3 Million Homeless Crows Using Cars to Crack Nuts

This latest chapter of unSpun has introduced some of the most startling information yet. After beginning with an introduction that told the story of the great crow fallacy and how it continued to spread long after suspicions had arisen and even after it had been debunked, the authors summarize the entire debacle quite well when they say that “It’s easy to see how spotting a few crows getting lucky can encourage even serious scientists to think the behavior might be deliberate” (105), and simply “It’s fun to think that crows might be clever enough to learn such a neat trick” (105). Again, the book shows us that we as people like things that are easy (because thinking is work) and because information is always more engaging when it’s actually entertaining.

What really surprised me, however, was how many people are willingly to believe information that is obviously fabricated, and, what’s more, is openly admitted to be so! The story about the ex-con Snyder blatantly faking the statistics about the numbers of homeless people within the country, and then (only when caught in a lie, of course) admitting it, only to have journalists and others continue to cite his information, was completely mind boggling! I know that many of us can be mislead either due to our own lack of effort in researching the facts or by or the genuine skills of propaganda creators, but this was beyond ridiculous. That a man could come right out and tell the WORLD that his information was completely baseless and still hold some rapport is utterly absurd, especially because (unlike with the cutesy little crow story) no one would actually want to believe that Snyder’s estimates, which were in fact tremendously overblown, were actually true.

Sometimes it is hard to be able to find the truth in any story, especially in cases like those of news reports during the Gulf War, when the media would often only portray the stories they wanted to be seen (which, in that case, were those of a clean war with supposedly little civilian casualty). But when it comes to believing something simply because it’s an entertaining or amazing piece of information, people should think twice about whether or not it may be valid.