Lead Pipes and Informed Misconceptions

     When I was twelve or thirteen I played Clue for the first time. We had gotten the board game for Christmas one year as a family gift. The game is basically a process of elimination mystery game, for those unfamiliar, and one of the things you need to solve is which of the six weapon options was used to kill the victim. The weapons in the classic game are a candlestick, knife, revolver, rope, wrench, and lead pipe. Now at the time, the fact that it was specifically a lead pipe seemed significant, especially since none of the other weapons had their composition designated. I was familiar with the concept of lead poisoning, so obviously the lead pipe was used to kill the victim through poisoning, otherwise why did it matter that it was a lead pipe? 

    I was eventually disabused of that notion, but I still find it irksome. Especially since three out of the six weapons were apparently used as a bludgeon: the candlestick, wrench, and lead pipe, which is redundant and boring. I think a little bit of poisoning, be it lead or arsenic, would have added some zest to the game. Also, given that the setting and characters in the game are kind of old school socialites (plus the housekeeper), poison would be a likely choice, considering the majority of them would likely be of the "I don't want to soil my hands with actual violence" mindset. Unless it was a crime of passion, that is. I suppose, given that Clue is actually a very shallow sort of mystery game, which only solves for location, weapon, and perpetrator, that it makes a sad sort of sense that it is unable to get into the deeper debates involving motive, premeditation, etc. 

    Anyway, moving away from the mechanics of the game and any failings it may have, what I was trying to say is that sometimes I think because we have some knowledge on a topic, we apply that information to situations where it doesn't actually apply, thus forming "informed misconceptions" and I can't help but wonder how often that happens and how we would ever realize them, because most of them will not be as obvious as misunderstanding a weapon in a board game. 

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