The facts are crying out. There is no doubt that modern life is not conducive to people's mental health. Social tension in society is increasing every year. On the other hand, there is a moral crisis. Many people find themselves in a state of spiritual vacuum: without having in their hearts

Facts are the basis of knowledge One of the most significant, characteristic features of science is that it is based on the study and analysis of real facts, that is, certain phenomena occurring in the world around us. “Purely logical thinking,” wrote A. Einstein, - itself

1. Basic Facts (vv. 1-2) The epistle begins without any formal introduction to prepare the reader. This is as amazing as it is difficult to understand. In the original, the words “about that” are put in first place, and the continuing sentences are summed up, in

Opinions and facts That's what I heard. Once the Exalted One was staying in Savatthi, in the Jeta Grove, in the Anathapindika Park. Then the venerable Malunkyaputta, who was staying at a distance and in solitude, had a chain of such thoughts: Regarding these opinions on various issues, which

ANATOMY FACTS Before eating meat, people disguise it in every possible way, using ketchups, sauces, and gravies. Meat is aged, soaked, fried, stewed, transformed in thousands of ways. Why is such disguise needed? Where does this reluctance to eat raw meat come from, how everyone eats it is true

Facts And concluding our conversation about the Fall, let's try to take an unbiased look at this whole story as it is set out in the Bible. Forget for a moment what you have been taught and just look at the text of Scripture - without immediately trying to explain it in terms of already

Facts The Gospel of Thomas is later, not earlier, secondary, not primary, in comparison with the New Testament gospels. Contrary to the opinion of some scholars, it was written in Syria at the end of the 2nd century. The Gospel of Peter, which contains the story of the speaker

The human body still continues to reveal its mysteries. By studying the operation of its systems, scientists make hundreds of discoveries every year. And often new facts refute centuries-old ideas.

20. Silence of the heart

The average adult's heart beats 72 times a minute, 100 thousand times a day, 36 million times a year, and 2.5 billion times throughout a lifetime.

However, the heart beats rhythmically, which means that in addition to beats, there are also pauses in the cycle. So, if you add up all the pauses between heartbeats in one average human life, it turns out that our heart is “silent” for about 20 years. It is also interesting that the heart stops when you sneeze.

19. Defying the laws of physics

It is known that liquid can flow from higher to lower pressure, but in our body this law is constantly violated. When measuring pressure in the aorta and femoral artery simultaneously, blood from the aorta, where the pressure is lower, flows into the femoral artery, where the pressure is higher.

18. Round heart

NASA recently conducted a study that yielded very interesting results. It turned out that in a state of weightlessness the heart not only weakens and decreases in volume, but also... becomes rounder. During the experiment, NASA cardiologists studied the hearts of 12 astronauts working on the ISS.

Analysis of the images showed that in conditions of weightlessness the heart is rounded by 9.4%. However, upon returning to Earth, the heart returns to its normal shape within six months and resumes “earthly” activity. To imagine the decrease in heart activity, suffice it to say that lying on a bed for a month and a half is equivalent to working in zero gravity for a week.

17. New skin: from three days to a month

Human skin is constantly renewed. This process is called regeneration. It happens like this: new skin cells are formed in the germinal layer of the epidermis, over the course of about 28-30 days they move to the surface and lose their cell nucleus. On the surface, with the help of the keratin they contain, they form the stratum corneum of the skin, which gradually peels off when washed or in contact with clothing.

Thus, the skin that we consider ours is constantly renewed. After a month, the composition of a person’s skin completely changes.

In newborns, the regeneration process, like many other processes (for example, metabolism), proceeds faster. “Skin change” in infants takes three days - 72 hours.

16. Internal "brewery"

People with “fermenting gut” or the so-called “inner brewery syndrome” turn any food and drink into alcohol within themselves. That's why they're always a little tipsy. The cause of the disease is the inability of the stomach to break down sugar into carbohydrates - instead it engages in fermentation.

In addition, the human body with a fermenting intestine is not able to process ethanol resulting from the consumption of starchy foods. For such people, one bottle of beer is enough to gain 0.37 ppm. Fortunately, this is a very rare syndrome, with only 11 cases reported worldwide today.

