14 ms·
Illusory Truth Effect
- ydb 7y agoShit. I got this all the time with my ex. Combine that with gaslighting[1] and you have a recipe for corn-fed, all-American propaganda. If people repeat stuff back to you, make sure you repeat stuff back to them! Force feedback! Conglomerate! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
- dang 7y agoThere's also https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/06/26/higher-intelligence-and-an-analytical-thinking-style-offer-no-protection-against-the-illusory-truth-effect-our-tendency-to-believe-repeated-claims-are-more-likely-to-be-true/ https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/06/26/higher-intelligence-and... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20284218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20284218, but no comments there)
- s_gourichon 7y agoYeah, I've heard about it already, probably true. ;-) Does it take a twisted mind to apply that pattern to https://xkcd.com/552/ https://xkcd.com/552/ ?
- vezycash 7y ago>Does it take a twisted mind to apply that pattern Not necessarily. They say the best liar is one who doesn't know that he's lying. Take the state of news today, we have bloggers who parrot a source with no verification and often zero comprehension of what they are reposting. RMS's issue a few weeks ago exemplified this effect with probably no single twisted mastermind. An under age girl was forced to ask a billionaire pedo for sex who turned her down was shortened to. Billionaire pedo forced an underage girl for sex. The shortened sensationalized version motivated by advert money then spread like wildfire. See the link below for how word of mouth stories become distorted with transmission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumor#1947_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumor#1947_study
- rich_sasha 7y agoI'm kind-of surprised this didn't get studied earlier. This was one of the pillars of Nazi propaganda - or indeed, come to think of it, presumably any propaganda. Relentlessly repeat your lies, and eventually people believe them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bananamerica 7y agoI have a friend who is a lawyer. He seems to believe that rhetoric and logic are the same thing. Links like this bring me bad memories.
- haecceity 7y agoShould've thrown a dictionary at him.
- bananamerica 7y agoI gave up arguing with him. He’s my friend and I love him. We play video games instead. No problem.
- teddyh 7y agoA lawyer’s job is not to actually find out the truth, like a scientist. A lawyer’s conclusion will not be tested by a harsh reality with which you can experiment. A lawyer’s job is entirely to convince other people of things. If people are convinced, the job is done; there are no further repercussions if the truth turns out to differ. Therefore, your lawyer friend likely has never thought about what logic is, or what a scientist does, and how physical reality with experiments is a harsh and unforgiving master, and therefore believes that everything is what he does – i.e. rhetoric.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bananamerica 7y agoI believe you’re right. I gave him a book on informal logic. He never even opened it.
- Merrill 7y agoThere is also a distinction between logical and quantitative thinking. Some people operate mainly out of a "whether or not" mindset, and they are not inclined to think in terms of "how much", "to what degree", or "how likely". Scientists tend to be quantitative thinkers, although computer scientists are quite often logical thinkers.
- known 7y ago"Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed" --Friedrich
- mbel 7y ago'Sometimes' seems to be a major understatement.
- Merrill 7y agoIt's particularly effective when combined with "Big Lie". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
- the_af 7y agoI don't follow. The "Big Lie" is a conspiracy theory devised (or at least advocated) by Hitler in order to justify antisemitism. It's not a true phenomenon -- like the Illusory Truth Effect -- but something Hitler falsely asserted the Jews did.
- wayoutthere 7y agoThe “Big Lie” was the lie itself — it could not be publicly disproven under the Nazi propaganda machine, and therefore provides a cover story. Nobody really believed the cover story, but they were also too afraid to find out the truth because they knew it would get buried (along with them and probably their family). Such is the power of the “big lie”.
- the_af 7y agoYes, that's what I was trying to say. The "Big Lie" is not a cognitive bias, it's itself a lie. It's a myth Hitler either invented or popularized. So I don't follow how it relates to the topic under discussion.
- wayoutthere 7y agoI think it’s because Goebbels said something along the lines of “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth” in reference to the Big Lie.
- krapp 7y agoThe cognitive bias is the effect of the big lie. Anti-semitism was already prevalent throughout Western culture at that time, and so the lie was easier to believe because of pre-existing cultural prejudice, and later because the propaganda was simply inescapable.
- haunter 7y agoHas this been affected by the on-going replication crisis? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
- lolc 7y agoI wonder about that too. But I've heard about the effect a lot so it must be true ;-)
- Fnoord 7y agoReminds me of the Microsoft Halloween documents.
- Akababa 7y agoPerhaps this can be rationalized from a Bayesian context. Unless your prior is that you're 100% sure of something (which no one is) and you don't completely ignore what other people say, your posterior will eventually shift to the opposite side.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoI think the error made here could also be described in Bayesian context: your posterior shifts to the other side because you keep counting repeated instances of the same information as new evidence.
- Akababa 7y agoThat would be an error if you know the repeated evidence has correlation 1. The studies try to make this clear to the participants, but it's plausible that after a week they forgot where they read some of the repeated facts and treat them instead as independent information. I'd be interested to see how the interval of repetition affects the results.
- ColonelSanders 7y agoIf you like this area of study I recommend studying object relations and reification. Object relations is all about how we strive for consistency in how we observe the world. It helps explain how people react and understand things. Reificaction is also a really cool tool to bring in since when people go around repeating some thing. Hm, like "gig economy". Like you're supposed to sit there and just accept this loaded concept, which some may believe implies accepting falsehoods, let me explain: Gig Economy: As if, you're powerless to shape environment. No statute could be created to make employement / labor more fair and stable (let alone generous). You can't influence it, analyze it, criticize it, lobby, vote. Somehow there isn't enough wealth to give everyone a living wage. Don't even bother. Let's imply the systems to fix it don't already exist - even when they do - and it could be done by the end of the year, a few months? Reification is amazing because it's all about injecting life into abstract concepts. It's where we create and give meaning to new words - it's what comes before illusory truth repetition. And it's amazing how things shift. For instance, USA - one big thing that makes us famous is big, fat paychecks. But today if you read the news and hear people speak, it's as if there's an implicit acceptance it's okay to give corporations welfare and consistency by the way of our laws, but not reciprocate by giving it to the workers? Then sometimes you read that having better employment conditions and wages are "socialist"? Lol? You could say: Nope, capitalism is all about huge pay checks. We're sharing this success we created as a private collective of workers. And you're very welcome! (And by the way, you all pay taxes that shore up the system, you're welcome for that too, as you're strengthening the system and helping downtrodden people you don't even know, you amazing humanist you) When someone says "Gig economy", go "Wait a second, who said it was okay to accept that, and why are you referring to gigs as employement?", then you can say, "I define employment as pensioned, salaried, position paid enough to comfortably support a family 4" Perhaps one could repeat "living wage" about 3 times every time they here "gig economy". Why tolerate anything less than comfort, stability and dignity for us? As if we lack the moral collective conscience and intelligence to do it? Lol?
- mistermann 7y ago> If you like this area of study I recommend studying object relations and reification. > Object relations is all about how we strive for consistency in how we observe the world. It helps explain how people react and understand things. I am very interested in this sort of thing, are there any resources or names you can recommend looking into?
- rb808 7y agoI wonder how this can easily backfire. Eg if someone repeats something repeatedly you can learn to believe it, but if you ever prove it wrong you never trust them again.