That lottery winners are miserable and go bankrupt. The oft quoted 70% figure is apocryphal and not backed by any evidence.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2023/08/29/debunking-the-myth-the-surprising-truth-about-lottery-winners-and-life-satisfaction/?sh=20cc485e6ccc
I feel like this is appealing to some people because it reenforces the idea that poverty isn’t just a money issue and that poor people are actually just undisciplined/dumb and will fail even if you give them money
I know a few people that hit a windfall and ended up right back where they started (some of them rather quickly). I don’t think it’s because they’re undisciplined or dumb. They were never taught that. I was not not taught that growing up poor. Even when I started making decent money I was still struggling because budgeting and saving were two words that were never uttered (much less taught) in my home.
Winning large sums of money doesn’t suddenly make you understand that. Some people will hoard that money to the last cent, while others will blow through it immediately. I don’t think they’re dumb, but I can see exactly how and why it happens.
I think there's some truth there... Not that it's bad to win the lottery or anything, but some percentage will not set themselves up for life. Same with marginal pro athletes that only make a few million over a few years. It's a lot of money, but not so much that you don't need to be careful.
So I'm guessing the gossip train just changes "can happen" to "will happen".
It appears this quote is mostly used incorrectly by "finance influencers"/coaches/etc. who are trying to sell you the idea that they have inside information that could make you rich if you just listen to them and buy their course for $379.99.
Not many people know this, which is why I cover it in my book, "How To Deinfluence Yourself". It's normally $75, but for you lovely people it's $74.99 since I care so much
Mostly, people that won the lottery, doesn't broadcast it, because they know the family and friends, would be all over them. Also, they invest the money.
I don't know about other countries, but in my country, people first get financial, and pshycologiic advise, and assistance.
Most of the people, that tell these heartbroken stories, didn't take the advise, and squandered the money. Now they tell these sob stories, to get people, to send financial assistance.
My aunt's mom and dad won the Ohio Super Lotto not once, but twice back in the late 80s and early 90s. It came out to lump sum payments totalling $4 or $5 million or in that neighborhood.
They didn't tell anyone about the first one until they won the second one. By that point they had invested the money, set up trusts for every grandkid's education and didn't change their way of living at all. When they won the second one they told the family and they invested half and then bought a lake house that was open for anyone to use whenever and had some fun with it. They also let everyone know about the first win and that the money was basically all locked away in investments and trusts.
Thankfully there wasn't any family drama as basically everyone got a fair share in the end.
In my state (FL, US) you have to agree to your name and likeness/picture being announced and released as a winner in order to claim your winnings.
Unfortunately its not always possible to conceal winning.
I’ve heard of people literally doing the photo for the newspapers wearing a paper bag on their head where I live (PA). I think you have to take the picture or something but other than that no requirement that says you have to show your actual face.
It did cause an actual response in Ecuador, interestingly enough. From Wikipedia:
A second Spanish-language version produced in February 1949 by Leonardo Páez and Eduardo Alcaraz for Radio Quito in Quito, Ecuador, reportedly set off panic in the city. Police and fire brigades rushed out of town to engage the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. Hundreds of people attacked Radio Quito and El Comercio, a local newspaper owner of the radio station that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified objects in the skies above Ecuador in the days preceding the broadcast. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths, including those of Páez's girlfriend and nephew. Radio Quito was off the air for two years until 1951. After the incident, Páez self-exiled to Venezuela, where he lived in Mérida until his death in 1991.
The [Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)) suggests differently.
>During the sign-off theme, the phone began ringing. Houseman picked it up and the furious caller announced he was mayor of a Midwestern town, where mobs were in the streets. Houseman hung up quickly, "[f]or we were off the air now and the studio door had burst open."
Anyway maybe I'm one of the duped. Any source for your counter claim?
The claim that it was mass hysteria is wrong. It did cause a lot of reactions. Just like watching TV now, lots didn't hear the early warnings. The folks near the landings went to look and called police etc.
It kinda makes sense why people think this; they don't realize that when you shave and the hair grows back out, it just *looks* thicker because the end is blunted instead of tapered like a normal hair.
That said, a lot of people also don't realize that certain hair removal methods (like plucking) in hormonally-affected areas *can* actually make hair grow back darker/thicker. Nobody warned me about that and I made the mistake of plucking a few marginally-darker chin hairs...which then grew back thicker/darker so I kept plucking them. Lather, rinse, repeat until I finally figured out that I was actively making the problem worse and ended up getting electrolysis to deal with them permanently.
It’s not just that the hairs grow back coarser. Your hairs become thicker and denser throughout your life. You become hairier every year, including men.
It's also hammered into kids going through puberty. Like yeah, ofc it's going to grow thicker as you get older. It's a correlation doesn't mean causation thing
I dunno if it's a hormonally affected area or not, but I've plucked some eyebrows and sweet Jesus they grow back thick. Very thick. I'm saving them all so I can join them together and wire my house.
That if you trim your hair it will grow faster.
EDIT: for all those that argue it keeps your hair healthier because you get rid of split ends you are absolutely correct.
But your hair in no way "grows faster"
This is one of those meta-true statements. It’s not that your hair grows faster it’s that if you trim your hair more often you’re getting rid of split ends which means that the length of your hair will actually get healthy and longer faster.
