Comic #4442: priming

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Here is the text from the comic:

Panel 1: "Recent studies have cast doubt on the so-called 'priming' effect in psychology, in which people are said to change their behavior in response to subtle environmental cues."

Panel 2: "These doubts are needless because we can prove that priming exists analytically."

Panel 3: "Imagine an experiment in which subjects are primed to believe priming doesn’t work."

Panel 4: "There are two possible outcomes: the subjects exhibit priming effects OR the subjects don’t exhibit priming effects."

Panel 5: "If they exhibit priming effects, trivially, priming is real."

Panel 6: "If they don’t, it shows that we successfully primed them to exhibit no priming effects."

Panel 7: "Given that there is only one possible outcome, the experiment is unnecessary."

Panel 8: "This is all stupid."

Panel 9: "AHA! You only believe that because I primed you by saying stupid stuff earlier!"

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