15. No hair

A spinal fracture can also lead to such an unexpected consequence as the disappearance of body hair. This is a unique phenomenon that scientists themselves have not yet understood very well. Hair on the human body actively grows when they make a request to the brain and receive feedback. If this connection is disrupted - and this is exactly what will happen if the spinal cord suffers serious damage - body hair gradually begins to disappear.

14. Avian genetics

The fact that the “lark” is a “lark” is not his merit. As in the fact that “owl” is “owl” - there is no guilt. Nature has “imprisoned” us this way. And who is responsible for chronotypes was determined by American researchers at the Northwestern University of Chicago Medical Center in collaboration with scientists from the Korean Institute of Science and Technology. While studying the fruit fly Drosophilia melanogaster, they discovered a gene that regulates circadian rhythm. They called it the “24-hour genome” and in 2010 they published the data in the journal Science, where they noted that the flies for which it “did not work did not show activity for a long time at dawn.”

If we draw a parallel with humans, then these fruit flies are typical “owls”, who also cannot tear their heads away from their “fly pillows”. And the same gene is responsible for the easy awakening of those who are lucky enough to be born “larks”.

13. Moving facial expressions

In 2011, scientists were able to discover that human facial expressions arise long before his birth. Even during the prenatal period, the child is already able to move his facial muscles, smile, raise his eyebrows in surprise or frown. The facial muscles make up 25% of the total number of muscles; 17 muscle groups are used during a smile, and 43 during anger or crying.

One of the best ways to maintain smooth skin on your face is by kissing. They work from 29 to 34 muscle groups.

12. Blood type as a factor in career and personal life

In Japan, since the 1930s, the doctrine of “ketsu-eki-gata” has been practiced, in which you can tell everything about a person by knowing only his blood type. The Japanese are confident that those with blood type I are sociable and energetic people, while those with blood type II are stress-resistant and patient, but stubborn. Creative and powerful people are usually blood type III. People with the rare IV group are balanced and natural leaders.

“Ketsu-eki-gata” is incredibly popular. A Japanese girl may ask on the first date not what your zodiac sign is, but what your blood type is. The Japanese rely on their blood type both when they get married and when they get a job. HR departments try to form teams that are perfectly matched by blood.

11. Testosterone and longevity

The effect of testosterone on life expectancy has been repeatedly confirmed in various studies. One of them, conducted in 1969 among patients at a psychiatric hospital in Kansas, showed that castrated men lived 14 years longer. Interesting data on this issue were recently published by the Korean scientist Kyun-Chin Min. He studied the book "Yang-Se-Ke-Bo", in which the genealogical information of 385 families of court eunuchs can be traced.

Comparing the life expectancy of 81 eunuchs with confirmed life dates, Kyung-Chin Min saw that average duration The life of the eunuchs was 71 years. That is, eunuchs outlived their contemporaries by an average of 17 years.

10. Craving for sleep

Narcolepsy is a disease in which a person constantly wants to sleep. Also called paroxysms of irresistible sleepiness and Gelineau's disease. The disease occurs infrequently, in approximately 20-40 people out of 100,000. Scientists associate narcolepsy with disintegration syndrome, an untimely onset of sleep phases.

Patients suffering from narcolepsy, although they sleep a lot, do not get enough sleep, because by skipping the slow-wave sleep phase, they immediately find themselves in the REM sleep phase, the encephalogram curve of which resembles the encephalogram curve of a awake person; it is almost impossible to get enough sleep in this mode. We get enough sleep in the deep delta sleep stage; patients with narcolepsy do not fall into this phase.

The causes of narcolepsy are still unclear. Some doctors believe that the culprit of the disease is the brain neurotransmitter hypocretin. It is he who regulates the REM sleep phase and wakefulness. If the cells of this neurotransmitter are damaged, it leads to sleep disorders.

9. Natural alarm clock

Probably, each of us at least once woke up a few minutes before the alarm clock, especially when we knew in advance that it was simply necessary to wake up.

This is the merit of the so-called “natural alarm clock,” namely, adrenocorticotropic hormone.

Scientists believe it has something to do with minimizing stress on the body when waking up. But the most interesting thing is that we can consciously control it. When studying the properties of adrenocorticotropic hormone, an experiment was conducted in which a number of subjects programmed themselves in advance to wake up at a certain time. More than 75% of the subjects actually woke up on their own when they needed to.