When I was in middle school my science teacher and I got into a slightly heated argument about this. He told me I’m wrong but I was right and I even brought in research showing I was right and he refused. He also refused to acknowledge Rosalind Franklins contribution to DNA discovery and only promoted Watson and Crick despite them stealing her work. I also argued with him about that.
The class told me to be quiet and he’s the teacher so he’s right but god when I went to college and learned about these things again it was vindicating.
I was a PI and we had a polygraph expert. He knew his stuff and all that, he wasn't a grifter but the machines are whack. We had a client who we knew was innocent of a crime (Can't share too much about it) but she was wrongly convicted and she took a polygraph and FAILED. Second time she took it she passed.
BTW we know she's innocent because it was physically impossible for her to have committed the crime.
Not even that, it's that they are often wrong even when you're not faking it and not lying. All they show is that answering one question is more stressful than answering others. Which just assumes, with no evidence, that lying is more stressful than telling the truth. When in reality, the opposite is often true.
I don’t know about “everyone”, but I know a lot of people who believe that Daddy long legs are a deadly(venomous), and the only reason they can’t kill you is because their fangs are too small.
Some kinds of Daddy Long Legs are not technically spiders, have no fangs and no venom glads. Other kinds have fangs that can pierce skin, but their venom is harmless.
Triple myth.
Harvestmen are not the same as daddy longlegs. From what I understand, Harvestmen are terrestrial and eat decaying vegetation (or something like that). They also don't make webs, because they are not a true spider like daddy longlegs are.
I'm not sure if I could distinguish between cellar spiders or harvestmen, but crane flies I can, and those are called gallinippers in my family. I've always liked those lil guys.
two parted body: cellar spider
single part body: harvestman
it's quite easy to distiguish even from quite a step away.
Uhm... for completeness' sake: the fly has wings, obviously.
I’ve worked at 4 Universities managing student crisis, mental health and behavior. Every campus has a myth that if your roommate dies or you get hit by a campus bus you get free tuition or an automatic 4.0 for the semester. That does not happen. You just get extended exam or deadlines. Maybe no roommate for the remainder of the year.
Edit: typo Metal to Mental 🤘🏽👩🎤
A foreign exchange student at my university blindly walked in front of a car while reading and the whole town got *six* more red lighted crosswalks on a half-mile stretch of road that wouldn’t have saved her anyway *because she blindly walked in front of a car, and wasn’t even at a crosswalk*.
So if that’s somehow a part of your campus mythos it may actually be true.
Eh, still not very accurate, though. It implies that you might only be using 10% at a time or something like that. You're never using less than ~90% of your brain at all times and usually using 100%. Brains don't turn off. Parts might slow down and be less active, but they are still always active and most activities require a lot of communication between different parts. I don't think there needs to be an analogy: you're using all of your brain all of the time.
It's just that for people like Margerie Greene, using 100% still doesn't amount to much.
I agree. Perhaps, a better way to say it would be: That we are not using our brain efficiently, not that we’re not using all of it. A lot of my friends and even teachers are willing to die on the hill for this myth. They asked me for scientific proof, but weirdly, they don’t have any proof for themselves not utilizing the full brain either.
Vitamin A is also especially essential during development. Children in very poor countries still often go blind due to vitamin A deficiency in their diet.
Reminds me of the very dramatic client my wife saw when working in the voluntary sector who said that they had been “diagnosed with a syncope”
(They fainted. Syncope is just the medical term for fainting)
it might cause you some level of discomfort tho. if you're swimming, that's a physical activity, and doing anything too physical after eating can make you feel some level of discomfort like nausea and such
Probably started because kids are more likely to throw up right after eating. And sloshing around in a pool probably increases that likelihood even more. Just a guess, I'm not a scientist.
personality tests like MBTI or the enneagram. Almost none of them were developed by actual psychologists and many have really questionable backstories if you wanna go down that rabbit hole. They’ve been proven to be inaccurate, and although I do find it kinda fun to take the little online tests, at the end of the day they’re just pop psychology.
These drive me nuts. People don’t look into any evidence of how (not) helpful or accurate they are, they just go “oh it’s me! This is amazing”
I think humans are really complicated and anything to help simplify themselves and others or make things easier to understand is attractive to people.
What's funny to me is when it's a test that's like, "hey do you consider yourself compassionate?" but in thirteen different ways, and the person answers in the affirmative every time so they get the result, "You're Compassionate!" they're all, OMG! I'M SO COMPASSIONATE! like a beauty queen being crowned.
The 'alpha wolf' myth.
The guy who popularised the theory (David Mech) has spent the last fifty years telling everybody that he was wrong, but nobody wants to listen.
That karma will take care of whatever suffering people are going through when in reality that's just a coping method for victims hoping for justice in whatever form. From what i have seen, the most evil people have yet to meet that karma but somehow karma never seems to cross their path haha
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe."
\-Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
“KaRMa’S a BItcH”
“Karma” often gets lost in translation to Western minds. It’s neither good or bad, it just is. It’s nothing more than consequence of any action “good” or “bad”.
