{"id":3236,"date":"2011-11-04T10:23:43","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T15:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3236"},"modified":"2011-11-04T10:23:43","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T15:23:43","slug":"the-lessons-of-hoaxing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3236","title":{"rendered":"The lessons of hoaxing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-201_162-20125432\/profs-fool-students-with-vegetarian-campus-rumor\/\">CBS News article<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/leiterreports.typepad.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/intro-to-logic-teachers-misbehaving.html\">Leiter<\/a>), a couple of logic profs at Smith College in Northampton, MA enlisted their students to play a hoax on the rest of the school.&nbsp; They instructed the students to spread the idea that the school was planning to adopt an all locavore and vegan menu in the cafeteria.&nbsp; Then at a certain point they, with the help of the college President, double-tricked the class into thinking that it was actually true.&nbsp; Here&#39;s the question (the question I actually made my Phil 210 students write about): what kind of lesson can one learn from this kind of hoaxing?&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that this one has such an air of plausibility (except maybe the vegan part) and authority (the President played along with part of it) that one learns a grim lesson: trust no one; they might be trolling you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to a CBS News article (via Leiter), a couple of logic profs at Smith College in Northampton, MA enlisted their students to play a hoax on the rest of the school.&nbsp; They instructed the students to spread the idea that the school was planning to adopt an all locavore and vegan menu in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3236\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The lessons of hoaxing<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1224,1226,1223,1225],"class_list":["post-3236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-hoaxing","tag-locavore","tag-smith-college","tag-vegan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3237,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3236\/revisions\/3237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}