Yes, this board is devoted to fighting ignorance, but sometimes my ignorance is like kudzu. I can fight it back for a moment or three, but it just keeps coming back. And it’s not always very complex or esoteric stuff; it’s often quite basic. Surely I’m not alone in this, right? So what can you just not grok for long?
Me?
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Time signatures.** I can “feel” 4/4 and 1/3 (Generic Rock and Waltz respectively, right?) and if someone sits me down and explains the whole concept again, I can understand it…for about an hour. Then it all flies right out of my head again, and I couldn’t clap out a 5/4 or a 7/8 to save my life.
Electricity. I started an “explain electricity to me using really tiny words” thread once, and by the end of it, I got it, I really got it! Now it’s gone, and electricity might as well be magic elves making my laptop work.
I know there are plenty more, but in the interest of moving the thread past the OP, I’ll stop now.
There used to be an exhibit at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. They had a couple of tensegrity spheres. If you’ve never seen one, it’s just rods and string, assembled in such a way that makes a sphere that’s much larger than any of the individual pieces. When I was standing there looking at it, it made perfect sense. But later I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I mean, how do you make a sphere two feet across from pieces that are only a couple inches? Strings can’t hold things apart, only pull them together. None of the rods touch each other. How does the string not pull the whole thing together until it’s just a pile of sticks in a display case?
There was a cat food commercial when I was a kid. They were trying to show how many different varieties they had, so there were something like 17 bowls of cat food lined up, with one cat at each bowl. Then an 18th cat came in and started eating at the bowl at one end. That nudged the cat who was already there to move to the next bowl, which nudged that cat, etc., until there were two cats at the bowl at the far end.
Electricity is like that, except with electrons instead of cats.
I’ve read about it many, many times - spoon-fed for the layman, comic book form, more heavy-tech breakdowns - heck, I have a first U.S. edition of Einstein’s explanation of it from 1920 (yes, it took that long for a layperson’s overview to come out - remember Einstein himself didn’t really become “crossover famous” until relativity was proved in 1919 with the eclipse that showed light being bent).
Anyway, I read about it, I get all the basic premises, the thought-experiments, etc. - but holding all of that in my brain, and extrapolating the consequences for how that shapes our reality? My brain just 'splodes all over again.
3/4 time signature for a waltz, yes? And an easy way to think of 7/8 is two sets of two and one of three, with the emphasis on beats 1, 3, and 5. ** 1 **2 **3 **4 **5 **6 7
Religion/Theism - at some point, it boils down to Faith, which is another way of saying “at some point, you need to ground your approach to beliefs in a few assumptions you use as your foundation.”
**Economics **- see Religion/Theism. Also, boils down to a few assumptions one then uses to build a system. The myth of Rational Markets is the latest example of an assumption that economists used over the past 30 years to justify decisions and actions - *that *worked out well…
My point in both cases is that HUGE edifices of human endeavor are based on these structures…which ultimately boil down to a few assumptions that time and events may or may not reveal have ANY relation to the reality we learn to perceive as our technology improves, or what consequences play out based on acting on our assumptions. Again, blows my mind.
“Offsides” in hockey. My husband has explained it a million times, and each time his explanation totally makes sense, but then it just disappears from my brain entirely, and I’m left as I was before, wondering what “offsides” means.
I also cannot understand syncopation – again, despite numerous clear-headed explanations of same. Nor can I understand why it is so easy to recognize. Shouldn’t it make no difference whether you start on the 1 or the 2? … Wait, stop, don’t try to explain it again. sigh
I suppose you could also say 1 2345 67, depending on the piece I was just saying that that’s an easy way to think of it, and I would say probably the most common permutation when it appears in popular music.
Mr. Shoe has this amazing ability to look at some pretty old-timey car and immediately blurt out the make, model, and year. He’ll explain to me that in '64 Buick did such-and-such with the fins, but by '67 they were such-and-such, and I just see … a car.
And, yeah, physics stuff like photons and relativity, and pretty much all math I can’t perform using my fingers and toes.
Well, um, going to simpler concepts…24 hour time. I just can’t remember anything after 14:00. I use this one website for events and it only uses 24 hour time, and every time I use it I have to refer to a chart.
I used to carry a watch that was not only set to 24 hour time, but to GMT. When people asked me what time it was, I’d have to stare at my watch and do the math. I wonder if people thought I was just dumb.
I comprehend electricity up to a point, but once I get to semiconductors it starts being magic. Way back in school once physics got to that point the best I could do was memorize the formulas and do my best to balance out the units of measurement on the sides of the equation.
Ditto relativity theory, I’ll reread the wiki page and the simplified explanations every now and again, and for a little bit it kinda sorta makes sense, but a few months later I’m back at the old how does a stick that would normally fit in a shed, but going real fast and therefore not currently able to fit in the shed behave if you shut the shed doors dilemma.
Don’t feel bad, I’ve been working in the semiconductor industry for 20 years and I still don’t completely get it.
When people ask me to explain it to them, I’ve been reduced to: “Well, basically you take a picture of a circuit board. Reduce that picture to a very small size and then super impose that picture on a silicon wafer.”
Which is like explaining radiation as a guy with a bottomless bag of peanuts constantly throwing them in random directions.
To the OP: For me it’s history. I’ve watched countless show and read many books on the subject. But damned if I can remember any of that information.
As soon as I read the start of the OP I thought “electricity”. After having it all explained to me so many times now as soon as someone starts talking about electricity I just shut down. Robot Arm’s cats up there are just blah blah cats. I hate it but I can’t seem to stay conscious when someone is discussing electrons.
I was just saying that that’s an easy way to think of it, and I would say probably the most common permutation when it appears in popular music.