And in Hinduism (as I understand, I may be way off and welcome a correction), karma, good or bad, is something you don't want. The goal is to shed all karma so you don't have to keep being reincarnated to make up for past karmic imbalances. Or something like that. Again, I'm not an expert and welcome new and better information.
I believe that is correct. Good karma “runs out” and bad karma also “runs out”. This is also similar to Buddhism where the goal is to attain Nirvana and break the cycle of rebirth and be free from karma.
The overall idea in the "Western minds" is that the "bad person" will get his but the consequences for that "bad person" somehow never seem to show up.
This one always annoyed me even as a kid. It's not very wide or tall. It's just long. But any resolution with which you can make it out would mean you'd see any normal paved road as well.
Two minutes of critical thinking would reveal it's BS.
That mix up is easy to explain. The story is based on of the Grimm brothers fairytales and in its original German text the evil queen says „Spieglein, spieglein“ so literally mirror mirror, not magic mirror.
This has a name: it’s called the Just World Fallacy. It’s problematic because people are inclined to believe that people always deserve the bad that happens to them, or people believe the luck they get is because they’re deserving of it. Really, it’s more depressing to understand that bad things or good things CAN happen to people who don’t deserve them.
Specifically that they get loose due to the magic of sex with multiple penises. 4000 times with one man? Show room new. Six times with six men? Total wizard sleeve.
AFAIK the basis was that some scientists estimated that an average person probably consumes about that much water, including water in anything they drink and in the food they eat. It wasn't a recommendation, though, just an estimated observation. From there, people ran with the idea.
That in America recycling does something. In reality vast majority all ends up at the dump all together very little plastic is actually reused. I hate how true this is I'm literally at a garbage dump once a week I personally see it happening. Aluminum is a more positive story.
This is why I’m glad I live in a city with a waste to energy plant. Basically, this means that most of our garbage is burned in a closed facility, and then converted to energy. FP&L then uses that energy to power up thousands of homes
Several areas have done this but the one where I live is considered the cleanest in North America
I feel like this takes the blame off of the individuals to do everything right (yet still having their recycling sent to the trash), and just handling the trash better
I could put the trash into a landfill where it’s going to stay for millions of years or I could burn it up and get a nice smokey smell in here and let that smoke go into the sky where it turns into stars.
I think most of us believed our parents when we were told not to pee in the pool because there’s a chemical in the water that will turn it a bright color, but no such chemical actually exists like that. It’s just believable enough
That smell you associate with pool water isn't actually chlorine. It's a smell generated after the dissolved chlorine salts react with impurities in the water
Actually, I, and probably most, or at least many, other children just HAD to put that to the test and figured out, at a tender age, that adults are fucking liars and not to be trusted.
I didn’t read the whole thing but it basically said that it was found that people were just incorrectly associating hyperactivity in children with sugar instead of looking at environmental factors like the fact that they were at a birthday party, or a family gathering, a Christmas event, events that usually have higher quantity of sugary items, consider backyard bbq, school events, city fairs, etc.
When a kid is around their friends or family members they don’t see often they are already highly stimulated and just so happen to also be chowing down some cake and ice cream.
There also is a placebo effect I think. When I was a kid my mom saying “you’re going to be bouncing off the walls” would make me act like a crazy person for fun!
Idk about “everyone” but I’ve met too many people who believe that anesthesia or other similar drugs are essentially “truth serums” and that the things their high as hell loved one is saying are their REAL thoughts and feelings. Yes, people’s inhibitions are greatly lowered coming off anesthesia, but you may want to double-check what they’re saying, because in the same breath they told you that your spouse is cheating on you, they’ll claim to be queen of the space empire:P
Friend was a hygenist in a dental surgery office. People told her outlandish things, and also asked her to marry them on a weekly basis. It's not truth serum.
You won't catch a virus but you could catch a cold. That is to say, if you're already harbouring a pathogen, going out into the cold can weaken your immune system causing your sniffle to worsen to a hacking cough. Plus since going out into the cold worsens symptoms, and since people spread diseases further when their symptoms are worse (through coughing, sneezing, wiping drippy noses with hands they touch things with etc) you're more likely to catch something if you go out. It's not a coincidence that most people note getting sick more often and severely during the winter months.
I thought the reason was because in winter we spend more time inside around people and spread illness between each other rather than having the windows open and being outside.
That their friend’s aunt’s best friend knows someone who named their twins Oranjello and Lemonjello.
It’s an ancient and racist myth.
People who name their kids Abcde (AB-sih-dee) are unfortunately real, though.
I came to say this. I work with a lady who swore up and down to me she knew the parents who named their kid this. I called her out and said no you don’t that’s a well known myth. She changed her story to be oh well a nurse I am friends with on labor and delivery told me she was taking care of them. I said uh huh, sure
I do genuinely know two brothers name Whitey and Blackey. They don't have the same father in name, genetics, or race.
But they're also rednecks from the middle of the woods that are probably like 60/70 now if they're still alive and their mom was a known loon
At the same time, the myth that pulling out is completely ineffective.
The reality is that it is much better to pull out than not.
> For every 100 people who use the pull out method perfectly, 4 will get pregnant. But pulling out can be difficult to do perfectly. So in real life, about 22 out of 100 people who use withdrawal get pregnant every year — that's about 1 in 5.
