[anon84598]

I've taken to calling this phenomenon (for a lack of a better word) "Popaganda" -- beliefs that are spread and mutually reinforced throughout popular media and the general population. If something seems believable, it makes its way into popular media and is therefore made more believable in an endless feedback loop, regardless of how inaccurate it is and regardless of how damaging it is for society to believe such a falsehood. The reason for singling these concepts out, and lumping it together with something as insidious as propaganda is that, similar to propaganda, once someone believes one of these concepts and sees it repeated around them so many times, it is almost impossible to convince them otherwise.

Some examples, both specific and general:

  * Smart people always immediately know solutions to problems and are  100% confident about these solutions
  * If someone's heart stops beating, just use a defibrillator
  * Hacking is an active activity
  * Modern medicine is "white box" -- just scan your body, see the problem and get meds that fix it
  * "Someone" (a government, a company, an evil mastermind etc.) is always in control of any given situation involving a large number of people, regardless of how chaotic the situation is and how many stakeholders are involved

(not a great list, but you get the idea)

[frosted-flakes]

FYI, prose inside code blocks is hard to read on mobile because it doesn't wrap. It's generally better to just make each list item its own paragraph.

[tsherr]

Agreed. I wasn't sure what caused the lines to be truncated.

[ScottBurson]

That's a great word!