Things that are true that you dont believe

Jimoslimos

NIMAN wrote: »

I was doing some reading recently on this atomic level stuff, and as you say nothing ever touches anything else. This I found hard to grasp. I was wondering if the edges of any surface have spinning electrons etc, why don't they bang into ones they come into contact with.

then I did the reading, and apparently 2 surfaces never touch, there is always a tiny gap between them. So the chair I am sitting on, I'm not actually sitting in it, I am hovering slightly about it.

Weird.

Well yes and no. Depends on your definition of "touching". Atoms aren't solid well-defined spheres with edges. Try not thinking of solid electrons spinning around a nucleus, but rather something akin to a fuzzy cloud which gets less dense as the probability of finding the electron decreases (i.e. moving away from the centre of the nucleus).

Yourself isit

clairewithani wrote: »

I often think of the colour one.

In general we probably evolved to see the colours the same way, except for colour blind people who we know don't.

I mean your red could be my green but it's not that likely.

Jack the Stripper

That my uncle James was caught riding my mothers brother in law.

Glenster

Yourself isit wrote: »

In general we probably evolved to see the colours the same way, except for colour blind people who we know don't.

I mean your red could be my green but it's not that likely.

The whole thing about colour is that there is no way of proving that we do not see colours differently.

there's no hypothesis beyond this that we may see colours differently.

it's similar to saying that there is 12 mile high invisible intangible goat in times square. there's no way of disproving that. but it's not a theory.

so I wouldn't worry about it.

osarusan

osarusan wrote: »

apparently it is better in terms of probability to switch. Maths says so, but I have no idea why and am intuitively against it.

My own brother nearly came to blows with me discussing that one once - so intuitively against it was he.

If it helps you intuit it - then stop thinking about the probabilities you are "right" at any time in the process but the probability you are wrong instead.

Realise instead the probability your first guess was _wrong_ was 2/3 - and it remains 2/3 throughout the remainder of the contest.

If it makes you feel any better it is not just you who is intuitively against it but people who very _very_ much should know better.

When it was detailed at one time - by a mathematician who was a child prodigy - it is said "she received over 10,000 letters, many from noted scholars and Ph.Ds, informing her that she was a hare-brained idiot." including it is said "a pair from the Deputy Director of the Center for Defense Information, and a Research Mathematical Statistician from the National Institutes of Health -- all of which contended that she was entirely incompetent"

Some of the letters were fun -

"May I suggest that you obtain and refer to a standard textbook on probability before you try to answer a question of this type again?"

"I am sure you will receive many letters on this topic from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for help with future columns."

and my absolute favourite because it is correct - but not for the reason the writer intended -

"You made a mistake, but look at the positive side. If all those Ph.D.’s were wrong, the country would be in some very serious trouble."

osarusan

Deleted User wrote: »

If it makes you feel any better it is not just you who is intuitively against it but people who very _very_ much should know better.

It should make me feel better to think that I am not one of those people who should know better?

:pac:

osarusan

osarusan wrote: »

It should make me feel better to think that I am not one of those people who should know better?

:pac:

Hehehe not _quite_ how I meant it But the average person like you or myself not knowing better is not quite as funny as someone with one or more phds in Mathematics not knowing better. My brother is not likely to be left as red in the face as the Mathematical Statistician who took the time to write in any deride her conclusions.

filbert the fox

filbert the fox wrote: »

The Siphon

the square root of a minus number*

how things go bad when you're in a hurry - all the aoul' wans come out in their slow cars knowing you're rushing to get somewhere

strawberries in the supermarket in January

an invisible God

that we still have civil war politics on this tiny portion of land.

That the most northerly point on this island is in the South!

*the rule is if you multiply a number by itself (+ or -) you get a positive. Minus multiplied by minus gives a plus.- if you multiply any number by itself it's the square. so the square root of a negative number is - well I haven't an iota.

Nearly forgot:
My Leicester are in the last eight in Europe and are still Premier League Champs.

marketty

Some of Dublin's great pintmen have been known to put away thirty pints or more in a day.

JimmyTClarke

Captain Chaos wrote: »

No it's not, it's expanding just everything is getting farther apart from each other. In 100s of billions of years time and the earth and sun somehow still exist (they wont after 5-7 billion years), if you looked into the night sky you will see no stars as they have will have moved beyond the distance light can reach us as expansion is still accelerating and it's not constant. It's the space between starts and galaxies that's getting bigger not the boundary of the universe expanding into nothing.

So it's kind of like an intergalactic beach ball being blown up?

RiderOnTheStorm

ablelocks wrote:

Leitrim.

Carlow

NIMAN

NIMAN wrote: »

I was doing some reading recently on this atomic level stuff, and as you say nothing ever touches anything else. This I found hard to grasp. I was wondering if the edges of any surface have spinning electrons etc, why don't they bang into ones they come into contact with.

then I did the reading, and apparently 2 surfaces never touch, there is always a tiny gap between them. So the chair I am sitting on, I'm not actually sitting in it, I am hovering slightly about it.

Weird.

You know why you can never trust an atom?

They make up everything.

JRant

Not all infinities are the same. Maths is just beyond strange.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-infinity-comes-in-different-sizes/

RiderOnTheStorm

JRant wrote:

Not all infinities are the same. Maths is just beyond strange.