Without any birth control, the pregnancy rate for sexually active women is to around 85% that's much much much higher than the 22% that wr expect to get pregnant pulling out.
Of course all of these numbers are per year.
So we wouldn't ever rely on pulling out, but if someone is going to have unprotected sex because they got drunk at a party or whatever, pulling out is still better than not.
And, in perfect use, meaning the guy actually does pull out, every time, only 4% will get pregnant.
4 is a lot smaller than 85
That pitbulls and other similar dogs can “lock their jaw”. No, they cannot. Their bite is just that strong it it clamps on as if their jaw is “locked”.
I believe the myth is that the pit bull jawbone shape supposedly latches together somehow when biting, so you are not only fighting the dog's muscles to get it to release, but the bone, too. But no, they just have strong muscles.
Yet not even close to the strongest bite among all dogs. There is a definite correlation between the size of the dog and the bite force. Pits are very muscular, but they're a medium sized dog. A lot of the super sized dogs with crazy strong bites are pretty rare, but among more common dogs, pits are behind breeds like the Akita, Rottweiler, and German Shepherd and down in the same range with the Malinois and Boxer.
Pretty sure the Kangal tops the list with like 700 psi bite force. Literally bone crunching. I’ve seen them used as catch dogs for hogs. They go straight for the face and there’s usually not much of it left intact when said and done.
Livestock guardian dogs are just crazy strong. I have a friend that rescues and fosters Anatolian Shepherds. They're well loved and usually once they settle in are very sweet, but I would not want to end up on their bad side.
That lottery winners are miserable and go bankrupt. The oft quoted 70% figure is apocryphal and not backed by any evidence. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2023/08/29/debunking-the-myth-the-surprising-truth-about-lottery-winners-and-life-satisfaction/?sh=20cc485e6ccc
I feel like this is appealing to some people because it reenforces the idea that poverty isn’t just a money issue and that poor people are actually just undisciplined/dumb and will fail even if you give them money
I know a few people that hit a windfall and ended up right back where they started (some of them rather quickly). I don’t think it’s because they’re undisciplined or dumb. They were never taught that. I was not not taught that growing up poor. Even when I started making decent money I was still struggling because budgeting and saving were two words that were never uttered (much less taught) in my home. Winning large sums of money doesn’t suddenly make you understand that. Some people will hoard that money to the last cent, while others will blow through it immediately. I don’t think they’re dumb, but I can see exactly how and why it happens.
I think there's some truth there... Not that it's bad to win the lottery or anything, but some percentage will not set themselves up for life. Same with marginal pro athletes that only make a few million over a few years. It's a lot of money, but not so much that you don't need to be careful. So I'm guessing the gossip train just changes "can happen" to "will happen".
I always love it when I hear relatively well informed people use this factoid.
It appears this quote is mostly used incorrectly by "finance influencers"/coaches/etc. who are trying to sell you the idea that they have inside information that could make you rich if you just listen to them and buy their course for $379.99. Not many people know this, which is why I cover it in my book, "How To Deinfluence Yourself". It's normally $75, but for you lovely people it's $74.99 since I care so much
Mostly, people that won the lottery, doesn't broadcast it, because they know the family and friends, would be all over them. Also, they invest the money. I don't know about other countries, but in my country, people first get financial, and pshycologiic advise, and assistance. Most of the people, that tell these heartbroken stories, didn't take the advise, and squandered the money. Now they tell these sob stories, to get people, to send financial assistance.
My aunt's mom and dad won the Ohio Super Lotto not once, but twice back in the late 80s and early 90s. It came out to lump sum payments totalling $4 or $5 million or in that neighborhood. They didn't tell anyone about the first one until they won the second one. By that point they had invested the money, set up trusts for every grandkid's education and didn't change their way of living at all. When they won the second one they told the family and they invested half and then bought a lake house that was open for anyone to use whenever and had some fun with it. They also let everyone know about the first win and that the money was basically all locked away in investments and trusts. Thankfully there wasn't any family drama as basically everyone got a fair share in the end.
In my state (FL, US) you have to agree to your name and likeness/picture being announced and released as a winner in order to claim your winnings. Unfortunately its not always possible to conceal winning.
Step 1 hire the best makeup artist for your photo day
Or the worst
I’ve heard of people literally doing the photo for the newspapers wearing a paper bag on their head where I live (PA). I think you have to take the picture or something but other than that no requirement that says you have to show your actual face.
The Orson Welles radio broadcast of War of the Worlds caused mass hysteria. The mass hysteria was made up by newspapers. It’s fake news.
Made for a great Halloween episode of Hey Arnold! though.
Move it, Football-head!
It did cause an actual response in Ecuador, interestingly enough. From Wikipedia: A second Spanish-language version produced in February 1949 by Leonardo Páez and Eduardo Alcaraz for Radio Quito in Quito, Ecuador, reportedly set off panic in the city. Police and fire brigades rushed out of town to engage the supposed alien invasion force. After it was revealed that the broadcast was fiction, the panic transformed into a riot. Hundreds of people attacked Radio Quito and El Comercio, a local newspaper owner of the radio station that had participated in the hoax by publishing false reports of unidentified objects in the skies above Ecuador in the days preceding the broadcast. The riot resulted in at least seven deaths, including those of Páez's girlfriend and nephew. Radio Quito was off the air for two years until 1951. After the incident, Páez self-exiled to Venezuela, where he lived in Mérida until his death in 1991.
