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Being publicly wrong in “real time” is one of those experiences so deeply uncomfortable that one tends to remember it at night for the next few decades. However, as humans, we can still find great ways to “enjoy” when others make the sort of mistakes that would mortify us.
There are few things funnier than someone being deeply convinced that they are right when they are blatantly incorrect. So get comfortable, since we’ve put together a lovely list of folks digging their own grave with utter confidence. Upvote your favorite posts and be sure to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments down below.
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There's a certain kind of bite that comes from being wrong to other individuals. Whether confidently getting it wrong in a meeting, butchering a word you've only ever looked at on a page, or strongly stating something that gets shot down the moment you say it, the embarrassment bites more sharply than you can imagine.
And for some inexplicable reason, these always seem to happen when you are in bed, running on repeat in your head as you lie on your back staring at the ceiling, wondering why your brain decided to run the "Personal Humiliation Greatest Hits" on repeat at midnight.
Behind this reaction lies our socially conditioned hard wiring. People lived in groups, and mere survival sometimes hung on how well we were succeeding in them. Being wrong, especially out there in public, happens to feel like a crack in that social standing. It whispers this unspoken message: "Maybe I'm not as competent, educated, and capable as I thought." Sure, nobody's actually banishing us from the tribe anymore, but our brains still experience these moments as some kind of social threat.
Public mistakes also encroach on one of our earliest self-protection instincts: "impression management". Most of us put a lot of effort (overtly or in hiding) into creating what other individuals see in us. We want to seem competent, nice, and confident. When we are eminently wrong, it feels as if we are watching a laboriously designed image fail and twist before our eyes, and we imagine that all the other individuals saw each pixel warp. Actually, most people probably forgot right away, but our own sense of self does not allow us that much leeway.
Public mistakes also encroach on one of our earliest self-protection instincts: "impression management". Most of us put a lot of effort (overtly or in hiding) into creating what other individuals see in us. We want to seem competent, nice, and confident. When we are eminently wrong, it feels as if we are watching a laboriously designed image fail and twist before our eyes, and we imagine that all the other individuals saw each pixel warp. Actually, most people probably forgot right away, but our own sense of self does not allow us that much leeway.
The haunting quality of these memories, especially at night, is a quirk of how the brain works. When we’re trying to sleep, the distractions of the day are gone, and the brain has space to wander. Unfortunately, it often wanders toward moments that triggered strong emotional reactions, because those moments were tagged by our mind as “important.” Embarrassment, being a mix of shame and surprise, leaves a particularly sticky tag. The mind replays the memory as if it is trying to caution you not to make the same error, even though the mistake was harmless and took place years ago.
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Stephanie Did It 3 months ago
When a mommy chicken and a daddy chicken love each other very much...
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Roxy222uk 3 months ago
This is hugely important to understand, as it can save us from having the wool pulled over our eyes. Say we're told looking at tins of shoe polish reduces the chance of toe nail cancer by 50% - sounds great, doesn't it? But we've no idea if it's great until we know what the chance of toe nail cancer was usually. If it was 15% then a reduction to 7.5% is worthwhile, but if it was 0.05% then a reduction to 0.025% really isn't enough of a shift for keeping all those tins of Kiwi out.
There is also a perfectionist impulse in all of us that can't stand the idea that "everyone" screws up sometimes. We measure our previous selves by today's standards and forget that the "you" at the time did not have the benefit of hindsight. Instead of viewing the event as a normal human hiccup, we rerun it like an habitual personality quirk preserved in amber.
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Forrest Hobbs 3 months ago
Edwina Currie. Just sayin'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonella-in-eggs_controversy
Overlying that is the "spotlight effect", our intrinsic proclivity to grossly overestimate the degree to which other people notice and remember our mistakes. Most people are really too busy concentrating on their own mistakes to pay attention to ours. Nevertheless, our brains relive the episode as if the whole crowd is still watching, still judging, still talking about "that time you used "ironic" when you meant to use "coincidental"."
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Yrral Spavit 3 months ago
Well, that there is a drawing of the rare and little known lined lion. True fact. Wouldn't lie to you :).
The shame lingers not because the incident was disastrous, but because it nudged against something deep: our phobia of not fitting in, of being seen as stupid, of not having social capital. And though those anxieties are correct on some primal survival level, they're completely disproportionate to most contemporary situations.
