Okay, here's one for Avatar,

20:51

the last Airbender fans out there, Um, we're

20:53

hearing from several of them. Which

20:55

nation was the avatar Apa

20:57

born into. I don't know if that one or

21:00

not. But of course ang is the last and

21:02

not the last avatar, and is the avatar uh

21:05

Appa is the sky by sin that he rides

21:07

on. Ah. I see, so I

21:09

don't know ang Appa. Maybe that works not

21:11

sure? Well that went over my head anyway.

21:20

So you might think, well, now that we have told

21:22

you there is such a thing as the Moses illusion,

21:24

uh you know you would never fall for it, right

21:27

because you know you will

21:29

now always having this knowledge

21:31

in your mind. Notice when there will be substitutions

21:34

of this kind in a question or a sentence.

21:36

But it turns out that's not necessarily true. Uh

21:39

So there was this original research from nineteen

21:41

eighty one, but there have been a bunch of studies

21:44

in the decades since then replicating

21:46

the original finding and further

21:48

probing the effect to figure out what's

21:50

going on in our brains. Uh So,

21:52

I wanted to talk about some typical findings.

21:55

First of all, some things that were summarized

21:57

in h in a few literature reviews I was

22:00

looking at. One was in a book chapter

22:02

by Elizabeth J. Marsh and SHARDA

22:04

Umanath. It was a

22:06

book called Processing Inaccurate

22:08

Information published by M. I. T. Press.

22:11

In that book sounds like a scream,

22:14

but their chapter is called knowledge neglect

22:16

failures to notice contradictions with stored

22:18

knowledge and will revisit this chapter a few

22:20

times later in the episode. But they

22:23

summarize some things about the

22:25

Moses illusion. Uh so they

22:27

say that most of the time people will fall

22:29

for the Moses solution even though they actually

22:32

know the difference between Moses and Noah, as

22:34

demonstrated with later interrogation. So

22:36

you can ask people questions like who

22:38

built the arc or who took the animals into

22:41

the arc, and they'll get the answer right, but they

22:43

still fail to notice that it's Moses in the question.

22:46

And this can be accomplished with other similar

22:48

Switcherus actually included rob

22:50

a list for you to look at of questions

22:53

like this one. I like, is um, what

22:55

did Goldilocks eat at the Three Little

22:57

Pigs house? And a lot of people

22:59

will is to answer porridge, even though you

23:01

can later ask them like, hey, whose

23:04

house did Goldilocks go into? The three

23:06

bears or the three Little pigs? And they of course

23:08

know that it was the bears. Now that One's interesting

23:10

because for me anyway, there's

23:13

a there's an associated mental image of

23:15

the bears or the pigs. Uh.

23:18

They they look rather different, uh, and

23:20

and ultimately they have different functions in the stories,

23:23

whereas Moses and Noah are more interchangeable.

23:26

And it is the same sort of character and

23:28

there of course the same species, because the

23:30

pigs are there to be the victims of the big

23:32

bad wolf story and to get beaten, and

23:34

the bears are there too. I don't

23:37

know what, just hang out in their house, I guess right,

23:39

But I can still imagine someone uh falling

23:42

for this or or you know, having airing

23:44

in answering this question, because in a way,

23:47

again, you're you're racing into the finish line. You're picking up

23:49

on the you know, the basics

23:51

of the question, even though you're you're you're

23:53

skipping over this. This this this

23:56

misinformation that's embedded in the middle

23:58

of it. Right. Though, it's interesting

24:00

that you mentioned racing to get to the answer. I do

24:03

think you're basically right about that, except

24:05

it doesn't really seem that time is

24:07

a factor here, because giving people

24:09

extra or even unlimited time

24:11

to think about the question does not eliminate

24:14

the effect does it, So it doesn't

24:16

seem to result from people being in a hurry

24:18

in terms of time, though I think you could

24:20

still think about it as people being in

24:22

a hurry in terms of just like wanting

24:25

to get to the part where they answer the question.