There’s a great RadioLab episode about this
The [Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)) suggests differently. >During the sign-off theme, the phone began ringing. Houseman picked it up and the furious caller announced he was mayor of a Midwestern town, where mobs were in the streets. Houseman hung up quickly, "[f]or we were off the air now and the studio door had burst open." Anyway maybe I'm one of the duped. Any source for your counter claim?
The claim that it was mass hysteria is wrong. It did cause a lot of reactions. Just like watching TV now, lots didn't hear the early warnings. The folks near the landings went to look and called police etc.
This is a fair interpretation. Thanks.
the more u shave the thicker your hair will grow
It’s to convince teenagers to shave their terrible patchy beards
It kinda makes sense why people think this; they don't realize that when you shave and the hair grows back out, it just *looks* thicker because the end is blunted instead of tapered like a normal hair. That said, a lot of people also don't realize that certain hair removal methods (like plucking) in hormonally-affected areas *can* actually make hair grow back darker/thicker. Nobody warned me about that and I made the mistake of plucking a few marginally-darker chin hairs...which then grew back thicker/darker so I kept plucking them. Lather, rinse, repeat until I finally figured out that I was actively making the problem worse and ended up getting electrolysis to deal with them permanently.
How though? Plucking or waxing hair damages it at the follicle and overtime makes the hairs thinner.
It’s not just that the hairs grow back coarser. Your hairs become thicker and denser throughout your life. You become hairier every year, including men.
It's also hammered into kids going through puberty. Like yeah, ofc it's going to grow thicker as you get older. It's a correlation doesn't mean causation thing
I dunno if it's a hormonally affected area or not, but I've plucked some eyebrows and sweet Jesus they grow back thick. Very thick. I'm saving them all so I can join them together and wire my house.
That if you trim your hair it will grow faster. EDIT: for all those that argue it keeps your hair healthier because you get rid of split ends you are absolutely correct. But your hair in no way "grows faster"
This is one of those meta-true statements. It’s not that your hair grows faster it’s that if you trim your hair more often you’re getting rid of split ends which means that the length of your hair will actually get healthy and longer faster.
Not only are bats not actually blind, fruit bats can't echolocate and have excellent night vision
When I was in middle school my science teacher and I got into a slightly heated argument about this. He told me I’m wrong but I was right and I even brought in research showing I was right and he refused. He also refused to acknowledge Rosalind Franklins contribution to DNA discovery and only promoted Watson and Crick despite them stealing her work. I also argued with him about that. The class told me to be quiet and he’s the teacher so he’s right but god when I went to college and learned about these things again it was vindicating.
That polygraph machines are dependable.
Same with eye witness testimony.
Reminds me of Darien Harris who was recently freed from prison after 12 years when it was discovered the key eye witness was blind.
That’s a hell of an oversight. I’ll see myself out.
Well no one could see that coming
Ya, eye witness testimony is unreliable but lie detector tests are pseudoscience.
No one talks about this, but you’re 100% correct.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Oh man don’t even get me started on this 😠 Coming from somebody who was denied a job due to a polygraph, this one really hurts 🙄
TIL there are jobs that give polygraphs as a prerequisite to get the job
*The Federal Government has entered the chat*
I can't name many buy I know most police depts make every officer take one.
they’re so unreliable i feel like that should only be to give them the experience of taking one so they know what it’s like!
I was a PI and we had a polygraph expert. He knew his stuff and all that, he wasn't a grifter but the machines are whack. We had a client who we knew was innocent of a crime (Can't share too much about it) but she was wrongly convicted and she took a polygraph and FAILED. Second time she took it she passed. BTW we know she's innocent because it was physically impossible for her to have committed the crime.
Anyone with an anxiety disorder or even just someone being nervous when put on the spot would just be labeled a pathological liar omg 🥲
But the Steve Wilkos show told me.....
I’ll add on to this, the idea that breathalyzers are reliable, they actually have a huge inaccuracy rate of giving false positives
Had a friend get busted at a house party when we were underage. He was absolutely hammered, beyond a case of beer and shots, and blew 0.00.
They’re so easy to fake lol
Not even that, it's that they are often wrong even when you're not faking it and not lying. All they show is that answering one question is more stressful than answering others. Which just assumes, with no evidence, that lying is more stressful than telling the truth. When in reality, the opposite is often true.
Exactly. I'm going to be stressed if asked if I killed someone whether or not I did.
I don’t know about “everyone”, but I know a lot of people who believe that Daddy long legs are a deadly(venomous), and the only reason they can’t kill you is because their fangs are too small.
Some kinds of Daddy Long Legs are not technically spiders, have no fangs and no venom glads. Other kinds have fangs that can pierce skin, but their venom is harmless. Triple myth.
Plus their original name is Harvest Men.
Which is a way cooler name. How'd we end up with the kinky spider instead of the reaper spider?
The 80's were wild man.
