[throwaway613834]

> Not true, we just have different priors and are fooled in different ways. See stage magic, optical illusions, etc...

But we can often recognize them as such, which is important. Actually, on that note, is there work on making machines being able to recognize magic tricks?

[ben_w]

> But we can often recognize them as such, which is importan

Can we? The occult, new age, and religious sections of bookstores suggests otherwise, as do paid horoscope readings, homeopathic medicines, un/lucky numbers (housing and lottery), and shell-game scams.

[soundwave106]

All of those (along with stage magic and illusions) have plenty of material (in bookstores and elsewhere) describing either the mechanics, the long odds, or debunking them largely as pseudoscience and/or scams. So it's clear that some people at least can recognize them.

I think it's also possible for humans to be 100% aware of the "adversarial attack", and still use these types of mediums for light entertainment. This seems to describe many people who occasionally buy lottery tickets for entertainment, and would probably apply to many who attend and produce modern stage magic shows.

(In fact, I notice that some of the top modern crusaders against con artists who do use illusions and paranormal / occult claims for adversarial reasons are stage magicians themselves -- James Randi, Penn and Teller, Derren Brown.)

[ben_w]

“Some” is not ”often”. If there are any illusions that affect all humans, then by definition we cannot give them as examples because nobody realises they exist.

Yes, it is possible for people to know lottery odds and still play for the excitement. This does not invalidate the claim that many play the lottery with the expectation of winning, nor that people choose numbers superstitiously.