You might label the fact that people find untrue information more interesting as “harmless” at first glance. You might say, “Don’t obsess over it, prof.”
I also wanted not to obsess; however, this situation is not a personal obsession, but a proven system flaw. As MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) studies on mass psychology clearly reveal, the human mind is evolutionarily programmed to focus on the new and extraordinary. [1]
On the other hand, there is a much more unpleasant side to the coin: Truth and the structural verities that will actually be useful to us in the long run usually have extremely boring, tiring, and colorless explanations. Truth, by nature, does not perform a show; it doesn’t give immediate gratification, it only demands mental labor and patience.
It is precisely because of this vulnerability of the brain and this “boring” nature of truth; almost all people start thinking about, telling, applying, and unfortunately spreading the lies they find interesting. As they spread them, they make them esteemed. Moreover, they do this with a determination that they couldn’t muster even if you assigned it as a highly paid job. Without caring but with a life-long continuity, sporadic yet permanent…
Ultimately, that interesting-found wrong spreads so widely that the person who says otherwise, that is, who only defends that colorless truth, is labeled “eccentric”. The truth-telling part of society is rapidly pulled into a spiral of silence. [2]
“What happens if you are labeled eccentric a few times, or don’t obsess so much over others being labeled eccentric, prof,” you might say.
However, if you read a bit more, right inside this spiral, I can make you feel how much personal danger you are in and cause you to acquire a brand-new trouble.
Maybe you should stop right here.
I have hundreds of examples in my mind, from health to finance. While writing this, I went back and forth between the thoughts of which example should I give to annoy more and which example should I give without annoying too much.
Nevertheless, if you are continuing to read, I continue in a way I will never be able to measure practically how much it will shake whom. Thus, I free myself from my anxieties about whether I am being soft or merciless:
“Einstein was expelled from school, Edison’s teacher told him he was a retard, Bill Gates dropped out of university…” We all love telling these entrepreneurship and genius tales. Our mind finds this narrative very interesting and attractive; because this fiction dons a guise of “unappreciated genius” over failure, academic laziness, or lack of discipline. There is no more comfortable way than this to rationalize our own mediocrity or our child’s unsystematic nature.
Yet, on the boring, colorless, and merciless side of the coin lies “Survivorship Bias.” [3]
“Prof, what happens if it lies there or not,” you might say.
Have you never felt that a student today finds it “cooler” to commit disciplinary or criminal offenses and be expelled from school, rather than failing classes? Moreover, have you never come across short social media videos that glorify those who want to lure them into crime, used to motivate the remaining pawns in their hands?
The boring truth is: Einstein was never expelled from school; on the contrary, he was always at the top level of his class in mathematics. Behind those few names who abandoned university and established billion-dollar empires lies the merciless statistics of science and mathematics. According to global data, 90% of enterprises that set off with those “interesting and brilliant” dreams go bankrupt mercilessly within the first few years, becoming ruined.
The ratio of those who change the world, among those who set out rejecting a basic discipline and structural education, setting off with just an “interesting idea” or with an audacity at the boundaries of stupidity, is a statistical anomaly, that is, roughly 0.0001%. Do you know how hard it is to make a young person read this percentage?
That’s why I will write it out: ONE IN TEN THOUSAND.
But you reject that 99.9% failure rate, that colorless and sweating statistic. Because studying regularly, obeying rules, and constructing mastery that lasts for years is boring. Instead, you spread and esteem that billionth-part “dropout genius” tale. The youth listens to this more easily.
Ultimately, what happens? You pay the price of escaping the boredom of truth by dragging your own life, or the future of the one you value most, into a statistical suicide. By believing in that interesting tale, you actually create a massive heap full of unequipped, unprofessioned, and disappointed individuals.
That heap could be your child.
Perhaps you might be injured, disabled, and even killed by one of that heap.
Worse than being killed might happen: You might be intimidated and dominated by them.
I am using a pseudonym when writing!
…Are you one of that heap?
Footnotes:
[1] Novelty hypothesis: The tendency for the mind to pay more attention to surprising and fictional stimuli rather than the usual truth.
[2] Spiral of silence: The process in which an individual cannot object to the majority’s lie due to the fear of isolation and exclusion, causing those who speak the truth to become completely silenced.
[3] Survivorship bias: The logical fallacy of ignoring the millions of failed examples and focusing only on the exceptional few that survived, thereby drawing incorrect conclusions about the system as a whole.