8. Wave of Death

In 2009, in one of the American hospitals, encephalograms were taken from nine dying people who at that time could no longer be saved. The results were sensational - after death, the brain of all subjects, which should have already been killed, literally exploded - incredibly powerful bursts of electrical impulses arose in it, which had never been observed in a living person. They occurred two to three minutes after cardiac arrest and lasted approximately three minutes. Previously, similar experiments were carried out on rats, in which the same thing began a minute after death and lasted 10 seconds.

Scientists have dubbed this phenomenon a “wave of death.” Scientific explanation“waves of death” raised many ethical questions.

According to one of the experimenters, Dr. Lakhmir Chawla, such bursts of brain activity are explained by the fact that from a lack of oxygen, neurons lose electrical potential and discharge, emitting impulses “avalanche-like.” “Living” neurons are constantly under a small negative voltage - 70 minivolts, which is maintained by getting rid of positive ions that remain outside. After death, the balance is disrupted, and neurons quickly change polarity from “minus” to “plus.”

7. How men and women hear

Women are better at distinguishing high-frequency sounds. A one-week-old girl can already identify the sound of her mother's voice and hears when another baby cries. Boys don't need that.

Women better than men recognize changes in tone and therefore know very well when men are lying.

Men, on the other hand, specialize in the sounds of wild nature (this skill is not so necessary in the city) and “hear” directions perfectly. If a woman hears the kitten’s meow first, then it is the man who will indicate where to look for it.

6. Such different sensitivities

A woman's skin is 10 times more sensitive than a man's skin. Research by English scientists has shown that even the most sensitive man in this sense does not live up to the most insensitive woman. But men's skin is thicker than women's and therefore men have fewer wrinkles. On the back of an adult man, the skin is four times thicker than on the stomach. And if a man is busy with work, then the sensitivity of the skin drops even more, and he almost does not feel pain.

5. Electricity is in us

Humans have great prospects as generators of electricity; it can be generated from almost any of our actions. So, from one breath you can get 1 W, and a calm step is enough to power a 60 W light bulb, and it will be enough to charge your phone.

4. Lungs - the “stove” of the body

One of the luminaries of Soviet hardening systems was the Soviet scientist of Austrian origin Karl Trincher. He spent five years in the Gulag and knew firsthand about the cold. Treacher once noticed that in laboratory animals, when there is a lack of oxygen, the temperature in the lungs increases. From here he made a brilliant conclusion: “The lungs are the only organ where fats, reacting with oxygen, are burned directly. Without any enzymes."

Today, physiologists no longer deny that the lungs are a “stove” that can warm the body in cold weather. Or rather, not to warm, but to keep warm, to resist the pathogenic dominance of the cold. Therefore, in the cold, you first need to monitor your breathing, breathe slowly, evenly and deeply.

3. Color perception of floors

The retina of the human eye contains almost seven million “cone” receptors, which are responsible for the perception of color. The X chromosome is responsible for their action. Women have two of them, and the palette of colors they perceive is wider. In conversation they operate with shades: “color sea ​​wave", "sand", "light coffee". Men talk about fundamental colors: red, white, blue.

2. Big skin

Skin is the largest organ of the human body. Its average surface area is from 1.5 to 2 square meters. In different parts of the body, the skin has different thickness and sensitivity. The thickest skin is on the feet and palms, the thinnest is on the eyelids. At the same time, skin sensitivity is not directly dependent on thickness. Thus, the skin on the fingers and palms, although quite thick, can feel a pressure of 20 milligrams, which corresponds to the average weight of a fly.

1. A hard worker's heart

Extremely high-speed processes occur in our body every second. When the body is at rest, the path of blood from the heart to the lungs and back takes only six seconds, from the heart to the brain and back - eight seconds, and sixteen seconds from the heart to the fingertips and back.

We tend to consider ourselves open-minded and think that we are ready to accept new information regardless of whether it contradicts our worldview. But the paradox is that when new facts refute our most cherished beliefs, faith in them only strengthens. In psychology, this phenomenon is called the rebound effect. Journalist David McRain examines the phenomenon using scientific research as an example and explains why we selectively perceive the truth and persist in our delusions.

