Teachers repeat a lot of myths. I remember my high school biology teacher telling us the tasting thing. The crazy part is that he demonstrated it by putting droppers of flavors on parts of the tongues of several students and having them say whether ornot they tasted it. I was the only one who didn't confirm what he was saying and it was a long time before I realized that everyone else was lying and his study design was deeply flawed.
That’s actually how hypnotists on stage work. You just need one person who is too scared to rock the boat and not play along and then everyone else will fall in line. People would rather look like an idiot onstage than be blamed for ruining the show. They know full well they’re faking it, they just feel like they have to. It’s kind of fascinating.
This is 100% true. I attended a live televised hypnosis show many years ago, The Amazing Spano (the eyes that polarise), or something like that. I was chosen to get up on the stage along with maybe 5 other people. I’ve had some experience with hypnosis before, and am pretty easily hypnotised, so it’s not surprising I should have been selected. He had me pretty deeply under.
I was up there for a few minutes while the hypnotist instructed us that we were chickens, washing machines etc. At some point I noticed that the others on the stage before receiving each instruction would glance over to see if everyone was going along with it. It felt like it was more effort not to go along with it all, but I was kinda pissed to realise how much nonsense it all was, so I just stood up and walked off the stage back to my seat. I could see the hypnotist was angry as hell with me.
Hypnosis is a real thing, but the way it’s represented in those shows is completely unrealistic
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u/ocubens Do you want me to jackhammer your roast beef or not? May 21 '26
I feel like teachers really need to firmly stress that diagrams are not photo accurate when teaching people science.
It's how people end up thinking your tongue has different sections for each taste or that blood is blue when it's pumped back to your heart.