24:27

I don't know, maybe that could be like self imposed

24:29

time limits, even if they're not imposed

24:32

by somebody externally trying to rush

24:34

you through. Now, Also, in a typical

24:36

setup for these Moses illusion experiments,

24:38

readers will be warned that some questions

24:41

will contain incorrect presuppositions,

24:43

so it's not just like a trick question where they don't

24:45

know this is coming. They'll be told, Okay,

24:48

some of these questions will be valid questions,

24:51

in which case you should just answer them,

24:53

but other questions will have incorrect

24:55

presuppositions, and when you come across

24:58

one of those, you should note that the question

25:00

is not valid. Now, the interesting

25:02

thing is, I would think something like that would almost

25:05

completely erase the effect, because you're putting

25:07

people on guard to be like interrogating

25:09

the questions. But it doesn't. You can

25:11

put people on guard like that and they still

25:13

fall for the Moses solution. In

25:16

these experiments, it does seem to be a very

25:18

robust effect, like a substantial number

25:20

of people will fail to detect errors

25:22

in questions, even though they later showed

25:24

that they possessed the knowledge to answer

25:26

them correctly. Uh. The exact

25:29

percentages of the effect, though very

25:31

a good bit UH from that chapter by

25:33

Martian Umanov the

25:35

they right quote. Overall, the Moses solution is

25:38

robust, with readers answering from fourteen

25:40

percent to forty percent to

25:42

fifty two percent to seventy seven

25:45

percent of distorted questions depending

25:47

on the particular experiments. So they're citing a number

25:49

of different results there. The fourteen percent was

25:52

by van Jarsveld

25:54

Dikstra, and Herman's was

25:58

Hannon and Donovan and too, and

26:00

one was Ericson

26:02

and Mattson in one

26:04

and was Barton and Sandford

26:06

inte. And I would imagine

26:08

these differences have a lot to do with like what

26:11

what exactly types of warnings

26:13

you're giving people ahead of time, what exactly what

26:16

exact examples are used? As

26:18

we've said, you know, it's it's clear that different

26:20

questions are more prone than others.

26:23

Like I think more people would probably fall for

26:25

the Moses Noah confusion than

26:27

for the Three Little Pigs, Three bears confusion.

26:30

Yeah, I have to say some of the the examples

26:32

that you included on a list here, it's it's interesting

26:35

to run through this because even though I'm not

26:37

encountering them as actual questions

26:40

like one and someone in one of these studies would be I

26:42

can certainly pick up on the ones that I feel

26:45

like would have been more likely

26:47

to fool me, like, for instance, what

26:49

kind of treated Lincoln chop down? What kind

26:52

of treated Washington chop down? Um?

26:54

Like I can imagine myself sort

26:57

of this being a story I'm not tremendously

26:59

in the it in, but have a version off

27:01

stored away I can instantly

27:04

skip, or even not instantly, but even

27:06

with some thought would be like I think, yeah, cherry Tree,

27:08

cherry Tree, that's the one, you know, even if

27:11

said Lincoln. Yeah, even if it's said Lincoln,

27:13

because also I don't know Lincoln. Something

27:16

about like their stories about him, you know,

27:18

we also have sort of tall tales about him and his exploits,

27:21

and um, the one about him,

27:23

Uh, there's one about him answering

27:26

a duel. Somebody challenged him to a duel and he

27:28

says, well, I get to choose the place

27:31

and the weapon. So I choose, uh,

27:33

what's sledgehammers and five feet of

27:35

water or something? DAVI that he's tall

27:37

and the other person was short, something like that. I have no

27:39

idea if that's an even a legitimate

27:41

story, but I have it in my head. So I have

27:43

an image of Lincoln holding some sort

27:46

of long handled tool, so it

27:48

fits in nicely into the story,

27:50

like I can easily overlay one over

27:53

the other. Yeah. One of the examples

27:56

that I feel extremely confident

27:58

that I would not fall for is the

28:00

one of what is the name of the Mexican

28:02

dip made with mashed artichokes? I

28:06

definitely, I mean, I just know artichokes.

28:08

No, that is not what it is. You don't

28:10

mash artichokes, do you. I mean, I haven't

28:13

seen it. Could could make

28:15

an artichoke paste, but

28:18

artichoke guacamole. That sounds gross, I

28:20

mean, but yet artichoke depp is

28:22

amazing, but artichoke guacamole

28:25

just says it sound right? But

28:28

anyway, So Marcia and Umanov also

28:31

note that um that that error detection

28:33

is lower when items uh that

28:36

items are swapped are similar in a couple of

28:38

ways. We've already mentioned these, but they

28:40

reiterate that it helps when there's

28:42

phonological similarity. So do the words

28:44

sound close to each other? I feel like, uh,

28:47

Avocados and artichokes, like they have

28:49

some similar vowel sounds, and they start with the same

28:52

letter, but they sound different enough to me

28:54

that I'm immediately strong. I think somehow

28:56

like the hard k sound coming towards

28:58

the end of the word art a choke, but coming

29:01

towards the beginning of or,

29:03

I guess in the middle of avocado. Somehow, that makes a

29:05

big difference in my brain. And

29:08

then, of course, as we've been saying, semantic

29:10

similarity, are the concept somehow similar

29:13

or related? Would we put them in a kind

29:15

of meaning next us together in the brain?

29:18

Uh? And and of course it's notable that the

29:20

Moses versus Noah one meets both of

29:22

the criteria. They sound similar and they're

29:24

related. So anyway, it's just this

29:26

interesting fact about our brains that something

29:29

about being asked a question

29:31

like this. So trying to process a sentence

29:34

like the questions in these studies causes

29:36

us to ignore the fact that the contents

29:38

of the sentence conflict with things that we

29:41

know to be true, and I wanted to mention

29:43

one other study I was looking at that. This one

29:46

is by Hadency Bottoms,

29:48

Andrea and Slick and Elizabeth J. Marsh

29:51

from published in the journal Memory

29:54

called Memory and the Moses illusion failures

29:56

to detect contradictions with stored knowledge

29:59

yield negative memorial consequences.

