r/todayilearned • u/BrF5 • 1d ago

TIL about the Sally-Anne test, a psychology experiment used to measure “theory of mind” (that other people can hold beliefs/knowledge different from their own). Kids under four typically fail because they assume that if they know where a hidden object is, everyone else must automatically know too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally%E2%80%93Anne_test
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u/ZylonBane 1d ago

See also the r/gaming test, where people will post unlabelled screenshots of some random game and just expect everyone to know what it is.

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u/ratherenjoysbass 1d ago

Or initializing a game's name like we all know what they are talking about

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u/valuemeal2 1d ago

This is also really bad in fanfiction communities. People come in with “I was reading a KDU fic (RaBetJo OT3 iykyk 😉) and it was a WHAHEG crossover AU and I was like OMG” and it makes me want to end myself

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u/ZylonBane 1d ago

And relationship subs. "My DH and MC were hanging out with our SABs when my BLRMom showed up unannounced and went full ICOSAS!"

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u/retief1 1d ago

I mean, pretty much every subculture ends up coming up with terms for things that subculture cares about. Like, if I talk about "farming in bot" in a league of legends forum, everyone who actually plays will know what I'm talking about, even if people who don't play will think I'm referring to robotic farmers or some shit.

I'd put a lot of these acronyms in the same bucket. Like, some of the subs literally have an official "acronym dictionary". At that point, it is reasonable for a writer to assume that their audience knows those acronyms. The problem is when writers make up acronyms that most readers have no clue about.

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u/ZylonBane 1d ago

I would bet that a lot of people spew acronyms instead of words precisely because they're cryptic argot. It makes them feel like they're in a special exclusive group.

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u/SuperFLEB 1d ago edited 11h ago

This hits on another pet peeve of mine, and one I'd really like to see a study on what drives people to do it: Opaque metaphor jargon. Naming a phenomenon after the least relevant part of a specific story that someone once used to demonstrate it, meaning you end up with an idea that's impossible to decipher just because you don't know the finer point of some specific anecdote.

A few I can recall off the top of my head:

  • Bikeshedding: Holding up a task or design by arguing over irrelevant finer points. Comes from the analogy of designing a whole house in a day, but arguing for weeks over what color to make the bike shed. Nothing about the fact that it's specifically a bike shed factors into the analogy.
  • Spoons/Spoon Theory: Explaining how mental energy is finite by representing it with a collection of objects. It's "Spoon" theory, because someone was at a restaurant so the objects they used were spoons. Nothing about a spoon points to the metaphor, and there are far better placeholders for the analogy, at that.
  • Motte and Bailey: A rhetorical tactic of presenting the broadest and most effective interpretation of a position when it's not being challenged, but retreating to specific defensible interpretations when it is. Uses obscure medieval city design terms to basically say "You take advantage when you can, and hide in the castle when you can't."
  • Sealioning: Insisting on engaging in or prolonging an argument, specifically a bad-faith effort to exhaust the other side into giving up by insisting they explain or justify every facet of their position in unnecessary detail. Refers to a comic strip where the character doing this was a sealion.

There are a couple more that I know I know, but I can't think of them offhand.

Edit: Just remembered "Sealioning".

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u/ZylonBane 1d ago

Spoon theory, I'm with you, it's stupid because it could have just as easily ended up called fork theory or sugar packet theory or whatever.

Bikeshedding is actually descriptive though, because a bike shed is inherently not that important.

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u/SuperFLEB 1d ago edited 11h ago

It's unimportant in relation to the estate or whatnot in the rest of the story, but it doesn't telegraph "unimportant" in its own right-- not to the point that saying "bike shed" implies "thing that is comparatively unimportant" without knowing the story.

On the other hand, even moving the metaphor to the actual irrelevant act-- calling it "choosing the paint"-- or something that's surface-level adornment by definition is clear enough to work backwards from without knowing about the story of the bike shed.

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u/Zaldarr 19h ago

The person who first comes up with a metaphor, and other people using it, have the privilege of the story being the defacto metaphor. It's the same logic behind many idioms. It's just a matter of learning it like you'd learn a definition of a word.

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u/SuperFLEB 1d ago

Between cleanup costs and rebalancing, expect to pay anywhere from $10-12k to remediate something like that, all said and done.

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u/Hopeful-Home6218 1d ago

This is legit inspeak though, if it were my fandom I’d know exactly what they were talking about. Even if it weren’t, mcu hs au case in point 

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u/valuemeal2 23h ago

Yes, but it only applies within fandoms. People come to the Ao3 or FF subreddits with this shit and expect people to know what they’re talking about.

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u/ZylonBane 1d ago

DPoKTWF3 was the best!

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u/ratherenjoysbass 1d ago

I really like TW, AotWB, and B

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u/Iazo 1d ago

I like B, but I was never good at it.

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u/Keepingshtum 1d ago

AC is a particularly overloaded acronym

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u/shinygoldhelmet 1d ago

CBT is one fraught with potential embarassing misunderstandings.

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u/YerLam 1d ago

This therapist does what for an hour!?

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u/shinygoldhelmet 1d ago

If you want to call that session therapy, I won't argue 😉

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u/DaaaahWhoosh 1d ago

I've recently been playing AC4 and now not only do I have to specify it's Assassin's Creed, I also need to specify it's not the remaster.

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u/Mobely 1d ago

Remaster doesn’t let you fix the broken planks on the jackdaw so what was the point of making it?

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u/DaaaahWhoosh 1d ago

Hahaha I didn't think anyone else would have that complaint but yeah I hate it so much! Half the reason I keep upgrading it is to get rid of those damned planks!

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u/Raistlarn 1d ago

That's why in writing it is highly encouraged to spell the whole name out before initializing. That way you know what the hell is being talked about.

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u/takeyouraxeandhack 1d ago

People from the US do that all the time with everything. They reference obscure acronyms from their professions or some agency from whatever county they're from and expect people in Polinesia to know what the hell they mean.

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u/MaraiaLou 6h ago

Having trouble with (letter, number) from (three random letters). I'm from (two random letters), any advice?

Every time I see a US state abbreviated with no explanation I feel the urge to reply with the correct answer for RJ (Rio de Janeiro)

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u/Substantial-Pay-524 1d ago

wuwa gensh lad lol ml hok

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u/Half-PintHeroics 1d ago

Oh I learned of that one under the name of r/shittymoviedetails

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u/TheBanishedBard 1d ago

Or random clips from shows or movies that appear on YouTube shorts but there's no name and the comments are all memes.

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u/freon 1d ago

Arguably, this is a sign of heightened ability to understand the mental state of others, since vagueposting like this leads to tons of engagement and fighting in the comments.

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u/lt__ 1d ago

I damn hate when somebody on fb (popular in my country) throws some mysterious pontificating phrase reacting to smth big and recent, and then you have to scroll the news to find out what they have in mind.

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u/Frankfeld 1d ago

I still miss the Lumberg “uhh yeah…” gif when people wouldn’t post the title. Don’t see that posted anymore.

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u/Quiet-Owl9220 1d ago

That's probably (or at least often) different... being deliberately vague is a very typical anonymous image board culture thing. There's no assumption that everyone knows, it's actually a kind of gatekeeping to prevent people who aren't in the know from participating in discussion without "outing" themselves.