The number of people that understand the details of how a refrigerator works is orders of magnitude higher than the number of people the really understand everything about cellphone technology. But yeah, the hum is not pleasant, has that been studied? ;)
I feel like for something to stick there does need to be more than that. But who knows, give it a try and see! If you look at the common conspiracies they seem to target more complex things.
Anti-vax is a lot more complex. There was Andrew Wakefield's fraud. There are real side effects for many vaccines. There are public health considerations. The science is definitely not at a fridge level. Pharma companies can have conflicts of interest. Maybe the original cowpox gives immunity to smallpox is more intuitive but mRNA vaccines that cause cells to make the Covid spike protein are not as simple. Covid vaccines were rushed to market (one can argue for good reasons) and they did have side effects (e.g. myocarditis, tinnitus?). Authorities have walked the line of being open about the considerations vs. trying to force public health policies, sometimes eroding trust while they do that. Even experts differed on some finer policy points. I know I was really upset with people who didn't vaccinate for Covid because I believed we could get herd immunity but then new variants showed up that were so more infectious and got around the vaccine where that didn't matter.
> understand the details… really understand everything
That’s two different standards, and only relevant if either of them was a significant percentage of total population. Most people don’t even understand why a refrigerator door gets briefly stuck after you close it. It’s practically a magic box that gets cold which is perhaps why they fall for conspiracy theories so readily, any explanation is equally plausible.
And sure at a high level I understand both, but to really understand a refrigerator the same way you would need to really understand 5G etc, you would need to know the actual pressures involved etc. People don’t know the chemical properties and makeup of the refrigerant. What’s the acceptable impurity levels. What lubricants are in use, etc. The physical geometry of all the mechanical parts and so forth.
One way to convince yourself that a fridge is simpler than a 5G cell system is to look at the science history behind them. The heap pump, the core concept behind a fridge, goes back to 1748 (Cullen). Radio goes back to Maxwell (circa. 1864) and Hertz (1886). Basically at the time that Radio was invented/discovered refrigeration along the lines of the modern fridge was well understood. The first cellphone was invented in 1973 and the first commercial cell phone was 1983. Lots of technologies in the latest generations that are pretty cutting edge and today's phone and technologies look like science fiction to someone from the 1970's or even 1980's...
Longer history can also imply complexity. A 2024 Honda Civic is way more complicated than a Model T.
Though ultimately yea a smartphone extremely complex. I’m just saying being able to have a high level understanding is very different than knowing how to maintain or design something.
I feel like for something to stick there does need to be more than that. But who knows, give it a try and see! If you look at the common conspiracies they seem to target more complex things.
Anti-vax is a lot more complex. There was Andrew Wakefield's fraud. There are real side effects for many vaccines. There are public health considerations. The science is definitely not at a fridge level. Pharma companies can have conflicts of interest. Maybe the original cowpox gives immunity to smallpox is more intuitive but mRNA vaccines that cause cells to make the Covid spike protein are not as simple. Covid vaccines were rushed to market (one can argue for good reasons) and they did have side effects (e.g. myocarditis, tinnitus?). Authorities have walked the line of being open about the considerations vs. trying to force public health policies, sometimes eroding trust while they do that. Even experts differed on some finer policy points. I know I was really upset with people who didn't vaccinate for Covid because I believed we could get herd immunity but then new variants showed up that were so more infectious and got around the vaccine where that didn't matter.