There are fish that can survive on dry(-ish) land for extended periods of time.
And don't get me started on the utterly bizarre slime mold.
The number of species that defy our expectations is countless.
Bluntly, there's a lot of arrogance in the claim that anyone should be able to easily and automatically rule out the existence of some species based on their personal knowledge, and that anyone who fails to do so is "gullible".
some, certainly yes.
i don't think anyone would disagree that some claims are more plainly ridiculous than others. i'm replying to someone who let themselves be convinced the tree octopus was real by a page picturing an octopus climbing a tree. let's not abdicate our regard for common sense.
For example, why is a tree octopus any less likely than the platypus, a venomous aquatic mammal that has a beak, lays eggs, and detects prey by sensing electric fields like a shark?
do i think i'm as intelligent as anyone, or that everyone is as intelligent as me? of course not. but i do think your standard for gullibility is too high if you don't think believing the linked article satisfies it.
I suppose that's enough to make my point for me.
the difference between people who initially believed this and those who didn't is gullibility, and this is a great example of gullibility because of how outlandish the claim is and appears to be. that's all i'm arguing. the counteraguments i see boil down to "but if someone is gullible enough, they'll think it's actually not outlandish and accept it on face value" which is not contrary to what i'm saying.
if you were one of the gullible ones, sorry! sucks to be more deficient than others in some way, but we all have deficiencies.
But I suppose you have your deficiencies too, same as those who thought it to be real (however briefly).
1) obviously photoshopped -- a real octopus on a tree branch would look totally different, it would sag in some places, it would affect the pine bristles underneath, it wouldn't have a shadow that makes it look like it's hovering an inch above the branch, etc. Also, that octopus image looks totally out of proportion, but I can't pin down why -- I _think_ it's because the level of detail is higher than for the branches.
2) It looks exactly like a regular octopus. Not only should an animal the size of a small bird have different proportions from a regular octopus (compare e.g. bats and fruit bats, or cats and tigers), but it should also look only distantly related to a regular octopus because it's adapted to a totally different biome.
All that leads me to the following conclusion: Common sense, in the sense of broadly understanding how the world works, really is what prevents you from getting fooled, and the more things you understand, the less likely you are to get fooled. Also, the more information a hoax has, the more likely it is to get exposed, because just one sufficiently glaring inconsistency can sink it.
- Tree lobster - Tree crab - Tree clam - Tree fish
People thought the Platypus was a hoax was it was initially discovered. It is real.
There could be. The name of the animal isn't what gives the lie away.
There are people who say birds aren’t real, or that Australia isn’t real, or that the earth is flat.
The animal involved not meeting heuristic models for plausibility may be something that should trigger skepticism, but its not the thing that should tell you this is a lie.
I don't think it's lying in the sense of trying to make someone else actually believe it. It's just a form of creative fiction writing. It can be a lot of fun to write in this mode; when well done it's a pleasant kind of erudite humor because to produce it (and get it) you have to be somewhat knowledgeable in the topic. Mockumentaries might be the film/TV equivalent. Unfortunately (especially for certain subjects) it also confuses and causes strife if readers take it too seriously.
'Click here to donate to my gofund me to save the amphibious octopus.'
You really think it means absolutely _nothing_ about this topic? It's literally an example of people believing what they read online! I think you're having an overly defensive reaction to probably falling for it.
> It would be very hard to go through life questioning the veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no one has an incentive to lie about
The issue is you may not understand or fathom the reasons someone may lie about something. Imagine the strange traditions that leaders have maintained throughout history to help control their subjects. To those subjects, I'm sure they weren't even imagining that these things they thought were spiritual were just fictions.
As for my point - yes you should try go through life with a certain level of curiosity and apprehension when people tell you things. I feel like a lot of our societal issues are a result of things continuing for no good reason, just because we've done it in the past. It's become fairly easy to fact-check, and while not popular at parties, it's important if you're actually trying to learn and build an accurate mental model.
If people were more comfortable questioning all aspects of our society (and if society was receptive to the criticism), I feel like we would be better off.
