Twitter Quirkiness

Just a quirky episode from the other day... below is a verbatim copy of a tweet that someone posted (I've taken their name off) which I read quickly, thought was kind of fun, and re-tweeted to my followers, giving no more consideration.  If you've not already seen it, take a quick look, and then scroll further below for the little follow-up:

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the non-commutativity of custard, according to @DrEugeniaCheng. i'm going to have to try this. so weirddd  

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A smidgen interesting I thought, but did you catch the error? (and no, I don't mean the spelling of the word "weird" which was clearly deliberate)... because it slid right by me, despite being rather obvious! And it interests me because of the way language and words function cognitively (psycholinguistics, including speech processing, was my primary focus decades ago).

So, in case, like me, you didn't notice it, the graphic example shown above is one of associativity, and is clearly labelled as such. Yet the poster's description calls it an example of "non-commutativity" (which of course it is NOT).

I simply found interesting the tendency (on my part anyway) to be so drawn to the graphic as to read right through the clear, posted words and not have them accurately register -- you think you know what they say, but the precise meaning may be translated in one's mind quite otherwise, overridden by expectation or the simple speed of processing (part of it too I think is just the mental 'appeal to authority,' resulting from invoking Eugenia Cheng's name, even though she is NOT the one who makes the error). It's almost like an optical illusion that you "see" one way, but is really another -- here, a word takes on an illusory effect.

Anyway, this may be of interest to no one else; I'm just eternally intrigued/concerned by how language plays with our minds (and often in far more deleterious ways!).

p.s.: Brian Hayes was the one who first pointed out the error above to me, and the author of the post apparently heard from several other folks as well; so to many, the mistake no doubt jumped right out.

In any event, I'm in the mood for some custard. :)