Wired, The New York Times, Backyard Poultry Magazine - it happens to everyone. Sometimes they make mistakes and get the facts wrong. And then, be it a well-known printed newspaper or an online news resource, the editors admit their guilt. If a news publication needs to maintain its good reputation, the editors publish corrections. Most of the time, this technique works, but what news outlets don't consider is that correction can further distance readers from the truth if the false report matches their beliefs. In fact, those pithy notes on the back page of every newspaper draw our attention to one of the most powerful forces influencing the way we think, feel and make decisions - the mechanism that prevents us from believing the truth.

In 2006, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler of the University of Michigan and Georgia State University wrote several articles about key political events. The contents of these articles confirmed widespread misconceptions about some controversial issues in American politics. To begin with, the subject was offered a false article, and then another, which refuted the message of the previous one. For example, one of the articles said that the United States had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The next one said that the US never found him, which was true. Pacifists or adherents of liberalism generally rejected the first article and agreed with the second. The militarists and conservatives agreed with the first article and categorically did not accept the second. This reaction is not surprising. What was truly unexpected was the reaction of conservatives when they learned the truth. They admitted that after reading the material that in fact no weapons were found, they were even more convinced that in fact there were weapons in Iraq and that their initial beliefs were correct.

“Being confused, you strengthen your beliefs even more, instead of challenging them. When someone tries to correct you, to dispel your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens your confidence."

The experiment was repeated, this time focusing on stem cell research and tax reform, and again it was found that corrections actually reinforced the misconceptions of study participants if the corrections contradicted their beliefs. People on different sides of the political barricades read the same articles and the same corrections, and if new information went against their beliefs, they began to defend their point of view with redoubled tenacity. The corrections unexpectedly led to the opposite results.

When a thought becomes part of your worldview, you try to protect it from outside influences. This happens instinctively and unconsciously as soon as the brain encounters information that is incompatible with its attitudes. Just as the mechanisms of justificatory thinking protect you when you actively seek information, the backfire effect protects you when the facts come to you, attacking where you are most vulnerable. In your confusion, you strengthen your beliefs even more, instead of challenging them. When someone tries to correct you, to dispel your misconceptions, it backfires and strengthens your confidence. Over time, thanks to the rebound effect, you begin to look less critically at the facts that allow you to continue to consider your beliefs true and legitimate.

In 1976, when Ronald Reagan was on the presidential campaign trail, he often told voters about a Chicago con artist who made her living by scamming insurance companies. Reagan said the woman had 80 names, 30 addresses and 12 Social Security cards, which she used to receive food stamps and benefits from health insurance companies. The future president said that the woman drove around in a Cadillac, did not work and did not pay taxes. He talked about this woman, whom he never named, in every small town, and the story infuriated his listeners. Thanks to her, the concept of the “Social Security Queen” entered the American political lexicon and influenced not only the political discourse of America for the next 30 years, but also the government’s social policy. But this story was just a canard.

Of course, there have always been people who stole from the government, but no one who fit the description of Ronald Reagan actually existed. The woman who many historians suspect may have served as the model for the presidential heroine was an actress-con artist who used four false names and moved from place to place, changing her appearance each time, not some housewife mother surrounded by a pack of whiners. children.

Despite the fact that the story was publicly refuted and a lot of time has passed, it is still alive. The fictional lady who wallows in luxury and languishes over mountains of meal tickets while hard-working Americans go on strike is still a fixture in online newspapers these days. The mimetic stability of the word is impressive. Some version of the story appears weekly in blogs and magazine articles about legal violations, although it only takes a couple of clicks to find out it's false.

“When evidence confirms beliefs, people tend to see what they expect to see and draw conclusions that are consistent with their expectations.”

Psychologists call such stories narrative scenarios - these are stories about exactly what we want to hear, confirming our beliefs and giving us the right to adhere to the opinions we have already formed. If belief in safety net queens protects your worldview, you accept the myth and move on with your life. You may have found Reagan's tale disgusting or laughable, but without question you believed stories like these about medical companies interfering with research, or warrantless searches, or the benefits of chocolate. You watched a documentary about the dangers of... something you don't like, and you probably thought it was about the soul. For every Michael Moore "absolutely true" documentary, there are exactly the same documentary with the exact opposite content, in which the champions of the idea argue that their version of the truth is better.