30:01

Now we can revisit some of the things in this

30:04

more as we go on, but I just wanted to note

30:06

a few things that they bring up. Uh

30:08

So, first of all, they note some other previous

30:11

findings in their introduction. One

30:13

is that um error detection

30:16

improves, so people are less likely

30:18

to fall for the Moses illusion when

30:20

the error appears in what they call the cleft

30:23

phrase or the main focus of

30:25

the sentence. So there are ways that you

30:27

can basically ask the same question but just

30:30

sort of rearrange the words to make

30:32

people more likely to notice the

30:34

problem. So, if you take the sentence

30:36

how many animals of each kind did

30:38

Moses take on the arc? The word Moses

30:41

is kind of syntactically de

30:43

emphasized in that sentence, you know, it's

30:45

not like the main focus of the way the sentence

30:48

is phrased. You can re orient

30:50

the words to make moses more prominent

30:52

in the sentence, in which case people are more likely

30:54

to catch the problem. Yeah, Like

30:56

I also feel like having the word show up

30:58

so late in the sentence. I'm I'm,

31:01

I'm. Like, you're always predicting where sentences

31:03

are going, you know, yes, so you've kind of already

31:06

filled it in to a certain extent, like you know, you

31:08

know who we're talking about. Uh, even

31:10

if you end up using the wrong name. Um,

31:13

yeah, I think you're exactly right about that. Like

31:15

that, once you've heard I don't know, you get

31:17

like four or five words into the sentence, you you sort

31:20

of are like you already know what it's going to

31:22

be, and you're just sort of like okay, you like

31:24

mostly ignoring the words that come after that.

31:27

Another thing that they point out that's interesting

31:29

is that error detection improves

31:31

when questions appear in a difficult

31:34

to read font And they

31:36

say this is because it reduces

31:38

processing fluency, which in turn makes

31:40

material seem less familiar

31:43

and less true. And this was found

31:45

by Song and Schwartz in two thousand and eight.

31:48

And this, of course, this comes back to our old friend.

