Well, you and I don’t but,to be fair, “intellectual curiosity” is in the eye of the beholder.
I don’t think I ever learned anything about the moon in school. Everything I know about space and physics is from Robert Heinlein.
Living in a large city with lots of light pollution with frequently cloud cover, my perspective is quite different from someone who lives in the countryside with dark skies and agriculture. All that moon business is probably very relevant to farmers.
Shakespeare plays are full of astronomical references that his audience surely understood.
I barely pay attention to the moon around here, so I had no idea as to the timings of the phases and when they are visible. I mean, I guess I noticed that the full moon seems to rise when the sun sets, but I’ve never thought about why or even connected the two events. I would have not known about the waning crescent and when it can be seen. I had no idea about the half moon tid bit, either. Once again, I just know I sometimes see the moon during the day. Never noticed particularly what phase it was in or where it was in the sky.
I agree; it’s going to be a very small percentage.
I know a fair amount about astronomy, as it’s a subject that’s always interested me. I know a lot of the basic facts about the phases of the moon, as discussed here, but even I would have to sit and puzzle it out to figure out “if there’s a crescent moon in the night sky, is it waxing or waning?”
For a non-scientist, I suspect that I know a lot more about various scientific areas than most laymen – call it intellectual curiosity, nerdiness, or whatever – but even then, there are areas where my knowledge is not as strong. I’m a weather nerd, in particular, so I understand a lot more about that area than, say, atomic theory or paleontology (e.g., which dinosaurs were contemporary of each other, and which weren’t).
Frankly, as a non-astronomer, all I could tell you was that the Moon rises and that it’s about 240,000 miles from Earth (thanks to the movie Apollo 13.) That’s all. Nothing about this waxing or waning stuff.
Astronomy is pretty non-observational to 21st century man thanks to calendars, light pollution, and mostly spending almost all of our after-dark hours indoors. You have to look at the sky several nights in a row to know if the moon is waxing or waning or what phase it is. How many of us look at the sky every night? Someone who took Astronomy in college 20 years ago is far less likely to know about the Astronomy in the OP than an illiterate shepherd.
I always assumed the Moon was sentient and showed you whatever it wanted to whenever it wanted to and if we piss it off enough (by dumping our space trash on it or trying to infest it with colonists), it will fix our wagon and there will be a Roland Emmerich movie detailing…
uh-oh
How much is not understood by those not specifically interested in lunar astronomy? Very little, in my experience. Me, I was interested in the topic as a kid (had my own telescope), and went so far as to take some astrophysics in college.
I had some friends over at our place a while back, and at one point in the evening I suggested we all move to the deck, as the moon was due to rise in about 3 minutes. We all trooped out there and indeed, it rose up over the the horizon in a most gorgeous fashion.
One woman there, an RN with a Masters degree, was absolutely stunned and amazed that I was able to predict that. Turns out she had no idea that the moon regularly rose/set at predictable intervals, or about how it progressed thru its phases.
Minimal. It is fair to assume very bare bones knowledge, or near enough to zilch to make no difference. It’s a miracle as it is that most people can tell the Sun from the Moon, and night from day. Knowing when in the day a waning moon is visible is rocket science to them.
Don’t get me started on ignorance of geology. I mean, the Sun and Moon are way over there, but most everyone is standing on some geology right now, blissfully ignorant.
My knowledge is moderate. I don’t think we learned much about it in school. My father has a strong interest in it.
As for common knowledge of specialist subjects? In many cases it is modest, usually minimal. People usually have sone familiarity with stuff taught in schools.
I dislike the phrase “perfect storm”. But people believing without cause or reason they know more than experts, the rise of pundits claiming expertise who possess more media or trolling savvy than sagacity and desire wealth more than wisdom, a distaste for academics despite being as important as ever, and a million distractions certainly have not helped matters.
That said, these unimportant errors in stories do not surprise me or bother me very much. One would hope once brought to their attention they might be corrected in future editions?
It reminds me of a general rule that I have: “it’s difficult to enjoy an entertainment piece related to your profession, or a subject you know well.” In many cases, either the author/producer/director isn’t actually an expert on that subject, or they take artistic liberties to tell their story, and the inaccuracy takes you (as a relative expert) out of the story, and out of the moment.
In other words: an entertainment piece isn’t a documentary.
Yes. But it is not really the lack of technical knowledge that makes me not watch hospital or emergency medicine TV shows. I have no problems realizing they lack experience or leave stuff out to emphasize the story or could care less about fine details. That never bothered me much. I don’t feel the need to embiggen myself by pointing out the many contradictions.
I think this is something some people tell themselves because they’re just overly critical buggers. It’s not some kind of rule - I mentioned this in a thread on The Rings of Power, but it also goes for movies like The Core *, or any lava scene in any movie ever - bad geology just doesn’t ruin my enjoyment of things. Neither does bad archaeology nor bad medieval history. I just don’t expect any accuracy on those fronts in fiction, ever.
Similarly, my medievalist friends will watch anything even vaguely in period with gusto.
* I’m not saying I liked The Core. Just didn’t dislike it for the geology stuff they made up out of thin air.
Maybe so; I didn’t say it was a universal rule. 
I am intellectually curious, and I have a sufficiently high IQ to be in Mensa. I’ve never really kept track of the number of books I read, but it has to be an absolute minimum of 40 per year, and probably many more. I read a newspaper every day, and supplement that with news articles that I find on the internet. I keep myself at least vaguely informed of politics and events in places like Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, China, and several European and Middle Eastern countries.
I say all that to say this–
As far as I’m concerned, the ONLY relevance that the phases of the moon have is (A) how much light the moon gives out, and (B) whether or not it’s possible to have an eclipse. As far as I’m concerned, the waxing and waning phases are completely interchangeable. I would never dream of expending time and brain power to keep track of what phase comes when, or anything like that.
There is certainly an important place for knowledge and precision. Critical in academia; clearly more marginal in works meant to entertain more than elucidate.
Same here, the OP of this thread was news to me. Indeed, I read the thread title and thought the OP was going to pose a different question.
British state-educated, in case its of interest to anyone.
That’s wonderful. Have you had a chance to show them what the stars look like in a dark sky location?
This is me as well. I was not a science major, but I took a variety of science courses during undergrad. I am extremely curious about many many areas.
As it happens, I took an astronomy course in college, and had some astronomy during secondary school. I’ve done some long-exposure photography of the night sky, and I’ve read fiction and nonfiction involving astronomy concepts. I don’t recall ever being taught anything about the moon that would have made me realize that statement was impossible. In fact, I remember working out for myself that the full moon would rise at sunset, and that the moon would always rise in the east (more or less, similarly to the sun). Even so, I would not have noticed that the statement was wrong.