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Is Science Reliable?

Smarter Every Day - How Helicopter Autorotation works

Aziraphale says...

It's totally intellectually dishonest to use one standard of reason and knowledge for everything else, and then abandon that system entirely for one particular idea just because you would prefer it to be true. Shame on you Destin, how do you live with that kind of cognitive dissonance?

artician said:

I could be way off, but I had the impression he was pretty religious in the first place.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Republicans: Do Your Job

Aziraphale says...

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

He is a perfect example of what happens to a person when you conflate your opinions with your identity; an abject rejection of any evidence contradictory to his world view. I sort of pity him.

shagen454 said:

His comments are so brain-dead that I think he is probably just a troll.

Why the Electoral College Ruins Democracy

Aziraphale says...

The electoral college is an unnecessary relic. At the time you would actually need a person from each state to physically go down to DC and cast a vote. With today's technology this has become clearly obsolete.

Teenager wins $400,000 for video explaining Relativity

Aziraphale says...

I've seen a video from sixty symbols with a similar explanation (kind of). Does this have any relevance?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxqjyl74iu4

dannym3141 said:

This is an excellent explanation for someone of his age and his skill with video editing obviously helps a lot. It held my interest, the world needs more entertaining and educating videos like these.

My only criticism - and some youtubers have already pointed this out - is that the explanation of time dilation "..the same bodily change that happens on earth takes much longer to occur when you are moving so fast.." is wrong.

Signals sent within the body can be analogous to a clock - any fixed duration measured between two ~lightspeed reference frames will be different, including seconds measured by an atomic clock - but time dilation specifically has nothing to do with the mechanics behind how you measure the time or the time it takes a signal to travel. It's a property of the nature of spacetime. Time itself actually slows down. There's no 'trick' to understanding how or why, it's just a property that it has. We can forgive him because he'd already demonstrated that physics is the same in any inertial reference frame and there is no "preferential" reference frame; therefore the motion of the reference frame can't be responsible for the observed difference, so he obviously already really knew all this.

There's no shame in getting that wrong, because he'll be taught more and better about it as he progresses through school. Generally the arbitrary subjects are the hardest to live with because you just have to accept them as they are rather than 'understand'. Quantum mechanics is the same - you just have to accept the rules and apply the maths. Everyone struggles with it, even Feynman said "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."

End Slow Loris Trade Now (WARNING: Disturbing Content)

Smarter Every Day - You won't believe your eyes

Who Is Stephen Colbert?

Aziraphale says...

Yeah when she was telling him about what the results meant I found myself thinking "What is this some kind of religious self help seminar? How much did he pay for this lady?"

aaronfr said:

I put very little stock in these personality tests. In particular, I don't trust them because they only describe whatever personality you have in positive, flattering terms - a trait/tactic very similar to horoscopes. Of course you will like the result if you are being compared to Shakespeare and told that you are among the most brilliant minds in the known universe.

How powerful illusions reveal glitches in your brain

Scientists Show Conspiracy Theorists Will Believe Anything

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