Humans are naturally curious. We seek to explore, learn, and understand. In fact, the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the HAAS School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that when the brain searches for information, it accesses the same neural code as when it's hunting for money.
"To the brain, information is its own reward," said co-author of the study Ming Hsu, Ph.D. According to him, just as we like empty calories from junk food, we can also overvalue data that makes us feel good but may not be useful.
Or, as one Reddit thread shows, even accurate! Started by platform user lilCRONOS, it has folks sharing "the dumbest" things someone made them believe to be true that they later found out wasn't. Below you will find the most popular submissions to the discussion, which serve as a reminder that we can't trust everything we hear.
#21
I thought that if you touched a frog or toad, you'd get warts. This led to an irrational fear of amphibians until high school biology class set me straight.
72points
#22
That my dog went to live on a farm.
71points
#23
When I was in the fourth grade I asked my mom if we were Irish (I think we were celebrating St Patrick’s day at school) and she told me that my grandmother was a leprechaun. So then I proudly told my teacher the next day that I was Irish because my grandmother was a leprechaun and the second I said it out loud I realized how stupid that was and have burned with shame thinking about it ever since.
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71points
#24
When I was about 5, my dad told me that if I put salt on a birds tail, I could pick it up and hold it. I ran around throwing salt at birds for years before I realized he had been f*****g with me.
68points
#25
That if someone has red eyes in a photograph, that means there is a demon living inside them.
67points
#26
Told my wife the channel tunnel has a 2 mile middle part which is see through so you can watch the fish as you pass through. Completely forgot until about 5 years later when we used the tunnel and she was gutted she didn't see any fish.
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59points
#27
That if you swallowed a watermelon seed a watermelon would grow inside your stomach.
Also, we had a lot of those big black and yellow garden spiders around. They would have these big zig zags of silk down the middle of their web and I was told they were writing spiders, and if you bothered them they would write your name and you would die. The zig zag was them practicing their penmanship.
58points
#28
There is a snail that lives up your nose and it’ll bite off your finger if you try and pick it. Older neighbor kid.
I googled it and it’s from a Shel Silverstein poem. This has been in my head for 35 years.
57points
#29
That if my sister put a stamp on on my forehead and stood me by the mailbox,the mailman would take me back to God.
56points
#30
I used to believe chocolate eggs were laid by roosters….
51points