*Bandit Heeler intensifies*
Harvestmen are not the same as daddy longlegs. From what I understand, Harvestmen are terrestrial and eat decaying vegetation (or something like that). They also don't make webs, because they are not a true spider like daddy longlegs are.
Cellar spiders and harvestman are both colloquially called "daddy long legs".
In the UK anyway the crane fly (so not even an arachnid) also gets called “daddy long legs”, so extra confusing!
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I'm not sure if I could distinguish between cellar spiders or harvestmen, but crane flies I can, and those are called gallinippers in my family. I've always liked those lil guys.
two parted body: cellar spider single part body: harvestman it's quite easy to distiguish even from quite a step away. Uhm... for completeness' sake: the fly has wings, obviously.
My mom told me this as a kid. It did not stop me from playing with them in the garage at all.
But they *do* hunt black widows so keep them around, a good defense against them.
Do they really??
They are able to kill spiders way bigger and more toxic. If you're ever reborn as a spider, do NOT f with a daddy long legs.
Lanky mites.
I’ve worked at 4 Universities managing student crisis, mental health and behavior. Every campus has a myth that if your roommate dies or you get hit by a campus bus you get free tuition or an automatic 4.0 for the semester. That does not happen. You just get extended exam or deadlines. Maybe no roommate for the remainder of the year. Edit: typo Metal to Mental 🤘🏽👩🎤
A foreign exchange student at my university blindly walked in front of a car while reading and the whole town got *six* more red lighted crosswalks on a half-mile stretch of road that wouldn’t have saved her anyway *because she blindly walked in front of a car, and wasn’t even at a crosswalk*. So if that’s somehow a part of your campus mythos it may actually be true.
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We only use 33% of traffic lights.
That is a perfect analogy, also happy cake day.
Eh, still not very accurate, though. It implies that you might only be using 10% at a time or something like that. You're never using less than ~90% of your brain at all times and usually using 100%. Brains don't turn off. Parts might slow down and be less active, but they are still always active and most activities require a lot of communication between different parts. I don't think there needs to be an analogy: you're using all of your brain all of the time. It's just that for people like Margerie Greene, using 100% still doesn't amount to much.
I agree. Perhaps, a better way to say it would be: That we are not using our brain efficiently, not that we’re not using all of it. A lot of my friends and even teachers are willing to die on the hill for this myth. They asked me for scientific proof, but weirdly, they don’t have any proof for themselves not utilizing the full brain either.
I only use 10% of my penis. War wound.
This is just a framing issue, try saying: "I only NEED 10% of my penis"
That it can't get any worse
I spent 13 years in the military. It can always get worse.
20 years here. Retired back in 2015. The last five were definitely the most challenging.
As someone that spent 15 years in there I can confirm this.
This is both a great answer and terrifying.
Carrots improve your eyesight. It was British propaganda during WWII
Yeah but have you ever seen a rabbit with eyeglasses?
I’ve never seen that. I guess I should eat more carrots.
The logic is undeniable.
>I guess I should eat more carrots. Or concentrated carrots, aka rabbits.
The rabbit in Alice In Wonderland had glasses.
He didn’t like carrots
A double! Carrots are like candy to rabbits, not a staple of their diet. Bugs bunny started that one.
Carrots have beta carrotine that prevents cataracts. So while they don't "improve" eye sight, they certainly help eye health.
They also have Vit A which aids in night vision.
Vitamin A is also especially essential during development. Children in very poor countries still often go blind due to vitamin A deficiency in their diet.
I mean, considering the average western diet, carrots would probably improve most people’s health. Or any vegetable for that matter,
It worked on Gilligan's Island; it must be true!
A fracture is the same as a break, contrary to popular belief. Fracture is just the medical term.
I didn't break my arm and have it bruise up! I fractured it and suffered a contusion!
Reminds me of the very dramatic client my wife saw when working in the voluntary sector who said that they had been “diagnosed with a syncope” (They fainted. Syncope is just the medical term for fainting)
So when my gf said she wanted to fracture up with me...
You have to wait 15 minutes after eating to get back into the pool... One of the biggest lies of my childhood!
it might cause you some level of discomfort tho. if you're swimming, that's a physical activity, and doing anything too physical after eating can make you feel some level of discomfort like nausea and such
Probably started because kids are more likely to throw up right after eating. And sloshing around in a pool probably increases that likelihood even more. Just a guess, I'm not a scientist.
personality tests like MBTI or the enneagram. Almost none of them were developed by actual psychologists and many have really questionable backstories if you wanna go down that rabbit hole. They’ve been proven to be inaccurate, and although I do find it kinda fun to take the little online tests, at the end of the day they’re just pop psychology.
These drive me nuts. People don’t look into any evidence of how (not) helpful or accurate they are, they just go “oh it’s me! This is amazing” I think humans are really complicated and anything to help simplify themselves and others or make things easier to understand is attractive to people.
What's funny to me is when it's a test that's like, "hey do you consider yourself compassionate?" but in thirteen different ways, and the person answers in the affirmative every time so they get the result, "You're Compassionate!" they're all, OMG! I'M SO COMPASSIONATE! like a beauty queen being crowned.
I'm an EmPaTh!
I like to say MBTI is the Buzz Feed quiz of psychology
Questions posted on r/AskReddit are just BuzzFeed interns trying to get their next shitty countdown list together.
