Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another similar one was the "Nuclear Gandhi" thing[1]. Just believable enough for programmers to think it must be true. My theory on Windows 10 would be wanting version number parity with Mac OS. Don't make a news story out of this though. Evidence: - Microsoft did the same thing with the Xbox 360 instead of calling it Xbox 2. "360" cleverly aligned it with both competing consoles of the same generation, the PlayStat…
The nuclear Gandhi think makes sense as naturally occuring from people trying to extrapolate hidden mechanics and false pattern detection. Pokemon had the "Press/hold B increases catch chance" illusion despite being pure RNG in the code.
Well, no. It's not something you could believe if you ever played Civilization with Gandhi. (Which is itself relatively uncommon - he can only appear in half of games that are configured with 6 opponents. With fewer than 6 opponents, he can't appear at all.)
I almost never played 7-player games, but I can tell you from long experience that it's not plausible for any civilization to be more aggressive than the Zulus. For Gandhi to be "25 times more aggressive" than the other civilizations in the game, he'd need to start breaking peace treaties several times per turn as soon as he developed Democracy.
And even then, Democracy arrives long, long before nuclear weapons. Gandhi would never have been noted for an affinity for nukes[1] - he'd have been noted for an affinity for stabbing you in the back with horse-mounted knights.
The nuclear Gandhi thing makes sense as an example of someone who is completely unfamiliar with a system making up behavior that he thinks sounds interesting. But not as an example of people detecting false patterns. The true patterns are too obvious.
[1] Nukes aren't likely to come up in a game of Civilization in any event. They appear too late; you'll win or lose before they're relevant.