People nowadays are quite gullible, and together with the rise of fake news which sometimes spread like wildfire, many fake and weird things are believed by people. This TED talk sheds some light on why this might be so.
1. People tend to remember the things people predict correctly, not the things people predict wrongly, which is how psychics, astrologers and tarot card readers work.
2. We have to ask ourselves at times what is more likely, for example crop circles. They can either be photoshopped or made by pranksters, or we really have alien lifeforms from outer space trying to leave us messages.
3. Having a theory sometimes may not be good as it may be loaded with cognitive biases. For example, we have a tendency to see faces, because we are programmed by evolution to see faces, so we see faces everywhere, from Mars, to tree bark, to cheese sandwiches.
4. If we are programmed to look out for certain things, we will be able to observe them. Listening to songs in reverse to pick out hidden messages is an example. By listening alone, it is usually hard to pick out anything, but if I give you the lyrics of the songs played in reverse and you tried to fit what you heard with the lyrics, then all sorts of hidden words can appear.
There was this line I remember from “Charlotte’s Web”, one of the books I read in my early schooling days. Charlotte the spider says “People are gullible. They tend to believe almost everything they see in print” And see proceeds to weave messages in her web to save Wilbur the pig. I sure hope people can think a bit more and find out before spreading misinformation around. Just a simple google search can sometimes expose what is real and what is not.
Never Stop Learning! 