Interesting. This makes me less skeptical of Derren Brown’s color illusion video (summary: a celebrity mentalist uses NLP techniques to convince a woman yellow is red, red is black etc.).
It’s only a small step away from what complete amateurs can do in a room in a university. Human judgement is careful not to get caught up with the actual real world when there is social influence at stake!
I don’t think social influence alone is a good explanation for the delusion in the video. Or more precisely, I don’t think the delusion in the video can be explained as just a riff on the Asch conformity experiment.
It’s only a small step away from what complete amateurs can do in a room in a university. Human judgement is careful not to get caught up with the actual real world when there is social influence at stake!
I don’t think social influence alone is a good explanation for the delusion in the video. Or more precisely, I don’t think the delusion in the video can be explained as just a riff on the Asch conformity experiment.
I agree (for the right definition of ‘social influence’, of course). That ‘small step away’ really is a step away.