31:50

Processing fluency, a cognitive

31:52

factor that I believe is one of the most underappreciated

31:56

influences on our thoughts and beliefs

31:58

and behavior. We talked about

32:00

it in our episode on the illusory truth

32:02

effect. Basically, processing fluency means

32:04

how easy is it for this

32:07

stimulus to be processed by the brain and

32:10

uh, and it came up in the illusory truth Effect episode

32:13

because I remember. The illusory truth effect

32:15

is where statements you've encountered

32:17

before seem more true than

32:19

statements that are new to you. And

32:22

one possible explanation for this is that

32:24

familiar statements are easier for the

32:26

brain to process than unfamiliar ones

32:29

are, and at some level, the brain

32:31

makes an equivalence between that processing

32:34

fluency, how easy it is to process

32:37

this incoming sentence because it's familiar and

32:40

factual trustworthiness. They actually

32:42

have nothing to do with one another, but the brain maybe

32:44

uses a little bit of shortcut there. So

32:48

are you saying that in the future for our

32:50

our shared notes, Joe, we should use chill

32:52

or font instead of whatever

32:54

we're using now. Yeah, that would

32:57

that make it less like I mean, I think that would

32:59

generally slow us down and make it

33:01

harder to do the podcast, But it also might

33:03

make it less likely that we would

33:05

just like flub words here and there, because

33:09

it would be a like really effortful, laborious

33:12

process to get through every single thought,

33:15

which you know sometimes it is anyway, but that

33:17

that's on us, um. But anyway,

33:19

So Song and Shorts here in two thousand and eight found

33:22

that simply by making statements harder

33:24

to read so you put them in, you said, Chiller,

33:26

I was thinking, Papyrus. I don't know what what

33:29

actual thought they used, but it would just

33:31

make people more likely to spot errors

33:33

in the questions instead of just rolling

33:35

right over them without noticing. And you

33:37

know that makes sense to me, Yeah, yeah, it

33:41

does. It is interesting that that's how our brains

33:43

work, though, Yeah, it is sort

33:45

of counterintuitive at the same time, like you might

33:47

just assume that if something's harder to read,

33:50

you would be less likely to catch errors

33:52

in it. But yeah, I think there's some kind of process

33:54

where it's like slowing you down. It's not allowing

33:57

you to just like skip over the parts

33:59

that it seemed like yeah, yeah, okay, Moses

34:01

whatever. It's like like a bit of food that's

34:04

extra chewy, so you're going to really taste

34:06

this, You're really going to get a feel for the texture. There's

34:08

no just wolf in this down. Yeah. Now,

34:10

In the study by Bottoms at All, they were

34:13

looking at the question of whether participants

34:15

can detect errors in questions better

34:18

if there are just more errors

34:20

overall in the sample of questions. So, if

34:22

I give you a bunch of questions and like, I

34:24

don't know, seventy of them contain

34:27

errors of this kind in them, are people

34:29

more likely to catch them? And it looks

34:31

like the answer is yes. Like, if you if you've got

34:33

people on guard because they were just constantly

34:36

problems with these questions, their guard

34:38

goes up and they do seem to make the Moses

34:40

illusion mistake less often. And

34:43

it strikes me that that could be possibly,

34:45

or at least partially because once

34:48

you start, you know, showing people questions

34:50

where most of them contain a problem,

34:53

or even just a large minority of them

34:55

contain a problem, people probably

34:57

start uh interacting with the

34:59

question less as questions

35:02

and becoming less focused on just getting

35:04

the answer and start looking at

35:06

them more like a puzzle where you're you're

35:08

trying to parse the sentence very clearly.

35:11

Yeah, Yeah, It's like, how is this trying to trick

35:13

me. Yeah, but

35:15

then there's one kind of scary implication

35:18

from this paper the author's right

35:20

quote. More generally, the failure to detect

35:22

errors had negative memorial consequences,

35:25

increasing the likelihood that errors were

35:27

used to answer later general

35:29

knowledge questions. Methodological

35:32

implications of this finding are discussed, as

35:34

it suggests that typical analyzes likely

35:37

underestimate the size of the Moses illusion.

35:40

Overall, answering distorted questions

35:42

can yield errors in the knowledge

35:44

base. More importantly, prior

35:46

knowledge does not protect against these negative

35:49

memorial consequences. And

35:51

Robert, I think you had a note about that. We can talk a little

35:53

bit more about that in a bit, but yeah, basically,

35:55

there there is some evidence that just

35:58

steamrolling over an incorrect

36:01

fact in a sentence, even when you know

36:03

otherwise, can can later damage

36:06

your ability to recall that fact correctly.

36:09

Yeah, yeah, so it Yeah,

36:11

as as well discuss here. It's it's

36:13

not just a situation where oh, well this is a quirk.

36:16

This is interesting. The brain does this. I mean, it

36:18

is that, but it it has it has

36:21

greater implications. Yeah. Now

36:23

I want to go back on the other side and say

36:25

that when we encounter

36:28

things like this, you know, illusions that humans

36:30

often fall for. When you read about a certain

36:32

type of I don't know, cognitive

36:35

bias or or something. I

36:37

think our tendency is often to at

36:39

first react like, wow, our dumb brains

36:41

were so stupid. But but I think

36:44

there's another way to think about it, and

36:46

that's this. How amazing

36:49

is it that we have such a powerful

36:51

command of language based reasoning that

36:54

we can answer questions

36:56

even though key elements of the sentence

36:59

do not match with our knowledge base.

37:01

I mean, think about the trouble that a

37:03

computer would run into trying

37:06

to do the same thing. Like, While

37:08

it's an interesting case of an illusion

37:10

failing to notice facts that conflict with

37:12

our existing knowledge, it's also

37:15

a demonstration of an absolutely

37:17

amazing capacity for language

37:19

comprehension, even when there are severe

37:22

errors in the questions or sentences that

37:24

we're trying to comprehend, Like somehow

37:26

our brains are so good at

37:29

getting what seems to be the gist the

37:31

intended global meaning of a sentence,

37:34

even when pivotal items in that sentence

37:36

are wrong and should be pointing you off

37:38

in the wrong direction and make you totally confused.

37:41

Yeah, yeah, um, you

37:44

know, I can't help but be reminded in all this about

37:46

the drawing of the bicycle that we've touched on

37:48

before about often, I mean it's different.

37:50

We're not dealing with language, We're dealing with a uh

37:53

like a mental image. Like we all

37:55

think we have the mental image of a bicycle pretty

37:57

firm in our heads, and yet when put to the

38:00

test, when acts asked to draw a bicycle,

38:02

um, we're often floored. You know.

38:05

Yeah, that was a different one of our cognitive Allusions

38:07

episodes. That was the the illusion of explanatory

38:10

depth. Yeah, the issue where people

38:13

they tend to think like that they understand

38:15

how something works until they're asked to

38:17

explain it. So somehow the brain has

38:20

a way of representing a sort of

38:22

pat Tempken comprehension, you

38:24

know that it puts up this facade of yeah, you

38:27

know how that works. I I I know how

38:29

I know the parts of a bicycle. I know all

38:31

the parts of a can opener. I could make one basically.

38:34

But then if you are asked to like explain the

38:36

steps of how it works or draw all the parts,

38:38

you're like, uh, yeah,

38:41

I thought about this a lot watching the Outlander

38:44

TV show about the time traveler goes back

38:46

in time and she's recreating various things

38:48

that she knows about from the future, and like,

38:50

God, like, how many of us, you know, we go if we

38:52

were to do that, if we were to go back in time, we

38:55

might tell somebody about all these marvelous things

38:57

like oh yeah, penicillin and uh

38:59

you know, by sickles and whatnot, and it'd be like, oh great,

39:01

how did it work? And it'd be like, uh yeah, no, no idea,

39:04

I have some some vague so I have some

39:06

of the facts that I had, but not near enough

39:08

to reproduce anything that I'm talking about.

