“I Just Found Out Last Year”: 30 Of The Dumbest Things People Were Convinced Were True

Humans are naturally curious. We seek to explore, learn, and understand. In fact, the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the HAAS School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that when the brain searches for information, it accesses the same neural code as when it's hunting for money.

"To the brain, information is its own reward," said co-author of the study Ming Hsu, Ph.D. According to him, just as we like empty calories from junk food, we can also overvalue data that makes us feel good but may not be useful.

Or, as one Reddit thread shows, even accurate! Started by platform user lilCRONOS, it has folks sharing "the dumbest" things someone made them believe to be true that they later found out wasn't. Below you will find the most popular submissions to the discussion, which serve as a reminder that we can't trust everything we hear.

#1

Image credits: PotatoWithFlippers

#2

Image credits: BurnerAccount337

However, these stories don't prove that we're doomed. Yet Mercier, a cognitive scientist at the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris, thinks that in order to fight disinformation more effectively, we need to stop believing in our own gullibility.

"We are skilled at figuring out who to trust and what to believe, and, if anything, we're too hard rather than too easy to influence," Mercier said. He bases those statements on a growing body of research in fields such as neuropsychiatry and evolutionary psychology, and argues that humans are hardwired to balance openness with vigilance.

#3

Image credits: AcceptableSample9636

#4

Image credits: Salzberger

To gauge a statement's accuracy, we instinctively test it from many angles, including: does it jibe with what I already believe? Does the speaker share my interests? Have they demonstrated competence in this area? What's their reputation for trustworthiness? And, with more complex assertions: does the argument make sense?

So there are a few ways of scrolling through the list: you might view the entries as proof that we can be easily persuaded, or you might treat them as evidence that we, eventually, figure things out. After all, the people sharing these anecdotes did.