this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Science Memes

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[–] Bendavisunlv6@lemmynsfw.com 64 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Ironically, doing research is the best way to be right. What people want is to feel right without having to think very hard. Feelings don’t really require energy in the same way that thinking does.

[–] agent_flounder@lemmy.one 28 points 1 year ago (2 children)

More than just research is needed and that's what many miss. One must be able to reliably evaluate the quality of evidence to sort fact from baloney. Doing so requires critical thinking, the ability to be able to poke holes in theories regardless of whether you like them or not, and the willingness to be wrong and, above all else, the mental flexibility to update your knowledge when proven so. Not everyone is able to do that.

I am used to being wrong a lot so it comes naturally lol.

[–] Agent_of_Kayos@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I end most of my thoughts with "but I may be wrong"

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[–] Kelsenellenelvial@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Plus the methodology. There’s an idea of actively seeking out research contrary to one’s hypothesis, this helps circumvent the confirmation bias of only looking for things that support a hypothesis and ignoring anything contradictory. It can be healthy to find and consider dissenting opinions.

Another fundamental issue is people using different meanings for similar words. Someone with a strong understanding of scientific method will say things like “I believe” or “studies show”, while someone else will say things like “This is” or “we know”. Colloquially the latter is stronger language conveying more confidence, but the former is more likely to be evidence based. “Theory” is used colloquially the way a scientist would use “hypothesis”. People will say “I have a theory”, that’s only a few sentences and doesn’t make any reliable predictions, the put down an actual theory backed by years of supporting evidence and peer review as “just a theory”.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Feelings are SUPER important to humans because they’re a huge efficiency boost. We take everything we’ve ever learned in our lives and crunch it down into a feeling for how the world works. Then we make the vast majority of our decisions by using that “gut feeling”. Can you imagine how ridiculously inefficient it would be to have to analyze every new scenario you come across?

The big problem today is that people lean in too hard on that idea and assume that because their feelings are right most of the time, feelings must be equivalent to truth.

[–] pjhenry1216@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The problem is that the efficiency is achieved through shortcuts and biases. It'd those biases people need to be careful with.

[–] 4am@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

Works fine when you’re a wild animal, not so much when you’re part of a society

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[–] snooggums@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Can you imagine how ridiculously inefficient it would be to have to analyze every new scenario you come across?

I have adhd so I do not need to imagine it.

[–] SwampYankee@mander.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

Can you imagine how ridiculously inefficient it would be to have to analyze every new scenario you come across?

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[–] HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml 60 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Third option: they've fallen into a pattern recognition fallacy and think it's a number when it's a completely different symbol. This happens a lot more often than most realize and even knowing about it, it can be difficult to go against the human instinct to find patterns that may or may not exist and then fit the data to it.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 45 points 1 year ago

Someone, somewhere, will misrepresent this to give credence to the "do your own research" crowd.

Which is not to discredit the message. They misrepresent everything.

[–] master5o1@lemmy.nz 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] wjrii@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

GTFO! Clearly a drawing of a sanitary door hook. This is war!

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

See, this meme is annoyed at the ramifications of epistemological relativism.

I am extremely annoyed by the superfluous commas.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

They aren't superfluous. They, ironically, indicate authorial intent for sentence flow.

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Unless the authorial intent is to read it in your head as performed by a William Shatner impersonator they are outright wrong. That predicate has been split so finely it's outright minced.

Here's a fun trick for sentence structure that helps with punctuation: replace clauses with single words and see if the sentence still looks good:

"Just because you are right, does not mean, I am wrong."
"This, means, that. Mr. Spock."

Mmmminced.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In yet another display of irony, you potentially demonstrated correct use in dialogue to indicate pauses in the speaker's speech.

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (15 children)

No, I didn't. I don't know who teaches people that commas represent small pauses in speech, but they're not helping.

That's what the ellipsis is for. If you want to correctly do fake Shatner you do

"This... means... that, Mr. Spock".

That's where the comma should go, by the way. You use it to separate the vocative. I had to use a period in the incorrect sentence above just to avoid the redundancy with the incorrect ones splitting the verb from the subject and the object.

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[–] Maultasche@feddit.de 16 points 1 year ago
[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

I really like this take.

[–] Phlogiston@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m a little amused that in the comic both viewers are correct relative to their frame of reference. An extremely powerful concept that significantly advanced physics and about which famous people are household names.

[–] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m a little amused that in the comic both viewers are correct relative to their frame of reference. An extremely powerful concept that significantly advanced physics and about which famous people are household names.

You accidentally made the wrong point, because Einstein's breakthrough of special relativity was that the speed of light is constant regardless of reference frame.

So if two people with different frames of reference are measuring the speed of light differently, at least one of them is objectively wrong.

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[–] eoddc5@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That grammar is shit as hell, too.

“Just because you are right

Does not mean

I am wrong

Except my grammar

Which sucks doodie”

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[–] Ilflish@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

"The building is behind me therefore it's a six"

"But the number should be facing away from the building therefore it's a nine"

Me, an intellectual: "I want egg"

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[–] CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] BearNoodles@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's not an 8, that's an infinity

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[–] PizzaDeposit@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

That's so deep. I'm shooketh.

[–] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

To further this point, there was an incident in early human history where it was debated whether the massive blobs in space where gas giants or galaxy. It went so far, in fact, that a mass of people built a telescope to clearly see the blobs just to prove eachother wrong and find out that both ideas were correct.

[–] DanielCF@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm aware of the irony of correcting you but I can't help it. Nebulae not gas giants. Gas giants were known to be planets at the time, as they have apparent motion relative to the Stars. Nebulae and galaxies don't have apparent motion relitive to the stars.

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[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

However we might complain about philistine relativism, it's not "what is ruining the world"

[–] Tankiedesantski@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk, the COVID "I'm just as right as the doctors" idiots have come pretty close. What was probably quite a containable virus is now just something we'll have to deal with forever.

[–] GarbageShoot@hexbear.net 5 points 1 year ago

There was astroturfing and bankrolled conspiracism backing that

[–] xuxxun@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

i see the hiragana "no"

[–] produnis@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

To all native speaker complaining about grammar: please translate the meme into german or french (without using AI)

[–] Pendulla@lemdro.id 5 points 1 year ago

What is ruining this world is that people are too lazy to crop their screenshots and make better looking posts with no wasted space. 😊 Just an opinion.

It's the logo for the nearby eyeglasses repair shop!

[–] Acamon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The irony is the "one of these people is wrong, somebody painted a six or a nine" is overtly false in this situation. Given the message of the original image, the artist spefically draw a symbol that could be interpreted two ways, and therefore (by design) both figures are equally and partially correct.

I don't believe we should abandon all pursuit of truth or objectivity, but the commentor is really making the artists case for them.

[–] Akagigahara@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

The Artist's intent/message is based on a symbol that can be interpreted two ways, yes. But it is a massive oversimplification for the sake of validating opinions that are plainly wrong.

The Artist's point can only be conveyed by creating a situation where there is no context, so neither opinion can be validated. This is inapplicable in any way IRL because there is always context that will validate a specific opinion with facts. The comment just highlights that this situation is contrived and couldn't, or shouldn't, happen in such a way.

It warns of taking Data out of context to suit a specific narrative.

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