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I want to fell you about something small and petty that drives me absolutely fucking bonkers. (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So there's this thing people do, it's harmless enough, but it also sort of hints at a completely incoherent style of thinking. It is absolutely unfair to judge people by random shit they write casually, after all I write like 3 geeked out baboons stacked atop one and other and yet I am a noble and refined rat.

Nonetheless I'm a judgy shit so I do. Ok so the thing? It's when people use a quote or situation from fiction as a predictor of what will happen in reality. A concrete example from earlier today paraphrased:

p1: I think blah blah thing will happen

p2: Ah but remember men in black? a person is reasonable, people are dumb panicky animals

me: teakettle noises

The causality is utterly confused, MiB cannot be used as evidence, it is written that way because the writer wanted a character to say that. It's possible a writer wanted a character to say that because the writer believed it to be true, but it's also possible that it was included for many other reasons.

screeeeeeeeeee

Anyway, share your thoughts. Also your own ridiculous rhetoric irritations.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

You know thought experiments are not used as evidence right, but rather to direct the search for evidence.

You go: "if X were true we might imagine finding Y under Z conditions" then we go and do real experiments in order to actually see if this holds true. Using the evidence we support or refute the imagined scenario.

Special relativity isn't true because of trains mirrors and torches, it is true because it's true and we know it's true (in the empirical not logical sense) because we have done measurements of atomic clocks and shit.