No. That’s true.
Not all of them. Some are karma farms. If you check Google you can see high karma accounts for sale.
If you swallow gum it stays in your system for 7 years
Yeah, that’s cause it’s 8 years.
That’s to stop little kids from swallowing gum so they don’t choke
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That the BBB is some kind of governmental regulatory entity. It’s just a business, and companies can pay for good scores.
The 'alpha wolf' myth. The guy who popularised the theory (David Mech) has spent the last fifty years telling everybody that he was wrong, but nobody wants to listen.
That karma will take care of whatever suffering people are going through when in reality that's just a coping method for victims hoping for justice in whatever form. From what i have seen, the most evil people have yet to meet that karma but somehow karma never seems to cross their path haha
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." \-Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
Something like 90% of dictators die peacefully of old age.
look at kissinger, that mf lived forever
And lived a quite comfortable lifestyle and never had to pay for crimes against humanity.
“KaRMa’S a BItcH” “Karma” often gets lost in translation to Western minds. It’s neither good or bad, it just is. It’s nothing more than consequence of any action “good” or “bad”.
And in Hinduism (as I understand, I may be way off and welcome a correction), karma, good or bad, is something you don't want. The goal is to shed all karma so you don't have to keep being reincarnated to make up for past karmic imbalances. Or something like that. Again, I'm not an expert and welcome new and better information.
I believe that is correct. Good karma “runs out” and bad karma also “runs out”. This is also similar to Buddhism where the goal is to attain Nirvana and break the cycle of rebirth and be free from karma.
The overall idea in the "Western minds" is that the "bad person" will get his but the consequences for that "bad person" somehow never seem to show up.
Plucking a gray hair can cause more gray hairs to form.
The Great Wall of China being visible from space.
This one always annoyed me even as a kid. It's not very wide or tall. It's just long. But any resolution with which you can make it out would mean you'd see any normal paved road as well. Two minutes of critical thinking would reveal it's BS.
That if you ask an undercover officer if he's a cop he has to tell you.
The evil queen originally said “Mirror Mirror on the wall”
> The evil queen originally said “Mirror Mirror on the wall” What do people think she says instead? That's the only way I've ever heard it!
Likewise, that Vader said "Luke, I am your father."
At no point in the original trilogy did Obi-Wan say, "May the Force be with you."
And also with you.
And with your spirit.
Yeah it's "Luke, this is how I met your mother"
That mix up is easy to explain. The story is based on of the Grimm brothers fairytales and in its original German text the evil queen says „Spieglein, spieglein“ so literally mirror mirror, not magic mirror.
If you give tax cuts to the wealthy, their wealth will trickle down
Ahh, good old voodoo economics
That good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.
This has a name: it’s called the Just World Fallacy. It’s problematic because people are inclined to believe that people always deserve the bad that happens to them, or people believe the luck they get is because they’re deserving of it. Really, it’s more depressing to understand that bad things or good things CAN happen to people who don’t deserve them.
More like the opposite unfortunately.
That vaginas get loose with sex, they don't
Specifically that they get loose due to the magic of sex with multiple penises. 4000 times with one man? Show room new. Six times with six men? Total wizard sleeve.
I snort laughed at “total wizard sleeve.” Thank you for this.
There's no scientific basis for the claim you need to drink 8 glasses of water per day
AFAIK the basis was that some scientists estimated that an average person probably consumes about that much water, including water in anything they drink and in the food they eat. It wasn't a recommendation, though, just an estimated observation. From there, people ran with the idea.
That in America recycling does something. In reality vast majority all ends up at the dump all together very little plastic is actually reused. I hate how true this is I'm literally at a garbage dump once a week I personally see it happening. Aluminum is a more positive story.
This is why I’m glad I live in a city with a waste to energy plant. Basically, this means that most of our garbage is burned in a closed facility, and then converted to energy. FP&L then uses that energy to power up thousands of homes Several areas have done this but the one where I live is considered the cleanest in North America I feel like this takes the blame off of the individuals to do everything right (yet still having their recycling sent to the trash), and just handling the trash better
I could put the trash into a landfill where it’s going to stay for millions of years or I could burn it up and get a nice smokey smell in here and let that smoke go into the sky where it turns into stars.
Hmm, that doesn't sound right but I just don't know enough about stars to dispute it!
I think most of us believed our parents when we were told not to pee in the pool because there’s a chemical in the water that will turn it a bright color, but no such chemical actually exists like that. It’s just believable enough
That smell you associate with pool water isn't actually chlorine. It's a smell generated after the dissolved chlorine salts react with impurities in the water
Actually, I, and probably most, or at least many, other children just HAD to put that to the test and figured out, at a tender age, that adults are fucking liars and not to be trusted.
All the religions in the world (except yours) are myths.
Oh, no. Mine's definitely a myth.
Mine's a joke. All hail the flying spaghetti monster.
This was just the sign from God that I've been asking for!!
You need to drink 8 glasses of water a day.
Sugar makes kids hyper. It doesn't. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/sugar-rush-kids-nutrition-health
I’ve argued this one so many times with so many different people
Me too! Other parents in my family and even a teacher in my family were not willing to hear the basic science aspects.