The purpose of misleading about “politician did X” is to sell a call to action. Any time there is a call to action supported by a claim, there is an obvious motivation for misrepresentation (the very same one present when “politicia did X” is the claim.) This contains a call to action, ergo, it has an obvious motivation for misrepresentation.
> I don't think it demonstrates much that students believed it.
I think it demonstrates a lot that half of 13-year-old students in the US study believed a page which referenced a fictitious nation-state in the Pacific Northwest was reliable, leaving aside the other indicia of deception. Though whether what it says is about internet literacy or complete failure of education on geography perhaps less clear.
I'm just going to leave this here
>> Although the tree octopus is not officially listed on the Endangered Species List, we feel that it should be added since its numbers are at a critically low level for its breeding needs. The reasons for this dire situation include: decimation of habitat by logging and suburban encroachment; building of roads that cut off access to the water which it needs for spawning; predation by foreign species such as house cats; and booming populations of its natural predators, including the bald eagle and sasquatch.
Are you referring to Cascadia? That's a perfectly non-fictional name for the region (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest).
Or maybe I missed another reference?
Or at least pretend to.
The problem is in getting hold of them, as trade in this protected species is illegal.
No, I just made the mistake of trusting you and your persistence!
I don't think believing makes you gullible, is just that the consequences for believing in this case are negligible. At worst, you repeat the story to someone else, as second-hand fact. Mostly likely however, you'd never think of this conversation again, and it would have no effect on your behaviour. I think it says much more about the person telling the lie (this is a shitty thing to do to a friend) than the person accepting the lies.
Extraordinary claims may require extraordinary evidence, but it really only matters at the point where believing those claims affects one's behaviour and the consequences are tangible and different from refutation of those claims.
Is there a subtle truth to your friend's lie? It need not be related to scallions. We perceive the world through narrative. Perhaps your friend was introducing a fundamental truth through the revelation of scallions growing in a bathroom. Or at least that's how we would interpret it on my home planet of Zeta Reticulii IV. Of course the "fact" that I'm from Zeta Reticulii IV is a lie. I grew up in Texas. You can make your own decisions regarding the relative adherence to consensual reality between Texas and Zeta Reticulii IV.
Perhaps the story of growing scallions in the bathroom is nothing other than the creation of a shared history. Does it matter that history is counter-factual? We're social beings. We do things like that.
I think it’s the same basic principle as hanging up if a relative calls you begging for money or proclaiming to be kidnapped and calling you back. The costs for double-checking incredible claims is often not that high.
Some fish-looking sea creatures are actually mammals. Sea horses have pregnant males. Deep sea fish look like horror monsters. A fresh water octopus just isn't that unbelievable.
But really, if there were something as bizarre as a tree octopus, you would have heard of it.
I mean absence of incentive to lie is far from universal criteria to distinguish false information.
To make money today, all one needs is attention. Therefore there is a universal incentive to say anything attention-grabbing.
Many people are making a living today by saying things that are at least as ridiculous as a tree octopus, for example that the COVID vaccine has a microchip from Bill Gates in it, or that there is a secret global plan for everything revealed by a guru nicknamed Q.
Information needs to be evaluated by a consistent approach that takes into account the source, cross-checking with other sources, and (especially) cross-checking with what is already known.
For example this fake animal story is easily caught by checking it against other trusted sites like Wikipedia, the Smithsonian, major news services, etc, and by testing it against existing knowledge of marine life: octopuses don’t have lungs, and therefore cannot persist out of water for more than short periods of time.
I believed it too. The thing is, this is something no one is really incentivized to lie about. If some website says "politician did X", then your lie detector turns on, because it's worth it for lots of websites to lie or mislead about that. It would be very hard to go through life questioning the veracity of every inconsequential bit of information that no one has an incentive to lie about. I don't think it demonstrates much that students believed it. And I especially don't think it means anything about gullibility about information found online. Almost certainly, if it were printed in a book, they'd be even more likely to believe it.