
Warning: Your reality is out of date - jamesbritt
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/28/warning_your_reality_is_out_of_date?mode=PF
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gsaines
This is a really well-articulated explanation for the phenomena that have
clumsily attempted to describe before. As someone interested in cars, I use
the example of Cadillacs and Buicks most frequently, since they used to be
symbols of power, prestige, and quality but seem to sell almost exclusively to
people over the age of 60 today. I actually always play a game when on the
highway: I check the drivers of Cadillacs and Buicks and my anecdotal sample
has been heavily skewed towards older owners.

I wish that the mesofacts site was more complete, because I love updating my
firmware. While reading it, I kept thinking "What else is it there I don't
know I don't know?"

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mreid
Your comment about Cadillacs reminded me of the scene from The Wire where
Snoop buys a nailgun: "Man says this here the Cadillac of nailguns. He means
Lexus but he don't know it."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8zavPW3Bus>

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gsaines
Yeah, I've seen that episode, and it's exactly what I was thinking. Up until
this Toyota safety debacle (at least it's a publicity debacle), I gave myself
a little self-congratulating pat on the back whenever I saw someone driving a
Cadillac, thinking "Ah, they don't know what quality really is, but I do:
Lexus!" I wonder if I won't end up putzing around in a Lexus someday thinking
it's so great while all the youngins snicker at me too! :)

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troystribling
Hans Rosling has a good TED talk discussing this in the context of the mind
set people have concerning industrial and developing nations,
<http://blog.ted.com/2009/08/let_my_dataset.php>. He claims most peoples
opinions are from data available in 50's through 70's which corresponds to the
dates when their school teachers were in college.

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losvedir
Cool - the fact about cell phones is astonishing. I always cringe at the false
boiling frog metaphor, though. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog>)

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rsheridan6
Read the wiki article again. It cites sources for the truth of the boiling
frog metaphor.

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Psyonic
Some, yes, but all from over 100 years ago. The contemporary scientific
opinion is very much against this "fact."
<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/01/frog.html>

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rsheridan6
The modern experimenters failed to find the original articles, since they were
published in German before last Thursday. So they heated the water too fast,
leading to their result.

The ages of the experiments are irrelevant here because 1) 19th century
Germans had thermometers and heaters that were more than adequate for this
task. We have no technological advantage over them in this regard

2) The modern experiments weren't building on or refining the old ones because
the experimenters weren't aware of them. We only see farther than those who
came before because we're standing on their shoulders. If we can't find their
shoulders, we don't have that advantage.

There's more about this in the discussion page between two wikipedia edit
warriors, on of whom, coincidentally, has the same username that I am using on
this site right now.

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wglb
Points to the interesting site <http://www.mesofacts.org/> which I found
interesting enough to pop into my rss reader.

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skmurphy
The mesofacts site is an interesting one. The concept seems related to the
"half life of information" which has over 7 million hits on Google
<http://www.google.com/search?q=half+life+of+information> [Caution: you can
lose a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon following these links]

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Psyonic
For instance, the fact that you can boil a frog, by slow heating up the water
its standing in (used as an example in the article) is most likely wrong:
<http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/01/frog.html>. Not technically a meso-
fact, as it the reality of it didn't change, but close enough to be funny.

For more:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Contemporary_exper...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Contemporary_experiments).

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gjm11
Dupe of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1162731> .

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_mattb
"Our schools are biased against mesofacts."

Not sure if that's the case: schools undoubtedly hit you with bits of trivia,
but this is done to develop students' mental powers. (Good) teachers know what
they're doing and are training you to accept more of these 'mesofacts.'

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onoj
(slightly off topic - sorry) curious.

Your Reality is Out of Date: Introducing the Mesofact (boston.com) 6 points by
JacobAldridge 5 days ago | 1 comment | flag

How is it that the same article is posted twice?

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erik
The dupe checker only catches exact matches in the url. This version of the
submission has a get parameter in the address.