A great example of selective disbelief is Literallyunbelievable.org. Its creators publish comments from Facebook users who believe in articles from the satirical magazine The Onion. Articles about Oprah Winfrey inviting a select few to be buried with her in a luxurious grave, news about the construction of an abortion center for hundreds of millions of dollars, or NASCAR's announcement about awarding bonuses to drivers for homophobic statements - users leave outraged comments on such news in full seriously. Psychologist Thomas Gilovich wrote: “When evidence confirms beliefs, people tend to see what they expect to see and draw conclusions that are consistent with their expectations. If the conclusion matches our attitudes, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe it?”; if the conclusion disappoints us, then we ask ourselves, “Should I believe it?”

This is why particularly ardent critics who believe that Barack Obama was not born in the USA will never believe the hundreds of facts that clearly prove the opposite. When the President's administration released the full text of his birth certificate to the public in April 2011, the reaction of Obama's opponents was exactly what the backfire would suggest. They carefully studied the document's release date, its appearance, its form - and as a result, they gathered at the forum and ridiculed it. Their confidence increased even more. This has always been the case and will always be the case when it comes to conspiracy theories or any other incredible facts. A refutation will always only strengthen a person’s belief in the opposite. It is always considered part of a conspiracy, and the lack of facts is attributed to concealment of the truth.

This explains how strange, outdated and downright crazy beliefs survive the fight against science, common sense and facts. However, the truth of the phenomenon lies deeper, because none of us considers ourselves crazy. We do not believe that lightning is sent by a deity who wanted to launch a couple of charges into the ground. You don't wear special underwear to protect your libido from the moonlight. Your beliefs are rational, logical and factual, right?

Fine. Let's talk, for example, about corporal punishment. Is this good or bad? Harmless or harmful? Can corporal punishment be considered a lack of love or, conversely, a manifestation of parental care? Science has its answer, but we'll get to that later. Now try to realize how you feel about this, and you will understand that you yourself want to fall under the influence of others, you passionately want to be enlightened about a great many issues, but you avoid some topics.

The last time you got into or witnessed an online argument with someone who was convinced they knew absolutely everything about health care reform, gun control, gay marriage, sex education, drug wars, Joss Whedon, or whether the number 0.9999, repeated ad infinitum, is equal to zero - remember how it all happened? Have you taught your opponent a valuable lesson? Have you been thanked for helping to understand all the intricacies of a controversial issue after cursing your opponent for his past ignorance? Has a virtual hat been taken off to you for making a better person?

“It is impossible to win an argument on the Internet. When you start throwing around facts and names and hyperlinks and quotes, your opponent actually becomes even more confident that he is right than before you started the argument.”

Most likely not. Most online battles unfold according to the same scenario: each side rushes to attack and fishes out more and more evidence from the depths of the Internet to strengthen its position until one of the sides, disappointed, decides to go all in and gets personal . If you are lucky, the comments will be deleted, and you will have time to preserve your honor and dignity, or some third-party commentator will help set a pack of indignants against your opponent.

Research into the backfire effect shows that it is impossible to win an argument online. When you start throwing around facts and names and hyperlinks and quotes, your opponent actually becomes even more confident that he is right than before you started the argument. When he starts contradicting you, the same thing happens in your mind. The reverse effect causes both of you to become even more locked in the belief that you are right.

Have you ever noticed a strange feature: we practically do not pay attention to praise addressed to us, but any criticism strikes us on the spot? Thousands of positive reviews may go unnoticed by us, but one single remark like “sucks” can stick in our heads for several days. One hypothesis to explain why this happens and why the backfire effect works is that we actually spend much more time thinking about information with which we disagree than we do about information that is close to us. Information that confirms our beliefs fades from our consciousness, but when we encounter something that challenges the truth of our beliefs, something that contradicts previously acquired knowledge about how the world works, we stop and Let's take note of this. Some psychologists argue that the explanation for this lies in the theory of evolution. Our ancestors paid more attention to negative stimuli than to positive ones, because negative events need to be responded to somehow. Those who could not adequately respond to a negative stimulus could not survive.

