Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

news.discovery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 121 posts

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#111

Post by lutusp »

waps wrote: post #102
lutusp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be clear that it can never be the case that by using a new mathematical model we can come to the conclusion that "the earth is standing still". Apart from the OP's many outright errors, this one suffers from the defect that it assumes there is only one possible frame of reference. One can obviously choose a frame of reference in which the earth is motionless, but relativity denies any special significance…

Which is exactly the point. Whether the earth rotates depends on your frame of reference. You can pick one where it is, you can pick one where it isn't. Neither is "true". So saying the earth orbits the sun is a choice : it is not a true or false statement, just a statement reflecting an opinion. Occam's razor (as well as general mathematical practice) dictates that we declare this to be not true in that case (note t…

> Whether the earth rotates depends on your frame of reference. You can pick one where it is, you can pick one where it isn't. Neither is "true".

No, both are true, yet you claimed that "3 in 4 hacker news readers don't know the earth doesn't orbit the sun at all" which is a false and ignorant claim.

> So saying the earth orbits the sun is a choice : it is not a true or false statement, just a statement reflecting an opinion.

False! Mathematical physics is as far from opinion as you can get, and it has vast amounts of supporting evidence.

> You cannot pick a reference frame in relativistic space that shows ellipsoid movement (like the one predicted by the Newtonian theory which is generally what people mean by "orbit").

Yes, you can! As I said earlier, sufficiently above the sun's north pole, you would see a classic Newtonian orbit, because of the choice of reference frame.

> you can only pick reference frames where the earth is standing still entirely, or you pick reference frames where it is moving along a straight line.

I just proved this claim to be false. But you know what? I'm not going to go through and correct all your false arguments (they're all false). I've had this exact experience more times than I care to remember. You don't know anything about physics or mathematics, your overall argument is post-modern ("It's all opinion"), and you're a waste of time.

If you actually understood the topic, you would use 10% of the words you use while being wrong, and your posts might become worth reading.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#112

Post by dennisgorelik »

lutusp wrote: post #110
dennisgorelik wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9/11 was an attack mostly fueled by Saudi Arabians pissed off by US involvement in the Middle East in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular. Blaming it on Islam is missing the point.

> Blaming it on Islam is missing the point. I didn't blame it on Islam, I attributed it to religious extremism, something the vast majority of Muslims reject. That attribution is absolutely correct and supported by an unbiased analysis of the events.

What's your point? That extremism is bad? I agree.

Are you also claiming that religious extremism is worse than non-religious extremism? Available data shows us that it's not the case.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#113

Post by lutusp »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #112
lutusp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blaming it on Islam is missing the point. I didn't blame it on Islam, I attributed it to religious extremism, something the vast majority of Muslims reject. That attribution is absolutely correct and supported by an unbiased analysis of the events.

What's your point? That extremism is bad? I agree. Are you also claiming that religious extremism is worse than non-religious extremism? Available data shows us that it's not the case.

> Are you also claiming that religious extremism is worse than non-religious extremism?

No, only that a prior poster's claim that religions have no connection to wars is false. This is easily established by reading the thread's contents instead of inventing views for people.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#114

Post by lutusp »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #100
lutusp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war. Absolutely false -- you have grossly overstated your claim and even contradicted your own sources. You have posted statistics that say either 7% or 40% (depending on source) of wars are caused by religion, and then blithely made a claim that contradicts your own evidence. If your claim were true, having religious beliefs would produce a reductio…

If anything, atheism has stronger correlation with wars and violence than religion has (after controlling for the age of civilization). Consider WW2: it was not backed up by religion. USSR was an atheist state and Germany was only mildly religious. How about Cambodian Civil War: what was Pol Pot's religion?

> If anything, atheism has stronger correlation with wars and violence than religion has ...

"Atheism?" You're absurdly arguing that every war not started by a recognized religion is started by atheists. You're overlooking the fact that a non-religious war is most often fought by people with religious beliefs -- not atheists.

> USSR was an atheist state

Oh, do learn some history. By that reasoning, prohibition stopped Americans from drinking, and laws against prostitution prevent sex workers from plying their trade.

Do you know the term "self-reference"? This conversation has a big element of self-reference. You're defending religion for a reason other than a dispassionate pursuit of truth, and you're not very bright. You represent the I.Q. norm that's been scientifically established for religious people.

If your arguments were more than paper-thin and self-contradicting, if you had the requisite intellect to construct substantial arguments, you wouldn't have religious beliefs and we wouldn't be having this conversation. Self-reference.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#115

Post by actsasbuffoon »

kungpooey wrote: post #61
dubfan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I mean. Science is not a religion. It is not a faith. Calling it that betrays a lack of understanding of the scientific method. The scientific method is not perfect and there are worrisome trends in modern practices of science (see the recent story about p-values being misused) but this is the sort of thinking that leads people to believe in nonsense like psychics, dowsing, homeopathy, anti-vacci…

Then in regards to time and effort invested, I would say many of the very critical parties I've met are doing it right. Scientist by-and-large are doing it wrong, in my opinion. There are parties still upheld by the climate debate which still refuse to share the data and methods they used to declare their findings. I don't care which side of the fence you're on, that's bullshit and can only be evidence of manipulatio…

> can only be evidence of manipulation.