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Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 3 months ago
Growing up watching Allo Allo I learnt French, German and Italian. It's all in the accent.
The irony is that these moments make us more lovable, not less. People tend to trust those who can laugh at themselves and rebound from mistakes. But the brain at 2 A.M. doesn't care about perspective, instead, it's replaying a loop of that quality you called your teacher in class.
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Finally, being publicly incorrect humiliates us because it momentarily shatters the armor around the self-image we present to the world. And those late-night rewinds? That's just your brain, wrongly trying to "protect" you from repeating the error, while keeping you awake all night in the process.
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Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 3 months ago
Space man or not, he was a bloody good cyclist, shame he resorted to cheating to win all those tour de France.
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Stephanie Did It 3 months ago
That's when the Gregorian calendar officially replaced the Julian calendar. Ten days were removed in the process because the Julian calendar incorrectly measured the lunar year.
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Roxy222uk 3 months ago
For all of those that do have some deficiency in their colour vision there are two digits, made up of two different shades of green. If you can differentiate both shades of green from the orange you can see 74, but if can only differentiate the bright green you will see 71.
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Anthony Elmore 3 months ago
LLMS are TERRIBLE for math. At all. They apply weights to words (or in this case numbers) If you give it the statement 56 x 75 = y and ask for the value of y, all it's going to really consider is that the suitable answer is a number. If you're lucky, the training data contains enough iexamples of 56 x 75 = y and then someone listing the value of y to know that the value of y is 4200. If it doesn't the AI will pick what it perceives a pattern to determine the answer. When training an LLM, the AI develops it's own methods of categorizing words as values, which is why they're ridiculously good at picking up patterns that humans don't notice, but frequently give the wrong answers to math questions. There IS a reason it gave the answer it did, but it probably has nothing to do with what the math problem calls for. The work around for this is that they effectively teach the LLM to recognize math programs and then plug that problem into a sub routine.
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Stephanie Did It 3 months ago
That 'mommy' cow has a pretty distinct pizzle. Yes, that is what it's called. Thus, it's either a bull or a steer. A male bovine is never a cow.
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Forrest Hobbs 3 months ago
Astronomers would *love* the Starlink constellation to be a myth... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink#Impact_on_astronomy
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Stephanie Did It 3 months ago
The band named itself after a friend's Burmese Blue cat named Procul Harun. They misheard the name and spelled it wrong.
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Stephanie Did It 3 months ago
Could be that one is 2.37 lbs and the other is 3.67 lbs in weight, maybe?
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Doug Moyer 3 months ago
Well, all official government history is being scrubbed so no American can feel bad about the past, so...
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Geoffrey Scott 3 months ago
Except, as a 60+ yo man, I can verify your bladder will be FAR more active with coffee, there by negating the water.
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Riley Quinn 3 months ago
Funny, not 5 minutes ago, my neighbor and I were both saying how we think Elvis sucks because he never credited Black musicians for the songs he recorded, and bc he was a pedoph!le. He deserved dying on the toilet bc he was constipated.
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S Mi 3 months ago
That last information....please know that any drinking in pregnancy can have negative consequences for baby. Actually certain effects will happen if you drink during a specific few *days* of pregnancy. If you drank before you knew, you can still make a huge difference by quitting as soon as you find out.
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Fungus John 3 months ago
thank god they circled all the comments, I might have accidentally looked at the bottom of my shoe trying to see where the mistake was.
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Geoffrey Scott 3 months ago
Ice Road Truckers disproved this. Faster you go, you displace water ahead, when it runs out of room, BOOM, ice explodes.
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Stephanie Did It 3 months ago (edited)
Blonde A: How do I get to the other side of the river? Blonde B, on opposite shore: You ARE on the other side, dummy!
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Oerff On Tour 3 months ago
Probably the THIRD most toxic snake in the world. The most toxic snake in the world is the President of the United States
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What do you think ?
Stannous Flouride 3 months ago
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin
NJ P 3 months ago
I am embarassed at how stupid people are, especially when Google is right at their fingertips. Cannot believe these people will be running our busunesses and government. No hope for the future.
Stannous Flouride 3 months ago
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin
NJ P 3 months ago
I am embarassed at how stupid people are, especially when Google is right at their fingertips. Cannot believe these people will be running our busunesses and government. No hope for the future.
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