[dspillett]

> It just struck me at that moment that people also hallucinate information confidently all the time.

And many will just repeat what was confidently said without question.

I know this it true, because my intelligent mate down the pub says so.

[OneMorePerson]

Yes exactly. We are all wrong on occasion, but before I repeat something I perceive as important (or maybe not even important, just "factual") I tend to always want to try to verify it. Otherwise I'd say "I heard..." or something similar to caveat. Maybe it's an engineering mindset thing.