In 1992, Peter Ditto and David Lopez conducted an experiment in which subjects had to dip a small strip of paper into a cup of saliva. The paper was completely ordinary, but the psychologists told one half of the participants that it would turn green if a person had serious problems with the pancreas, and the other half that this would happen if they were completely healthy. Both groups were told that the reaction would take about 20 seconds. Typically, people who were told that the piece of paper would turn green if they were healthy waited much longer for the result than the 20 seconds they were warned about. If the color did not change, 52 percent tried again. In another group, where green was supposed to mean bad news, people were mostly content with 20 seconds, with only 18 percent trying to put the paper in the bowl again.

When you read a negative comment, when someone trashes something you love, and when your beliefs are challenged, you scrutinize the information, looking for weaknesses. Cognitive dissonance blocks your thinking until you can cope with the situation. In the process, you form more neutral connections, construct new memories, and generate some effort—and when you finish thinking about the subject, your original beliefs are stronger than ever.

Psychologist and New York Times columnist Dan Gilbert observes the opposite effect in the fight against excess weight: “It happens that the number on the bathroom scale goes off scale. Then we get off and stand back up again to make sure we see the result correctly and don't lean too heavily on one leg. If we are satisfied with the result, we go into the shower with a smile. Without any further questions, we accept on faith the number that we like, and try again and again if we don’t like the result, thereby, as if unobtrusively, tipping the scales on our side.”

The backfire effect continually rearranges your beliefs and memories, swaying you to one side or the other through a process psychologists call assimilation bias. Decades of research into various types of cognitive distortions have shown that people typically perceive the world through a thick lens of faith, clouded by attitudes and worldviews. In 1996, scientists showed a group of subjects the Bob Dole-Bill Clinton debate and found that before the debate, everyone believed their candidate had won. In 2000, when scholars began studying Clinton supporters and opponents through their reactions to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, they found that Clinton supporters tended to view Lewinsky as an untrustworthy home-wrecker and had difficulty believing that Clinton had lied under oath. Of course, the president's opponents experienced exactly the opposite feelings. Fast forward to 2011, when Fox News and MSNBC were vying for cable territory: each promised to present information that would not challenge the beliefs of any part of the population. That's biased assimilation in action.

Biased assimilation does not only work in relation to modern events. A group of academics conducted a 2004 study asking liberals and conservatives to weigh in on the 1970 Kent State University shooting, in which National Guard soldiers opened fire on anti-Vietnam War demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine. .

As is usually the case with any historical event, the details of what happened at the University of Kent began to become distorted within a few hours. Years later, books, articles, broadcasts and songs wove an impenetrable web of reasons and motivations, conclusions and assumptions, in which every opinion was somehow justified. In the weeks following the shooting, psychologists surveyed Kent University students who witnessed the events and found that 6% of liberals and 45% of conservatives believed that National Guard provoked. Twenty-five years later, they surveyed the then-students again. In 1995, 62% of liberals said that soldiers committed murder, while only 37% of conservatives agreed with this statement. Five years later, students were given the questionnaire again, and the researchers found that conservatives were still inclined to say that protesters had overstepped their bounds in relation to the National Guard, while liberals saw the soldiers as more likely to be aggressors. Strikingly, the more people surveyed said they knew about events, the stronger the strength of their beliefs. That is, a person supported the National Guard or protesters the more vehemently the more he knew about what happened. People who were only generally aware of what happened were less likely to experience backlash when evaluating events. The same effect caused those more knowledgeable to deliberately ignore controversial details.

“The mind of man does everything to support and agree with what he has once accepted, either because it is an object of faith or because he likes it. Whatever may be the strength and number of facts that testify to the contrary, the mind either does not notice them, or neglects them, or rejects them through distinctions with great prejudice, so that the reliability of those previous conclusions remains unimpaired. Francis Bacon

In 1997, Geoffrey Munrow and Peter Ditto released a series of false articles. One study said that homosexuality is most likely a mental disorder. Another argued that any sexual orientation is natural and normal. The subjects were then divided into two groups: some considered homosexuality a disease, while others did not. Each group was given fake articles with fictitious facts and evidence, claiming that their point of view was incorrect. After both groups read materials that challenged their beliefs, no one said they suddenly saw the light, realizing that they had been wrong all these years. On the contrary, everyone began to argue that the solution to such problems was beyond the reach of science. When the subjects were later given other topics to discuss, such as spanking and astrology, the same people said they no longer trusted science or its ability to establish truth. Instead of reconsidering their beliefs and facing the facts, people chose to reject all science altogether.

