When Your Brain Freezes Up

Some time ago, I was part of team for a trivia contest. There was no internet or computer access at that location, so no chance of cheating. I took the lead on some of the questions and got them wrong!

Why did that happen? I expected the questions to be hard. I expected the trivia questions to have non-obvious answers. It turned out that the obvious answers were the correct ones.

Go to this you-tube "video" (it's audio only) where a radio disk-jockey is posing a question to someone they randomly called. If the person they called gets the question right, they could win a motorcycle worth around $8,000 (US).

DJ: We've got to ask you a question before we put your name in the barrel. Spell AC/DC.
Mark: AD AC
DJ: I'm going to ask you again.
Mark: Hang on.
DJ: How do you spell AC/DC?
Mark: A… D… A… C

There's some overlapping dialog, and we hear Mark say "ACDC" in that noise. But his answer when asked a third time is still ADAC, until they call him an idiot and tell him it's AC/DC!

It could be this guy had other issues, but under stress, our body is preparing for flight or fight. The neocortex is only a recent invention. "Flight or fight" has been around for billions of years.