Today’s quote to think about: “If you tell the average man there are 278,805,732,168 stars in the universe, he will believe you. But if a sign says Wet Paint he has to make a personnel investigation.”
I used to work in a restaurant and the same thing applied, if you told people the plates were hot, they would always have to touch them just to find out.
But how often are we completely the other way around? How many times do we take something as fact just because the person telling us spoke with authority? I have played a game a few times where I have embellished a truth and told it to a few people as fact. I’ve then sat back and waited to see how long it would take for the embellishment to come back to me. It normally only take a few days.
I’ve been in many problem solving situations where we would have fixed things a lot earlier if we hadn’t taken as fact the things that people told us.
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Aye – just ask my wife about the Rhetoric Gland. She believed me because, and I quote, “I used my best teacher’s voice.” Now to me it was a lesson in guillability but it’s also that sense as you identify about authority.
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Well there is a point where inquisition and stupidity overlap.
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