39:14

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Coming

39:17

back to this thing about how the Moses

39:19

ilusion is, it is and could be looked

39:21

at as an example of how

39:24

amazingly adaptive at

39:26

comprehension our brains are. Actually

39:28

found a book chapter discussing this very

39:30

aspect of the effect. So the

39:33

authors here were hik Young Park

39:35

and Lynn M. Rader. Uh

39:37

And this was a chapter in a book,

39:40

and the chapter was called the Moses Illusion.

39:42

I think it was published in two thousand four. And

39:44

so they're talking about different potential explanations

39:47

for the Moses illusion. What's going on in the brain,

39:49

and they conclude that they, or at least they

39:52

argue that the most likely explanation for

39:54

what's going on when we fall for this is

39:57

something they call the partial match HYPOTHESI

40:00

us so I just want to read from their conclusion

40:02

that's along the lines of what we've just been talking

40:04

about. Quote. Research

40:06

on the Moses illusion demonstrates that people

40:08

have difficulty in detecting distortions

40:11

or inaccuracies when a distorted element

40:13

is semantically related to the theme of the sentence.

40:16

Why should our cognitive system be so

40:18

tolerant of distortions and find

40:21

it so difficult to do careful matches

40:23

to memory. It might seem that partial

40:25

matching is a less than ideal way to process

40:28

information. However, the partial

40:30

match process is not only common

40:32

and normal, but also a necessary

40:34

mechanism of our cognitive system. This

40:37

partial match process enables useful

40:39

communication and comprehension. Very

40:41

few things that we see or here will

40:44

perfectly match the representation

40:46

that we already have stored in memory.

40:49

In order to answer questions, we need to

40:51

be able to use an acceptable match.

40:53

In order to understand a new situation

40:56

and map it onto something we have already seen

40:58

or done, we must apt slight

41:00

variations every day. At many

41:03

levels, we accept slight distortions

41:05

without even noticing the process. Occasionally

41:08

we notice a distortion and choose to ignore

41:10

it, but more frequently we do

41:12

not even realize that distortions

41:15

have occurred. A rigid comprehension

41:18

system would have a difficult time. Indeed,

41:20

many of our cognitive operations are driven

41:23

by familiarity based heuristics

41:25

rather than careful matching operations.

41:27

The Moses illusion is an example of how

41:30

the adaptive human cognitive system

41:32

works. Everyday, cognitive processing

41:35

must be based on simple heuristics,

41:37

such as matching sets of features,

41:39

rather than exact matches, as very

41:41

few tasks require exact

41:43

matches. Sentences do not match

41:46

stored information. Faces change,

41:49

voices may change slightly, even

41:51

our pets and friends change over time.

41:53

Therefore, it makes sense that people do use

41:56

partial matches in the normal course

41:58

of matching to memory. Rcial

42:00

matching is immutable because it is

42:02

the most efficient way for memory to operate

42:05

given the nature of the environment in which we

42:07

live. And so, yeah, this really

42:09

makes me think along the lines of what

42:11

we were just saying a few minutes ago. Like the Moses

42:13

illusion is kind of funny when you notice

42:16

yourself doing it, but it's also it's

42:18

also kind of a superpower. Yeah,

42:21

Like, imagine if you went to a video

42:24

store, which we still have one in Atlanta.

42:26

Imagine you went there and you were to say, um,

42:29

yeah, I'm looking for a particular movie. Um it

42:31

started Anthony Hopkins and it had a puppet

42:34

in it. And instead of being able

42:36

to piece that together and tell

42:38

you which movie you're talking about, what if

42:40

they were to say, Okay, keep listening, I need you

42:42

to list the entire cast. I need all

42:44

of the details. We have to make acent

42:46

match here. Or Yeah, imagine somebody comes into

42:49

the video store and they say, I'm looking

42:51

for The Godfather too, and they

42:53

say, sorry, we don't have that. What

42:56

they actually have is The Godfather Cole and Part

42:58

two. Oh man, that that's

43:00

not completely unbelievable and not with

43:02

our video store, but just sort of like the cliche video

43:06

store. You mean the

43:08

god Father part to Philistine.

43:13

I mean, that's a kind of silly example, but I think the

43:15

authors of this chapter are exactly right that every

43:18

basically, every single moment of our lives,

43:21

we are testing reality against

43:23

our memories, and we have to do so in a fast

43:25

and loose way, and our ability

43:27

to do so in a fast and loose way without

43:30

relying on every detail to be an exact

43:32

correct match is is

43:34

what allows us to live adaptively,

43:37

to sort of like be thinking creatures

43:40

looking for exact matches between

43:43

the current case you're observing and what's

43:45

stored in your memory. Like I made

43:47

the comparison to a computer earlier.

