6mo ago

You never know

13 comments

well, thanks to AI-generated answers, it might change every time you search
- Don’t forget to stabilize your kid’s sandwiches 🥪

This is a very good thing. If you don't know something, you can always look it up to figure it out, but there are so many times where people incorrectly think they already know about things, so they never look them up and realize they were wrong the whole time.

Mandela Effect is a thing. The impulse to verify your understanding is a good thing, in contrast with people so stubborn they’d rather double down than admit they could be wrong.

I’m older than the internet, so I have no choice but to question what I know. In the 80s and 90s many of us were obsessed with memorizing useless facts. They were a fun part of conversation prior to limitless access to information.
It’s bananas how much of what I memorized is false. Some of it even came from my teachers. This is a fun and interesting read that I highly recommend for anyone who attended public school in the US. This isn’t limited to age, however. Many of these falsities are still present in our curriculum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me

I used to know how to spell words, and what they meant. Then I spent too much time on the internet.
- Had to once double check "the" because I'd been talking to friends about how words eventually lose meaning they're overused. The example was to just say it repeatedly while thinking of the word in your head, and eventually the concept of the word the loses any tangible meaning
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation is the phenomenon

I also do this with word definitions all the time.
- Those sometimes do change randomly.

Fish still breathe with their gills, right? It really doesn't seem like there should be enough dissolved oxygen in water.
Don't you want to just be sure? Go on, check. I won't tell anyone.

13 comments