I've heard it as an anecdote many times, never heard of it actually happening.

There were a few times I've had people tell me that same story as though it was them, and I've questioned, "Was that ACTUALLY you doing that? Who was the professor? What was the class? When?" and invariably they back down a bit, "Well, I heard it this one time."

For convenience, I'll assume this "I was in a class" was really 'I heard a story about a class", rather than questioning your unassailable online integrity.

It honestly actually happened to me personally. But it is more interesting because regardless of whether the story is true, someone hearing the story can still learn the same thing as if they had participated for real.

All information is fiction, but individual pieces of fiction can be grouped together into self-consistent clusters. When reading a story, everything within that story can be self-consistent, and therefore true within that story, while at the same time being false when compared to the real world.

Yet it is possible to migrate information from isolated fictional clusters of information into your "trusted" fiction (your beliefs). The trick is determining what you should migrate and what you shouldn't.

I've heard it as an anecdote many times, never heard of it actually happening.

Had that kind of test in an english class. It was 10 or so marks, last ones said you should do stuff like say out loud "I am doing mark 8!". Last one said to ignore everything.

There. Now you got a few "actually happened" anecdotes.

Read the article. I've come across two or three articles like that.
In a more broad sense, many April Fools day articles are similar - though they leave the reveal until the last line or until a follow-up post.

Fwiw, Kim Davis probably has denied a marriage license to an atheist. When she stopped issuing licenses, she stopped issuing it entirely, to homosexual and non-homosexual couples, to Christians and atheists and whomever. It was a total cessation, not a selective cessation.

How does she keep her job? Why isn't she fired?

Elected official. She wasn't hired, can't be fired, and can only willing step down, wait until the next election cycle (depending on the local laws, a recall election might be possible), or be impeached. Or we could accommodate her religious objection and come up with a solution - which honestly, would be incredibly easy to do.

Regardless, the discussion isn't actually about her, it's about click-bait titles and people not reading articles before commenting on it.

It's an ever-worsening problem. Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of everything is crap, and most people are aware of that.

I can't tell whether the rest of your post is being facetious or not, but not only does it seem that 90% of everything crap, but with the good 10%, even most of the good articles at 90% crap with only a few sentences of actual value in them, so I readily acknowledge scanning many an article looking for the good parts, if any, without reading the entire thing.

You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

I still remember this awesome test I took in elementary school. It said:

1. Read all of the following steps first before performing any of them.
2. Draw circles around all of the even numbers.
3. Draw X's through all of the odd numbers.
4. Underline all primes.
(a list of 20 other steps)
25. Do not perform steps 2 through 24. Write your name in the corner and turn this sheet in.



When I looked around the classroom, it was full of people erasing all the marks they'd made.

One thing bothers me about that anecdote. What makes step 25 so much more important than steps 2-24? You ignore 23 steps just because 1 of the steps tells you to ignore them? With the steps weighted equally, following steps 1-24 would get you 96% of the test correct instead of the 8% you get for doing steps 1 and 25.

One thing bothers me about that anecdote. What makes step 25 so much more important than steps 2-24? You ignore 23 steps just because 1 of the steps tells you to ignore them? With the steps weighted equally, following steps 1-24 would get you 96% of the test correct instead of the 8% you get for doing steps 1 and 25.

That is kind of missing the point of the concept: Read and follow directions completely. The first step in this kind of thing is to read EVERYTHING, and understand everything in the problem. All too often people are keen to rush off and start 'solving a problem' before they've taken the time to understand it completely.

And besides, in many fields, especially engineering, testing is based on an on going series of problems, steps 1 through 10, where the answer from the first step carries into the next question. Get the first question wrong? Well, tough, you can have all the work 100% correct for the next 9 questions, but since the input for them wasn't the right value then your answers are meaningless and you get a score of 0. And if you can't get a process right from start to finish, then you really have no place designing things where a person's life could be at risk.

One thing bothers me about that anecdote. What makes step 25 so much more important than steps 2-24? You ignore 23 steps just because 1 of the steps tells you to ignore them? With the steps weighted equally, following steps 1-24 would get you 96% of the test correct instead of the 8% you get for doing steps 1 and 25.

In my class, the test wasn't graded at all. The whole point was to show students that it's easy to accidentally misinterpret something, especially if there is trickery involved. All the teacher had to do was look at each student's reactions to know if the lesson was learned or not.

And besides, in many fields, especially engineering, testing is based on an on going series of problems, steps 1 through 10, where the answer from the first step carries into the next question. Get the first question wrong? Well, tough, you can have all the work 100% correct for the next 9 questions, but since the input for them wasn't the right value then your answers are meaningless and you get a score of 0. And if you can't get a process right from start to finish, then you really have no place designing things where a person's life could be at risk.

So the steps should be done in order? Step 1, read everything, including step 25 that says to ignore stuff. Step 2, do some junk because you're not on step 25 yet, even though you read step 25.

I understand this technicality is not what the spirit of the problem is about, but still it's more technically accurate unless the problem gets some better wording.

That is kind of missing the point of the concept: Read and follow directions completely.

No, I totally understand the point. It's a nice little anecdote about paying attention and not getting ahead of yourself. You can read carefully and feel smart simply signing your name while other people shout out that they're on question #8. I'm just arguing that following along with the anecdote isn't actually following directions completely. You didn't follow directions 2-24, so technically, I wouldn't call that following directions completely.

The word "any" in step 1 makes it technically accurate (though technically it also means you can ignore step 25 as well, but elementary school students don't know that).

The word "any" in step 1 makes it technically accurate

Ah, so you read through, and choose what steps you'd like to follow. Good point.

Ah, so you read through, and choose what steps you'd like to follow.

Please tell me you're not a programmer. You don't "choose what steps you'd like to follow", you follow the instructions, and later instructions take precedence over earlier ones.

This is fairly basic human interaction, nevermind programming.

Your partner calls you at work

"Hey DifferentName, can you go to the supermarket on your way home? We need milk"

1 minute later (s)he calls back:

"Actually, you don't need to go to the store. Nypyren just got some milk"

Let's put it in code, just so we're clear:

// Read all of the following steps first before performing any of them.

var steps2To24 = new Action(() => 
{
   // 2. Draw circles around all of the even numbers.
   DrawCircles();

   // 3. Draw X's through all of the odd numbers.
   DrawXs();

   //4. Underline all primes.
   UnderlinePrimes();

   // and so on
});

//25. Do not perform steps 2 through 24. Write your name in the corner and turn this sheet in.
if (false)
{
   steps2To24();
}
else
{
   Console.WriteLine(name);
}

Get it?