43:49

Today, I guess we're more familiar with more adaptive

43:52

types of computer functions that are based on like

43:54

AI or like huge amounts of machine learning

43:57

or something like that. It makes me think about like the

43:59

early old days of dealing

44:02

with the you know, computer programming, where like

44:04

if you slightly misspelled, like you

44:06

know, um, you're you're playing Zork

44:09

or something and you type like wolke

44:11

north the w o l K, it's not is

44:13

to be like that is not a valid action. Like

44:16

yeah, it's amazing nowadays, how just like

44:18

how much thumb fumbling I can

44:21

put into typing something in search and

44:23

it still knows what I'm talking about. I still

44:25

um able to floor it every now and then because I'll get really

44:27

reckless and u and

44:30

it'll just have no clue. But but more often

44:32

than not, it'll it'll guess what I'm going

44:34

for. But that is amazing because that

44:37

is the the the input

44:39

receiver whatever, you know. This piece of technology

44:41

it's called AI because it's becoming

44:43

more like our brains. It's becoming usefully

44:46

sloppy and and loose in the way our

44:48

brains are. Now.

44:50

I guess we could talk about a couple of other possible

44:52

examples of knowledge neglect or implications

44:55

of knowledge neglect. One that I came

44:57

across that I thought was pretty funny is something

44:59

that seems fairly

45:01

narrow, but it's known as the yolk phenomenon.

45:04

Uh, So it goes like this apparently was originally

45:07

described in an article in the Psychological

45:09

Review by Gregory Kimball

45:12

and Lawrence Pearl Mutter. Uh

45:14

this was in the year ninety if I didn't already

45:16

say that, But it consists

45:18

of asking somebody a list of questions

45:21

and and it's designed to produce a

45:23

certain answer. So you say, what

45:25

do we call the tree that grows from acorns?

45:28

And you say an oak? And then you say,

45:30

what do you call a funny story joke?

45:32

What's the sound made by a frog croak?

45:35

What's another word? For a cape cloak.

45:38

What do we call the white of an egg? And

45:40

most people say yolk um,

45:43

which is obviously wrong, And people are not

45:45

confused about the white of an egg

45:47

being called the yolk. But it seems like instead

45:49

the implication is that there's a certain kind of

45:52

pattern seeking that overtakes

45:54

semantic processing here, like

45:56

the brain starts to conclude while you're answering

45:59

these questions because of the

46:01

established pattern that rhyming is more

46:03

important than the actual meaning

46:05

of the word that rhymes and you know it

46:08

rhymes march exactly. It's the rhymes

46:10

reason effects sort of. I mean, uh, which

46:13

I think we talked with that in our episode on anti

46:16

metaboli. But I was wondering,

46:18

I wonder how many items in a list

46:20

like this it takes before the majority

46:22

of respondents will give the

46:24

yolk type answer, will ignore the known meaning

46:27

of a word and just supply the nonsensical

46:29

rhyming match. I don't

46:31

know. I feel like I'm very susceptible to this

46:33

one, because I I recently was

46:35

trying to do a recipe and it got

46:37

kind of confusing, and I had a moment where

46:40

I had to ask myself, wait, which part

46:42

is the yolk and which is white.

46:45

Um, it was only a momentary lapse, but

46:47

there were a lot of things going on. There was a lot. I was like

46:49

having to take them apart, you know, as one of those

46:52

we have to have the egg white and one bowl and

46:54

the yolks and the other. And it was I was making

46:56

a su flight That's what it was, and

46:58

an applicated dish. Yeah, and I did

47:01

had I had not had coffee yet either, so I had

47:03

that going for me. Um. It was

47:05

successful. But yeah, there was that moment where I'm

47:07

like, okay, I have to have so many egg whites and

47:09

then a different number of yolks and

47:12

which ones which? Now? Uh so I

47:14

would totally fall for this. I mean, did

47:17

you succeed? Did it rise? Yeah? I had

47:19

Rise. It was good. Yeah. I don't think I want

47:21

to put it in regular weekly rotation, but it

47:23

was. It was good for a special treat. I feel

47:25

like the soufle a that is just one of the most notorious,

47:28

tricky, tricky dishes for people

47:30

who aren't I guess like working in you know, kitchens

47:33

or bakeries every day. Yeah, it was still it was

47:35

tricky. It was tricky for me even though I went

47:37

with a very what seemed like a very simple recipe

47:39

that that didn't steer me too wrong, but still

47:42

I got lost a little bit for a moment. Well,

47:45

I'm impressed, So I was. I was reading

47:47

through this book chapter as well, um on

47:50

Knowledge Neglect by marsh and Humana,

47:53

and uh, yeah, this was this was very interesting.

47:55

Um so yeah. They point to a couple of

47:57

other misconceptions. I don't think we've mentioned these

48:00

on on the episode thus far, but one

48:03

of them was Toronto is the capital

48:05

of Canada, and a

48:07

blow to the head cure's amnesia, which I guess

48:09

is like a TV you know, cartoon kind of a thing.

48:12

But these are all like examples of misconceptions

48:15

that you might have in your head that are are not true.

