We might pay attention to fad facts, but I wonder if people's first reaction to everything is scepticism. Mine is. I don't necessarily subscribe to ideas that get my attention, but it's nice to throw those ideas into the mix. As AdMan707 says, philosophical "truth" is subjective. I'd like to add that there is a lot of bad science that wants to appear true, particularly whether food x or vitamin y is good or bad for you. Anyway, thx veen for the post.To grab people's attention, you should argue that something we think of as bad is good, or vice versa; that some apparently individual phenomenon is really collective; that several seemingly disparate things are actually part of the same thing
Yes, interesting will get more attention than boring, and this article is interesting and fun -- but I have to ask, is it true?But is it true? (In science, this helps explain the "file drawer effect": studies with interesting conclusions get published; boring ones, however true, get locked away.)
It's not just the boring ones that get locked away. It's also the ones that contradict a particular ruling class's beliefs.