Need help debunking idiot physics

[PeZook]

Sadly, no. I just bought a copy of Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed for my father, which is IMHO an excellent popular science level introduction to the field. But many people have the bizarre conceit that the universe should be simple and easy to comprehend, and that the physicists with their counterintuitive notions and known flaws/gaps in their theories must be wrong, and cranks like this plug right into that. It's the same psychology that makes people buy into religion - and of course the very worst cranks (Tipler...) combine bad physics and religion into a perfect storm of bullshit.

I think people are suspicious of physics because they don't realize just how much we perceive filtered through our own experiences, and so conclude that some things they find counterintuitive just can't be.

For example, flight. Witness the history of flight - people first thought that flapping wings were the only way to fly because that's everything they ever saw.

Flying with fixed wings is completely counterintuitive to someone who never saw an airplane before. This approach shows more when the concept is even more complicated: I've heard people say there is no way the Apollo astronauts could have flown to the moon in the time given by NASA, because the Moon is 380 thousand kilometers away, while the Space Shuttle needs 66 hours to reach a space station that is just 200 kilometers up!

Of course, that's true in our limited Earthly experience, but spaceflight is completely counterintuitive...untill you learn about it and experience it, then it becomes obvious how things work.

In short, people will always long for ridiculously simple explanations for everything, because they want to feel that their life experience is worth something - I mean, it works 99% of the time, except when you have to make a nuclear reactor. But what makes those geeks so much more qualified for it than me? It can't be that complicated! - they feel dumb, and it doesn't matter that most people simply don't need to know or apply the more esoteric knowledge. They still feel dumb.

[Darth Wong]

People think things are intuitive only after they've seen them visually demonstrated in front of them in some compelling way. In the early 20th century, the New York Times science reporter once commented that Goddard was obviously ignorant of how Newton's third law works, because he thought his rockets would work in space, "where there is nothing to push against".

Today, we consider it intuitive, but only because we've all seen so many movies where it works fine. It's actually not intuitive at all.

[PeZook]

People think things are intuitive only after they've seen them visually demonstrated in front of them in some compelling way. In the early 20th century, the New York Times science reporter once commented that Goddard was obviously ignorant of how Newton's third law works, because he thought his rockets would work in space, "where there is nothing to push against".

Today, we consider it intuitive, but only because we've all seen so many movies where it works fine. It's actually not intuitive at all.

Obviously, since intuition is just a manifestation of our experience. It's just that people feel their intuition should work everywhere, anytime, even if they have no experience in that particular matter. Like in the Apollo example.

[Adrian Laguna]

Obviously, since intuition is just a manifestation of our experience. It's just that people feel their intuition should work everywhere, anytime, even if they have no experience in that particular matter. Like in the Apollo example.

Intuition can be surprisingly accurate and effective for people who are very knowledgeable within the field. Museum curators have been known to spot fakes at a glance, some people can seem to predict stock market movements more accurately than detailed models would, there's one tennis coach who would know whether a player would foul their serve or not when they threw the ball in the air, my mother can spot errors in data tables and the like at a glance, etc. The key here, however, is that these are all experts and their intuition is accurate only within their respective fields.

People trust their intuition probably because there was a time where we could trust it in all aspects of life. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to learn good plants from bad plants, or to know how to track an animal, and butcher it once it's hunted. Sure, some people are far better at it than others, but after doing it constantly for several years everyone's intuition is a good guide. The problem is that the body of knowledge humanity deals with has expanded astronomically, and thus the number of things your intuition won't help you with is tremendous.

[Surlethe]

You know what's really counterintuitive? Newton's first law. Aristotle had the intuitive description, and it held for two and a half thousand years.

Seriously, if any science were honest-to-God intuitive, it wouldn't have taken 95% of human history to develop even the most basic concepts.

[Starglider]

Seriously, if any science were honest-to-God intuitive, it wouldn't have taken 95% of human history to develop even the most basic concepts.

Yeah, evolution sucks that way; human 'intuitive physics', like the rest of human cognitive architecture, suffers from a serious case of worse is better. Of course religious nuts are pathelogically incapable of admitting this; presumably God knew what he was doing when he designed humans to believe objects move only so long as they have 'vital impetus', and all scientists since Newton are tools of Satan trying to delude you!

[CaptainChewbacca]

I'm collaborating with some folks currently to get him written up at Badgeology.com.

Victory will be mine!

I don't know if Mike said it originally or not, but I heard it somewhere:

If you're a maverick genius fighting against entranched bureaucracy of mainstream science with an idea that will change the world, you're probably a douchebag moron.

If its original, quote me on it.

[Il Saggiatore]

Oh, that Neal Adams!

He showed up in the "Bad Astronomy and Universe Today" forum: link to thread.
He did not stay long, probably because the members were not impressed.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Oh, that Neal Adams!

He showed up in the "Bad Astronomy and Universe Today" forum: link to thread.
He did not stay long, probably because the members were not impressed.

I actually debated him on YouTube (sad, I know), where he admitted to not fully understanding the geology texts he read, but that Expanding Earth 'Seemed to fit'.

This must be how you guys feel about Creationists, right?

[Junghalli]

Yeah, evolution sucks that way; human 'intuitive physics', like the rest of human cognitive architecture, suffers from a serious case of worse is better.

A lot of that is just because we live in a gravity well and an atmosphere, which gives us a profoundly distorted perspective of how motion works. If there was a sapient species that lived in space, Newtonian physics would be quite intuitive to them.

[PeZook]

Yeah, evolution sucks that way; human 'intuitive physics', like the rest of human cognitive architecture, suffers from a serious case of worse is better.

A lot of that is just because we live in a gravity well and an atmosphere, which gives us a profoundly distorted perspective of how motion works. If there was a sapient species that lived in space, Newtonian physics would be quite intuitive to them.

Hell, if you just have contact with space and spaceflight on a daily basis, the way orbital mechanics work will become intuitive within weeks.

Of course, in this case intuition means little, and you still need your funky maths and equations and whatnot. If you show an expert some numbers and a delta-v for a space vehicle and ask "Hey, will this be enough to hit Mars?" then the most he could say would be "Should be close", but he'd still have to run the calculations to give a definitive answer. Unless he's a freaking genius and can run them in his head

[Darth Wong]

Oh come on, intuition doesn't automatically get things right if you're in the appropriate environment. It took us thousands of years to figure out that air resistance slowed things down, even though any idiot can feel the power of air resistance on a windy day.

[PeZook]

Oh come on, intuition doesn't automatically get things right if you're in the appropriate environment. It took us thousands of years to figure out that air resistance slowed things down, even though any idiot can feel the power of air resistance on a windy day.

Chances are they'd "get" newtonian motion faster than we did, though.

...and get completely fucking confused once they landed somewhere that has an atmosphere, and form wacky theories to handwave it away that they'll sell to fools through the SpaceNet