Distractor
Properties
- tags
- Term
Distractor
- An element — deliberate or incidental — that draws attention away from the signal that matters, by being plausible or salient enough to compete with it.
- In AI: an incorrect-but-plausible answer option, or an irrelevant passage or context, used to test whether a model finds the right answer and resists being misled (AI/Q/In AI training, what's a "distractor"?).
- In writing: a superfluous figure or flourish — an awkward metaphor, say — that pulls the reader's focus off the point (My/Pref/Writing/Avoid Distractors such as Awkward or Superfluous Metaphors).