48:17

They point out that you know it tries, we might misconceptions

48:20

are impossible to ignore, and

48:23

uh, your best hope if you can't

48:25

avoid hearing misconceptions altogether,

48:27

which again is probably impossible, uh,

48:29

is to have them immediately corrected. But

48:33

that would be difficult, Like you'd have to have like a

48:35

standing conversation with somebody who

48:38

would not fall for your miscommunication,

48:40

you know, or you'd have to just be constantly, uh

48:43

like with with paranoia, just fact

48:45

checking everything you come across. Otherwise

48:48

some of them are going to get past your your

48:51

guard and they're not going to be instantly corrected.

48:54

And then they're just kinda they're just kind of in there.

48:56

Like even if you hear otherwise later, you

48:58

might still fall back to the earlier misconception.

49:02

Yeah, or it's just or it's something that doesn't come up

49:04

in daily life, you know, so you just there's

49:06

never been an opportunity for it to be corrected. I'm

49:08

reminded of that episode of This

49:11

American Life where they started off

49:13

by talking about this, uh, this this particular

49:15

individual who had just grown up

49:17

thinking that unicorns existed, like

49:20

it had never been corrected for, and so she

49:22

just had that misconception in her head until

49:24

finally she's at a party in

49:26

there and there's a conversation, like just a random

49:29

chatter about, hey, what are your favorite animals or something,

49:31

and she she mentions the unicorn and there's

49:33

like this awkward silence. So

49:36

why would that be all that awkward? I mean, would

49:39

she like the unicorn which is real? Well,

49:42

I think it was, it was probably why if I'm remembering

49:44

it correctly it was. There's a certain bit of ambiguity

49:46

where people are like, is she joking or oh

49:49

my goodness, she's not joking. She thinks there. But

49:51

it also makes all of us, I think, wonder, which,

49:54

what what misconceptions do we have just

49:57

rattling around in our brain right now? We

49:59

have no idea, but they're just they're ready to go at

50:01

any moment, you know, they can be loaded into

50:03

the torpedo tube of conversation or podcasting

50:06

or the next job interview, just just

50:09

just ready to go when you have no idea. I'd

50:11

say one of the most common edits I have to

50:13

make to this show before we release it as I

50:15

realized that I just sort of said something

50:18

that I knew was true. And then later

50:20

I'm listening back to it, I'm like, wait a minute, I

50:22

don't think that's right. Yeah, yeah,

50:24

I've definitely definitely done that before. But

50:27

well, I mean when I said it, I wasn't even wondering, you

50:29

know, just now now. The authors

50:31

here, they they touch on, of course, the fact

50:33

that the prior knowledge seems like it should

50:36

be able to protect us, uh, you know, and

50:38

and yet quote surprisingly, the effects of exposure

50:41

to misconceptions are not limited to cases where

50:43

people are ignorant of the true state of the world. We

50:45

touched on that already. Um. Another

50:48

great example they bring bring out is

50:50

a plane crashed, where did they bury the

50:52

survivors? Okay, which

50:55

you know obviously you're not going to bury survivors,

50:57

you were going to bury the dead. But again,

50:59

this is another question where you've kind of filled in all

51:01

the blanks, you know. Uh, they by

51:04

the time the survivors is the last word

51:06

in the sentence. Uh, and you fall for

51:08

it, right, So it's not like you think that

51:10

the survivors get buried, but you could be trying

51:13

to answer the questions just because like that's gone

51:15

straight past you. Yeah, And they

51:17

really drive home in this that knowledge neglect isn't

51:20

just a momentary lapse in memory, but rather something

51:22

with real consequences for memory. If

51:24

you don't recognize the error, the error

51:27

can become coded into your memory, into

51:29

your worldview as fact. Uh.

51:32

And because that error was recently encountered,

51:35

it's more easily accessed. So

51:37

again we have to remember that items in our

51:39

memory are not made of stone, they're

51:42

made of clay. Merely accessing

51:44

them can change them. And our most accessed

51:46

memories are the most changed memories

51:49

of all the ones we can trust the least.

51:51

Um So, an air that pops to mind

51:54

quickly is more likely to be thought of as

51:56

fact, not Oh I heard once

51:58

that X. I'm not sure about X, but I

52:01

think X, but rather just X is true,

52:03

X is the answer. Yeah, So I guess this is This

52:05

is connecting back to that finding we talked

52:07

about earlier that you know, um that

52:10

even against your existing prior

52:12

knowledge, like misconceptions or

52:15

errors that get by you unnoticed

52:17

in one of these Moses solution type sentences

52:19

can later damage your ability to remember

52:21

the actual fact of that sentence correctly.