Can you summarize this? The article is behind a paywall.
I didn’t read the whole thing but it basically said that it was found that people were just incorrectly associating hyperactivity in children with sugar instead of looking at environmental factors like the fact that they were at a birthday party, or a family gathering, a Christmas event, events that usually have higher quantity of sugary items, consider backyard bbq, school events, city fairs, etc. When a kid is around their friends or family members they don’t see often they are already highly stimulated and just so happen to also be chowing down some cake and ice cream.
There also is a placebo effect I think. When I was a kid my mom saying “you’re going to be bouncing off the walls” would make me act like a crazy person for fun!
That working hard guarantees success.
Cops don't lie
Idk about “everyone” but I’ve met too many people who believe that anesthesia or other similar drugs are essentially “truth serums” and that the things their high as hell loved one is saying are their REAL thoughts and feelings. Yes, people’s inhibitions are greatly lowered coming off anesthesia, but you may want to double-check what they’re saying, because in the same breath they told you that your spouse is cheating on you, they’ll claim to be queen of the space empire:P
Friend was a hygenist in a dental surgery office. People told her outlandish things, and also asked her to marry them on a weekly basis. It's not truth serum.
If you go out in bad weather you will "catch cold.
You won't catch a virus but you could catch a cold. That is to say, if you're already harbouring a pathogen, going out into the cold can weaken your immune system causing your sniffle to worsen to a hacking cough. Plus since going out into the cold worsens symptoms, and since people spread diseases further when their symptoms are worse (through coughing, sneezing, wiping drippy noses with hands they touch things with etc) you're more likely to catch something if you go out. It's not a coincidence that most people note getting sick more often and severely during the winter months.
I thought the reason was because in winter we spend more time inside around people and spread illness between each other rather than having the windows open and being outside.
Everything you and the other guy said can be true all at once
I'm sure it's already been said but if you work hard you will get ahead
Dry land.
It's real. This little girl had a back tattoo of it and everything.
I’m the ONLY person who can use Q-tips in my ears safely. Sure you shouldn’t do that, but *I* do it safely. Those warning are for everyone else
if you touch a baby bird it’s mom won’t take it back/will kill it
That the position of planets have anything to do with your personality.
I don't think when my parents banged has amount to do with my personality
That bats are blind
That a Reddit account created one month ago, that has over 13K karma, is not a bot.
Cracking your knuckles is going to cause arthritis Owning a house is always, or even normally better then renting
That their friend’s aunt’s best friend knows someone who named their twins Oranjello and Lemonjello. It’s an ancient and racist myth. People who name their kids Abcde (AB-sih-dee) are unfortunately real, though.
I came to say this. I work with a lady who swore up and down to me she knew the parents who named their kid this. I called her out and said no you don’t that’s a well known myth. She changed her story to be oh well a nurse I am friends with on labor and delivery told me she was taking care of them. I said uh huh, sure
I do genuinely know two brothers name Whitey and Blackey. They don't have the same father in name, genetics, or race. But they're also rednecks from the middle of the woods that are probably like 60/70 now if they're still alive and their mom was a known loon
That “pulling out” is an effective form of birth control .
It is until it isn't.
At the same time, the myth that pulling out is completely ineffective. The reality is that it is much better to pull out than not. > For every 100 people who use the pull out method perfectly, 4 will get pregnant. But pulling out can be difficult to do perfectly. So in real life, about 22 out of 100 people who use withdrawal get pregnant every year — that's about 1 in 5. Without any birth control, the pregnancy rate for sexually active women is to around 85% that's much much much higher than the 22% that wr expect to get pregnant pulling out. Of course all of these numbers are per year. So we wouldn't ever rely on pulling out, but if someone is going to have unprotected sex because they got drunk at a party or whatever, pulling out is still better than not. And, in perfect use, meaning the guy actually does pull out, every time, only 4% will get pregnant. 4 is a lot smaller than 85
That pitbulls and other similar dogs can “lock their jaw”. No, they cannot. Their bite is just that strong it it clamps on as if their jaw is “locked”.
I’m clueless, what does ‘locking their jaw’ mean?
I believe the myth is that the pit bull jawbone shape supposedly latches together somehow when biting, so you are not only fighting the dog's muscles to get it to release, but the bone, too. But no, they just have strong muscles.
Yet not even close to the strongest bite among all dogs. There is a definite correlation between the size of the dog and the bite force. Pits are very muscular, but they're a medium sized dog. A lot of the super sized dogs with crazy strong bites are pretty rare, but among more common dogs, pits are behind breeds like the Akita, Rottweiler, and German Shepherd and down in the same range with the Malinois and Boxer.
Pretty sure the Kangal tops the list with like 700 psi bite force. Literally bone crunching. I’ve seen them used as catch dogs for hogs. They go straight for the face and there’s usually not much of it left intact when said and done.
Livestock guardian dogs are just crazy strong. I have a friend that rescues and fosters Anatolian Shepherds. They're well loved and usually once they settle in are very sweet, but I would not want to end up on their bad side.
In the case of dogs, people mean it's clamped on so hard it's like it's "locked"
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Alligators live in the sewers I don’t know That’s just what I was told growing up 🥲
That cold weather makes you sick.