Science and literature once painted the future in which we now live. Books, movies and comics of the past depicted cyberpunks surfing the endless expanses of information, and personal communications devices enveloping a person in a cloud of beeps and calls. Stories and midnight radio chatter predicted a time when the sum of human knowledge and artistic production would be continuously available on demand and millions of human lives would be interconnected and visible to all who wanted to be seen. And now the very future has arrived, in which we are surrounded by computers that can tell us everything that humanity knows, explain how to perform any task, teach us anything and reveal the essence of any phenomenon on earth. So one day a fictional life became everyday life for us.

And if this promised future has already arrived, why don’t we live in the kingdom of science and reason? Where is the most socio-political and technical utopia, empirical nirvana, the abode of the gods of analytical thought (only without overalls and neon headbands), where everyone knows the truth?

Among the many prejudices and misconceptions that block our path to the realm of microprocessors and skinny jeans, lives a huge monster of our psyche - the reverse effect. He was always there, always influenced the way we and our ancestors saw the world, but the Internet unleashed the beast, greatly increased its persuasiveness, and over the years we have not become any wiser.

As they develop social media and advertising, it will become increasingly difficult for us to overcome a person's desire to confirm information that corresponds to his beliefs, and the effect of the opposite result. A person will have more opportunities to choose from the general flow exactly the information that fits into his vision of the world, and, in his opinion, reliable sources that will supply him with such information. To top it off, advertisers will continue to adapt, not only by creating ads based on what they know about a person, but by generating advertising strategies based on data about what has or has not worked for a person. The advertising of the future will be distributed not only depending on your preferences, but also on who you voted for, where you grew up, what mood you are in, what day or year it is - any information about you that can be measured. In a world where everything you want is available, your beliefs will never be questioned.

Three thousand spoilers were tweeted hours before Barack Obama ascended to his presidential pulpit and told the world that Osama bin Laden was dead. A Facebook page, get-rich-quick sites, and millions of emails, text messages, and instant messages about the death of a terrorist preceded official statement May 1, 2011. Stories and comments poured in one after another, search engines went white-hot. Between 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. on the first day, Google searches for bin Laden increased by 1 million percent compared to the previous day. Videos of Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood performing on YouTube took the leading positions in the ranking. Unprepared news sites were scrambling to write news at full speed to supply the insatiable public with more and more informational food.

“In a world where new knowledge flourishes, where scientific discoveries are made every day, illuminating seemingly all aspects of human life, we, like most people, still perceive information very selectively”

It was a stunning demonstration of how the world of information exchange has changed since September 2001, but one thing was predictable and, apparently, inevitable. Within a few minutes after the publication of the first materials about the Seal Team Six special forces, tweets about the shooting of bin Laden and the hasty burial of his body at sea, conspiracy theories bloomed in full bloom in the fertile soil of our prejudices. A few years later, when it became clear that photographic evidence of the incident would not be provided, the conspiracy theories took shape into complete and irrefutable facts.

And although information technology does not stand still, the behavioral patterns that a person uses when it comes to faith, indisputable facts, politics and ideology seem to remain the same. In a world where new knowledge flourishes, where every day scientific discoveries are made that illuminate seemingly every aspect of human life, we, like most people, still perceive information very selectively, even if the fact is supported by scientific data and is based on centuries of research.

Well, what about corporal punishment? After you've read all this, do you think you're ready to find out what science has to say about this topic? A secret source reports that psychologists are still studying this phenomenon, but it is already known that regular spanking makes children under seven years of age more docile if it is not done in public and only by hand. And now attention - a small correction: other ways of influencing behavior: positive reinforcement, symbolic savings, free time, and so on - can also be effective and do not require cruelty.

So, you read these lines and they most likely evoked a strong emotional response in you. Has your opinion changed now that you know the truth?