Ah yes, what I like to call the Infinite Toilet Roll Paradox. If you had an infinite number of toilet rolls, and unwound the paper from the cardboard tube of each one, and then stretched out all the paper end to end and same with the tubes. The paper would run on for infinity, and so would the tubes. But clearly the paper line is longer than the tubes, but both are infinitely long! Ergo, different infinities!

Amazing the ideas that come to you when on the bog after a night of drinking.

DavyD_83

RiderOnTheStorm wrote: »

Ah yes, what I like to call the Infinite Toilet Roll Paradox. If you had an infinite number of toilet rolls, and unwound the paper from the cardboard tube of each one, and then stretched out all the paper end to end and same with the tubes. The paper would run on for infinity, and so would the tubes. But clearly the paper line is longer than the tubes, but both are infinitely long! Ergo, different infinities!

Amazing the ideas that come to you when on the bog after a night of drinking.

is that different to saying 3times infinity is different to 5 times infinity?

LordSutch

I don't believe that the last Pterodactyl died 65 million years ago.

sunny2004

hank scorpio89 wrote: »

I was talking to a friend earlier and we somehow ended up in a debate about snowflakes..you no the old no two snowflakes are the same theory.
His basic argument was its science.my argument was i fail to believe 2 identical snow flakes have never fallen before.how can science even prove this ..got me thinking what other things are suposedly true that you dont beleieve ???

Argument solved guys, it has happened..
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/23/science/who-ever-said-no-two-snowflakes-were-alike.html?_r=0

fiachr_a

Vera Lynn still releasing music. She was considered old-fashioned by the Elvis/Beatles/Punk/Grunge generations.

Sam Kade

Op, if you don't believe in them how do you know they are true?

Fleawuss

Sam Kade wrote: »

Op, if you don't believe in them how do you know they are true?

Belief as requisite for truth. Sigh.

The question is OP why do you think there is any merit in believing things that you know aren't true.

scopper

....... wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

[Philosophy PhD here].

Within strands of philosophical neuroscience consciousness is generally explained as akin to a camera that is capturing externalities (environment) and building a map, always ongoing, that is updated and improved constantly. The nature of that map will be different contingent upon your own personal experiences. Your memory is basically just a store of information that is applied to the generated map.

I don't think there is an origin mystery if you can just think of it as a quite niche outcome of evolutionary pressures. Consciousness is, in a way, what humans developed to better survive in the environment, but from a strictly neutral perspective it's just a skill.

BrokenArrows

That its not butter.

BBDBB

DrumSteve wrote: »

That space is unending.

And if it's not, what's outside it?

A conservatory with the biggest wicker furniture you ever saw

764dak

filbert the fox wrote: »

The Siphon

the square root of a minus number*

how things go bad when you're in a hurry - all the aoul' wans come out in their slow cars knowing you're rushing to get somewhere

strawberries in the supermarket in January

an invisible God

that we still have civil war politics on this tiny portion of land.

That the most northerly point on this island is in the South!

*the rule is if you multiply a number by itself (+ or -) you get a positive. Minus multiplied by minus gives a plus.- if you multiply any number by itself it's the square. so the square root of a negative number is - well I haven't an iota.

The square root of a minus number is an imaginary number.

Yourself isit

fiachr_a wrote: »

Vera Lynn still releasing music. She was considered old-fashioned by the Elvis/Beatles/Punk/Grunge generations.

She was the soldiers sweetheart on WWII

Yourself isit

scopper wrote: »

[Philosophy PhD here].

Within strands of philosophical neuroscience consciousness is generally explained as akin to a camera that is capturing externalities (environment) and building a map, always ongoing, that is updated and improved constantly. The nature of that map will be different contingent upon your own personal experiences. Your memory is basically just a store of information that is applied to the generated map.

I don't think there is an origin mystery if you can just think of it as a quite niche outcome of evolutionary pressures. Consciousness is, in a way, what humans developed to better survive in the environment, but from a strictly neutral perspective it's just a skill.

That explains very little. Also I'm sure some higher level animals are conscious.

.......

This post has been deleted.

JackTaylorFan

The concept of time.

Laois_Man

DavyD_83 wrote: »

Also, that the odds of 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 coming up in the Lotto are the exact same as the odds of any other random specific set of numbers.
I don't play the lotto, mostly because I'm very aware of how long the odds are, but if I did, I'm never picking the first consecutive set of numbers, or any other consecutive set.

Too bad for you. There was a draw in the 90's where you would have got 5 numbers - and someone won it - and it was before there was any such thing as quick pick, so somebody manually chose them!

Laois_Man

Alina Purring Killer wrote: »

I'd give 36,37,38 a very slight (0.07%) bias advantage over 1,2,3.... Mainly due to 'slippy heavy balls' theory. That is: The balls with a higher surface area of paint application will be heavier, and with slightly less surface friction, than the smaller numbers. Other than that more or less same chance.

If that were true, after 29 years of lotto draws, one would expect to see that clearly reflected in the drawing frequency chart (that single digit numbers come out less often than double digit numbers). However the most frequently drawn out set of 6 numbers has numbers 2 and 6 in it.

This either disproves your theory - or supports the suspicion that the draw is rigged.

What might surprise you more is that the 3rd highest number drawn out is 38 - which wasn't in the draw until over 4 years after Lotto began when numbers 1 to 36 which were the original limits.

We're really fun at parties!!