Asklemmy

43933 readers

537 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

337

"If you tell a lie big enough and tell it frequently enough, people will eventually come to believe it". What is an example of this happening today? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 11 months ago by Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

401 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I would really rather that these were actual examples, and not conspiracy theories. We all have our own unsubstantiated ideas about what shadowy no-gooders are doing, but I'd rather hear about things that are actually happening.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 28 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That coconuts falling on people's heads kills more people than shark attacks. It's was literally an experiment to see how far a lie could spread, and now it's used by many as an actual fact.

[–] Rediphile@lemmy.ca 21 points 11 months ago

Source?

From what I understand, it's unknown if coconuts kill more people per year than sharks as death by coconut are not well tracked. But the specific number quoted of 150 isn't legitimate. However, I can't find anything about it being related at all to an experiment to see how far a lie could go though. Did someone tell you this? Definitely a possibility of some irony here...

[–] LowtierComputer@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't know if you're mixing up stats or I was told a falsehood, but I was told that the lie to see how far and fast they spread was about eating X spiders in your sleep throughout your life.

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That was actually a result of a statistical blunder. The people who ran the study forgot to exclude Spider-Eating Greg as an outlier.

[–] alt_xa_23@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

Wasn't it Spiders Georg?