

Disturbing Scientific Discoveries  - bootload
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/93785079.html

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RiderOfGiraffes
It's the comments I find the most disturbing about that article.

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shrikant
From one of those comments:

 _I'm still a teenager, so I've got plenty of time. Who am I to say it's wrong
or right? For the most part I believe everything here, but that's because of
what I see with the media and everything. This is good. :)_

No you whipper-snapper, it's _not_ good.

Sweeping generalisation: I weep for the teenager of today.

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jacquesm
Give it 20 years, they'll come around to your point of view eventually.

At least they're interested, that's a beginning.

Apathy is a much bigger problem than being still an uncritical consumer.

I remember the first time I had first hand knowledge of an event that was
covered by the media, and how much my personal, eye-witness experience
deviated from what I read in the newspaper and saw on TV the next day.

It was a moment of absolute amazement, and then I suddenly realized I'd
probably been duped to a greater or lesser extent for years about any number
of things.

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billswift
Maybe, but from my observations being apathetic and being uncritical are
closely related.

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axiom
Personally I find Godel incompleteness to be a far more disturbing discovery
than any of the things listed in the article. Something about a fundamental
limitation on deductive systems just scares the hell out of me.

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dmoney
Godel's theorem implies that in a consistent system there are unprovable
truths. I've always wondered if those truths could be things no one would care
about anyway. Are statements like "this statement is unprovable" useful for
anything other than proving the Incompleteness theorem?

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dgordon
The halting problem seems kind of important. Also, at least two of Hilbert's
problems -- the continuum hypothesis and solving general Diophantine equations
-- turned out to be undecidable (the latter because it reduces to the halting
problem.)

Edit: Er, actually, the Diophantine equation question would be uncomputable
(like the halting problem), not undecidable. The ideas are closely related,
though.

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dmoney
I meant statements which state that the statement itself is unprovable. Or are
you saying that the halting problem exists because of incompleteness?

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daniel-cussen
I remember Keats and the whole truth is beauty, beauty truth thing. I feel
like it's actually, truth is ugly, always. I mean, have you ever found out the
truth and not been disappointed?

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clay
Have you ever proved a mathematical theorem on your own?

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daniel-cussen
Yes; that's actually a pretty good counterpoint. But what about Gödel's
Incompleteness Theorem? That is a mindbreaker.

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pradocchia
_what about Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem? That is a mindbreaker_

Why? If I had to guess, I would say you are uncomfortable with intrinsic
uncertainty. Or is it something else?

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daniel-cussen
Well, to begin with, it's set theory, which is notable for driving at least
one person mad, and further, it's one of the more unsettling parts of set
theory. And I mean actually working through it, not just knowing about it. But
reading it over, "mindbreaker" is clumsy; perhaps "disturbing" or, better yet,
"unsettling" would be better.

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waratuman
Some of these aren't even scientific discoveries:

\- We’ve already changed the climate for the rest of this century \- There
have been mass extinctions in the past, and we’re probably in one now.

Seriously?

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brazzy
Yes, seriously. Realize that most of the doubt about climate change is
engineered by astroturfing campaigns and financed by oil companies.

Among the actual scientists, the overwhelming consensus is that climate change
is happening on a scale that is threatening, and to a significant extent
caused by humans.

~~~
waratuman
That is great! But the point is that this a prediction into the future and is
not a fact. A fact is something that you can prove, and you can not prove the
future. If you can, come talk to me we can start a business :)

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arethuza
If anyone finds that list disturbing then they really need to get out more.

Personally, I find what people capable of in our darker moments disturbing,
but science is essentially the antidote for that. Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted
World" being strongly recommended:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World>

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zokier
"c², or the speed of light (186,282 miles per second) times itself, which
equals 34,700,983,524."

Does that number actually tell anyone anything?

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brazzy
It tells people that (because it's such a huge number) "a little" mass
contains "a lot" of energy. The actual number and unit isn't really important
to get that point across.

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zokier
The point was that as mph is quite arbitrary unit it is practically impossible
to see the amount of energy. If the speed of light was given in m/s then the
amount of energy would have been easy to see. ie E = mc². c = 300 × 10^6 m/s,
c² = 9 × 10^16 (m/s)², so with that equation 1kg of mass actually contains
approximately 9 × 10^16 joules of energy which is a lot.

What would the equivalent thought process be in imperial units? Lets say you
have 1 lb of mass and want to figure out the amount of energy contained in it
with the equation E = mc² and c² being 3.47 × 10^10 miles per second, just to
know the scale of things (which was kinda the point in the article imho). How
would you do that?

edit: Another point of view: velocity and kinetic energy. E = 0.5mv², that
should be familiar to anyone familiar to physics. So with a velocity of 5.5 ×
10^9 inches per year you don't need a lot of mass to have a lot of energy,
because the multiplier is so huge, right?

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brazzy
The point was that the text is intended to be understandable by people who are
_not_ necessarily familiar with physics, who don't have the faintest idea what
a joule is and who wouldn't even understand scientific notation.

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j_baker
A bit of a correction: dark matter isn't "exotic". It's the most common form
of matter there is.

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terrble
This article is going to sound really silly when archaeologists dust off the
bits in 500 years.

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malkia
At least bacon is good :)