That statement is a non-sequitur. It _could_ be interpreted as evidence of manipulation, but that's hardly the only possible explanation. As much as we all wish science was given all the funding it needs and scientists wouldn't have to resort to hoarding information to protect their turf, that's not the world we live in.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#116

Post by pavelrub »

waps wrote: post #102
lutusp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be clear that it can never be the case that by using a new mathematical model we can come to the conclusion that "the earth is standing still". Apart from the OP's many outright errors, this one suffers from the defect that it assumes there is only one possible frame of reference. One can obviously choose a frame of reference in which the earth is motionless, but relativity denies any special significance…

Which is exactly the point. Whether the earth rotates depends on your frame of reference. You can pick one where it is, you can pick one where it isn't. Neither is "true". So saying the earth orbits the sun is a choice : it is not a true or false statement, just a statement reflecting an opinion. Occam's razor (as well as general mathematical practice) dictates that we declare this to be not true in that case (note t…

> Just because we prefer one arbitrary kind of reference frame above others here on earth (ie. euclidean) doesn't make it any more real.

You got it all backwards. Our preference for a certain reference frame is exactly what makes it real, because that's what 'real' means.

Certain frames of reference are almost useless, while others are very useful in our everyday life. This is why "I'm going to the store" is true, while "the store is moving toward me" is false: it is our application of those words in everyday life that defines what we would call 'true' and 'false' here.

It is ridiculous to claim that the above are equally true because supposedly we can choose our reference frame however we like: this is simply not what we mean when we talk about "true" and "false" here. By focusing too much on physical vocabulary, you are losing sight of what certain words mean in the first place.

If you develop a theory that says the fridge is moving toward me when I'm hungry (= I'm going to the fridge, from a different frame of reference) - you are not making a discovery, you are simply making up new definitions of existing words, and you are confused.

Also, mathematical models are just that - math, useful abstractions we can predict stuff with. Assigning to them an ontological status is a matter of choice and of personal belief, not of knowing anything about physics.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#117

Post by tptacek »

tzs wrote: post #103
dennisgorelik wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9/11 was an attack mostly fueled by Saudi Arabians pissed off by US involvement in the Middle East in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular. Blaming it on Islam is missing the point.

Wasn't a major reason they were pissed off by the US presence in Saudi Arabia that some very major holy sites of their religion are there (such as Mecca), and they objected to having infidels near such sites?

That's probably an oversimplification. The Saudi government's gobsmacking flagrant corruption was a powerful motivator for bin Laden, and religion is a vector for opposition to the Saudi state. And there's no question that the US helps keep the Saudi government in power.

The original stated objection of AlQ was indeed to remove US presence from Muslim holy sites, but Lawrence Wright's book on what happened (for example) makes it pretty clear that the religious stuff was more emblematic of the real problem than it was the real problem itself.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#118

Post by carsongross »

lutusp wrote: post #109
carsongross wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, an article on religious violence goes over religious violence. Who would have guessed? 7% of all wars in history have been religiously motivated (note, that is not by body count: if we went that way the atheistic russian and Chinese civil wars plus nationalist world wars would make them a round-off error.) Do some religious people commit violence? Yep. So do some environmentalists. Is the problem environmentalis…

> 7% of all wars in history have been religiously motivated You're picking data to suit your beliefs. Another of your own sources said the number was 40%. In any case, this contradicts your prior claim that: "There is absolutely no historical connection between religion and war." That's quite false, however you cut it. > Do some religious people commit violence? Yep. So do some environmentalists. You're moving the go…

You are the one picking data. The reality is that non-religious, even restricting to the more tightly defined atheist, people are responsible for more death and suffering than religious people. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. End of discussion.

Religious people are happier and more moral. They are less intelligent, for sure, but there is no correlation between intelligence and morality. Furthermore, since there are far more religious people in the world than non-relgious people, in absolute terms there are more intelligent religious people than intelligent non-religious people.

Good times are to be had outside the anti-religious bubble most people swim in here, you should come on out.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#119

Post by waps »

lutusp wrote: post #111
waps wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly the point. Whether the earth rotates depends on your frame of reference. You can pick one where it is, you can pick one where it isn't. Neither is "true". So saying the earth orbits the sun is a choice : it is not a true or false statement, just a statement reflecting an opinion. Occam's razor (as well as general mathematical practice) dictates that we declare this to be not true in that case (note t…

> Whether the earth rotates depends on your frame of reference. You can pick one where it is, you can pick one where it isn't. Neither is "true". No, both are true, yet you claimed that "3 in 4 hacker news readers don't know the earth doesn't orbit the sun at all" which is a false and ignorant claim. > So saying the earth orbits the sun is a choice : it is not a true or false statement, just a statement reflecting an…

> Yes, you can! As I said earlier, sufficiently above the sun's north pole, you would see a classic Newtonian orbit, because of the choice of reference frame.

No you would not. Here I assume a correct reference frame : the start point is above the sun's north pole, but it is in gravitational freefall, not artificially accelerated to the same relative position above the sun. If you looked at the earth moving and describe it's movement as an equation in relativistic space you'd get p = k * s + c (with k a real number, p s and c vectors).

This is not a rotation, obviously.

Intuitive observation would show rotation, but that's wrong, or at least that's not really what's happening. Note that your position "above the sun's north pole" is actually an accelerated movement at a point in time. As such it is not a reference frame that is at rest, and as such is not the type of reference frame you'd want to use for anything, unless of course you're using newtonian physics.

Re: 1 in 4 Americans Don't Know Earth Orbits the Sun. Yes, Really.

#120

Post by PhasmaFelis »

mercurial wrote: post #106
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the USA scored better than most of the rest of the world in this and several other basic science questions. The actual result is "humans aren't well-educated"; it's being cynically spun as "Americans are stupid."

I'm not sure that makes me much happier.

Nor should it, but you need to understand the scope of the problem before you can address it. The original headline invites millions of people to say "haha, look at those stupid Americans, they sure are stupid" and continue ignoring the problems in their own nations. We can do better than that kind of bullshit tribalism.
Post reply on HN