
Illusory Truth Effect - vezycash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
======
dang
There's also [https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/06/26/higher-intelligence-
and...](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/)

(via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20284218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20284218),
but no comments there)

------
haunter
Has 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
I wonder about that too. But I've heard about the effect a lot so it must be
true ;-)

------
Akababa
Perhaps 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
I 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
That 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.

------
known
"Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their
illusions destroyed" \--Friedrich

~~~
mbel
'Sometimes' seems to be a major understatement.

------
rich_sasha
I'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.

------
rb808
I 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.

------
Fnoord
Reminds me of the Microsoft Halloween documents.

------
s_gourichon
Yeah, 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
>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)

------
ColonelSanders
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.

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
> 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?

------
bananamerica
I 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.

~~~
teddyh
A 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.

~~~
Merrill
There 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.

~~~
stareatgoats
Agree in principle, but I have an issue with your use of the terms
"logical/quantitative". A pedantic nitpick to be sure, but the "logical"
mindset you describe is one of the most prevalent logical fallacies, that of
the "false dilemma" [0]. Maybe there are even better ways to describe it than
as a logical fallacy, but calling it "logical thinking" leads down the wrong
track IMO.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma)

~~~
mjburgess
He did not claim they were exclusive.

Your comment is an example of the fallacy fallacy.

~~~
bananamerica
The "fallacy fallacy" is valid for itself, though:

> since the fallacy fallacy is itself a fallacy, it cannot be used to label an
> argument's conclusion as false without committing it in the process. "You
> have used the fallacy fallacy, therefore you are wrong"

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy)

------
Merrill
It's particularly effective when combined with "Big Lie".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie)

~~~
the_af
I 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.

~~~
Merrill
From the wiki reference: >"A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda
technique and logical trick (fallacy)."

It is not a specific big lie, but a class of lies that exploit a certain mass
naïveté.

~~~
the_af
> _" It is not a specific big lie, but a class of lies that exploit a certain
> mass naïveté."_

At face value, yes. In practice the term is exclusively tied to Hitler's
meaning, who coined the term. I'm not even sure if "Big Lie" has ever been
used in another context, possibly because the term is a Nazi invention. To be
clear, the "mass naïveté" of "The Big Lie" is (alleged by Hitler to be) the
populace's, who "believed the Jews" when they claimed (always according to
Hitler) that Germany's loss in WWI was to be blamed on Ludendorff. There is no
other real-world usage of the term. And we know this Big Lie was itself a lie
coined by Hitler, and this alleged conspiracy to exploit the mass naïveté of
the people didn't actually exist.

From Wikipedia:

> _" The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book
> Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe
> that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".
> Hitler believed the technique was used by Jews to blame Germany's loss in
> World War I on German general Erich Ludendorff, who was a prominent
> nationalist and antisemitic political leader in the Weimar Republic."_

and

> _" Jeffrey Herf maintains that Goebbels and the Nazis used the big lie to
> turn long-standing anti-semitism into mass murder. Herf argues that the big
> lie was a narrative of an innocent, besieged Germany striking back at an
> "international Jewry", which it said started World War I."_

So Big Lie, as a term, is irrevocably linked to the Nazis as its main meaning,
is not a "general fallacy", and in fact it could be argued it doesn't
_describe_ a fallacy at all, but is _itself_ a fallacy devised by Hitler.

~~~
golemotron
When references disagree with you about a definition, it's time to realize
that there can be more than one.

~~~
the_af
Can you point me to said references? I'm ready to acknowledge them, but I
don't see them. The article in Wikipedia (linked to at the start of this
thread) is exclusively about the use of the term by the Nazis and how they
coined it.

~~~
golemotron
The wikipedia article identified it as the name of a propaganda technique.
There's nothing that restricts the use of that technique to anyone in
particular. Consider that people other than the inventor of the hammer can use
hammers.

~~~
the_af
Yes, I understand this, and that's something that sometimes happens with
words. But the use of "Big Lie" in this context (i.e. capitalized, a concept
about lying) is like the use of "Final Solution": sure, it _could_ be used in
another context different to what the Nazis meant by it, but how probable _is_
that? All the examples in Wikipedia are Nazi-related.

I'll be happy to stand corrected if you can point me to a single use of this
concept of "Big Lie" \-- referred to unequivocally as the concept we're
debating here, of telling a lie so big people won't accept it's not true --
that does not refer to the alleged "betrayal of Germany" meant by Hitler, or
its related Nazi myths and propaganda.

At this point I'm only asking you for an example. To be honest I don't think
there is, just as there is no other use of Final Solution, but of course I can
be proven wrong.

~~~
golemotron
That isn't hard at all. This one refers to it as technique used by the Soviet
also.

\- [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-
history/wp/2018/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-
history/wp/2018/05/21/many-are-worried-about-the-return-of-the-big-lie-theyre-
worried-about-the-wrong-thing/)

~~~
the_af
Thanks for the example. I wasn't aware of the use of the term in US
politics/journalism. In my defense, I'm not from the US and while I of course
follow some of the drama they have going over there, I'm not always familiar
with the details.

~~~
golemotron
I'm glad I could help.

------
ydb
Shit. 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)