52:24

Um, it can undermine your knowledge that it was

52:27

in fact Noah, potentially. And

52:29

this makes me think about the broader phenomenon of people

52:32

who are really trying to argue a point will often

52:36

structure sentences to try

52:38

to get something past you really

52:40

quickly. In the non pivotal part

52:43

of the sentence. It's almost like we have an intuitive

52:45

grasp of the Moses solution type

52:47

thing, where like a, I

52:50

don't know, you see people like like arguing about politics

52:52

on TV or something, and like so one

52:55

person will pose a question to the other person,

52:57

and the the pivotal part of

52:59

the sentence that's supposed to be in dispute, maybe

53:02

is is one part of the sentence, but then

53:04

in a different part of the sentence, there's also

53:06

like a disputable claim that's

53:09

just like shoved in there and goes by real

53:11

quick, right right, Yeah. If you end up

53:13

with a statement that has some some

53:15

mistruths sort of sprinkled in there

53:18

that are not key to the like the main you

53:20

know, talking point, or even the main untruth,

53:22

you know, that's that can often be the

53:25

nefarious thing too. It's like you catch the larger

53:28

um misconception or lie

53:30

in the statement, but then there are other lies in there that

53:33

you're not paying attention to because of the big one. Now,

53:35

the authors here they point out that improved monitoring

53:37

can help, you know, this is stuff like we're talking about,

53:40

like putting things in a different font, etcetera.

53:42

Um, But drawing attention

53:44

to errors can have the opposite effect,

53:47

increasing suggestibility, which

53:50

is is weird therefore to it as an ironic effect.

53:52

Um. Plus, many manipulations

53:55

designed to promote monitoring may

53:57

actually fail to do so, And they say it's difficult

53:59

to predict which manipulations will actually

54:01

work. So again, there's no there's no like

54:04

one guy, like, here are the three steps

54:06

you need to take to uh to keep

54:08

this misinformation from leaking into your brain.

54:11

I think a lot of what I take away from this is that,

54:13

uh, I don't know, being well informed

54:16

is an ongoing process that last

54:18

your entire life. And it's not a question

54:21

of like just getting the right facts in

54:23

the bank one time and then you're set.

54:25

You know. Yeah, there's

54:27

a lot of upkeep involved and a lot of

54:30

just continual pruning and not just new weeds,

54:32

weeds that have been in there your whole life

54:34

sometimes or seeing right bap the very

54:37

least. Um. Yeah.

54:39

The authors why, they also drive home that ultimately

54:42

we know a lot more about how people come

54:44

to misremember events versus

54:47

misremember facts, especially

54:49

when errors are are the errors

54:51

involved contradict stored knowledge.

54:53

So uh, you know, you know, again we

54:55

get into the complexity of memory, the

54:57

different types of memory that we have going on the

55:00

brain. Um, and we we still have

55:02

a lot more to learn about just

55:04

how this all comes together. Yeah.

55:07

Now, you know, here's a question that comes to mind. Um, I

55:09

wonder if anyone has constructed a Moses

55:11

illusion statement using Bilbo and Frodo.

55:14

Oh yes, that might so. Um,

55:17

like what was Bilbo carrying into

55:19

the fires of Mountain Doom? Yeah,

55:22

that's sort of thing. I don't know, of course, I guess you would want

55:24

to you'd want to try and construct it right

55:26

so that you get Bilbo there at the very end or

55:29

Frodo at the very end, depending on how you're you're you're

55:31

messing around with its rum

55:34

who was who was the dragon whose lair

55:36

was infiltrated by Frodo Baggins. Yeah,

55:39

yeah, that sort of thing that might work. Yeah, I

55:42

said, Bilbo and Frodo or even closer together

55:44

than Noah and Moses. Yeah, I mean they

55:46

are certainly that they actually

55:48

overlap, as opposed

55:50

to being separated by by long stretches of

55:53

time. Very very similar

55:55

characters actually related, right, they are related?

55:57

Yeah? Um, yeah, it's

56:00

that they would work. What Uncle, great

56:02

uncle Uncle, So I always forget what happened

56:04

to Frodo's parents. I've read it and I

56:07

still forget it. I'm gonna say, uncle,

56:09

all the all the Hobbits are cousins. Yeah, they're

56:11

all related. Actually, yes, all

56:14

right, well there you have it. We'd love to hear from

56:16

everybody about this, because of course this just touches on

56:18

how our brains work and how it now they are

56:20

brains work with with new

56:23

information, be it accurate or

56:26

or or or misconception. Uh

56:28

So I think everybody out there has something to

56:30

share. Which of these Moses

56:33

illusions worked the most on you? Which

56:35

ones I've worked on you in the past. Uh, we'd

56:37

love to hear from you. All right. If

56:40

you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your

56:42

Mind, you know where to find it. You can find

56:44

the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed wherever you get

56:46

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56:48

of Stuff to Blow your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

56:51

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56:53

We've got the Artifact on Wednesdays. You've got Weird

56:56

House Cinema on Fridays in a vault episode

56:58

on the weekends, Huge things.

57:00

As always to our excellent audio producer Seth

57:02

Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in

57:05

touch with us with feedback on this episode

57:07

or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,

57:09

or just to say hello, you can email us at contact

57:12

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57:22

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