It occured to me that there are a few subjects where popular knowledge tends to way, way off-base. Let’s list them:
The Middle Ages were not a particularly bad time to be alive. Most of what we “know” about the Middle Ages was defamatory bullshit created by Renaissance-era writers, who in many cases were purposefully trying to portray earlier times in the worst possible light.
“The Wild West” is almost entirely a myth. It wasn’t lawless. Your life was in far more danger in any of the big cities in the Northeast than it was in a frontier town. Men didn’t wear “cowboy hats.” If you look at old photos, almost everyone is wearing a derby hat. Most frontier towns actually had rather strict gun control laws, and when people did get shot, they were usually shot in the back. The Gunfight at the OK Corral was famous because it was such an atypical event.
What other subjects can Dopers add where what the average persons “knows” tends to be highly innacurate?
A lot of people think being gay is “genetically determined” at conception. It’s not, it’s really more “epi-genetic” and is hugely influenced by the hormonal environment the mother’s womb at fairly specific and narrow time windows during the fetal development cycle. It’s actually a big roll of the dice even after conception.
Re daily calories for adults -
A lot of online resources telling you how many daily calories you need for given activity levels are way off in terms of being too high for overweight people. A lot of overweight people especially middle aged and older, even with moderate activity need only 10-11 daily calories per lb of body weight to maintain a given weight not the 12-14 you commonly see cited.
I think it’s actually pretty common knowledge that crime rates in general are falling in most western countries. I certainly don’t know anyone who claims otherwise.
I’m surprised how common this one is with guys who actually know a lot about computers: “Dell makes good laptops” (this goes for most brands)
Most laptop brands are just that, brands, and they contract out various designers and manufacturers. Its kinda like Abercrombie, or maybe Nike clothing. The name doesn’t really mean anything.
HP, Dell, Acer and Toshiba contract out some of the same manufacturers, the big ones are Wistron, Compal and Quanta.
Haha, I was thinking about LGBT stuff, but I didn’t want to get all political, but since you posted:
People saying that being LGBT isn’t a choice and thinking that they’re validating homosexuality. (I’m not criticizing you astro) It just kinda implies that if one DID have a choice, they obviously wouldn’t choose to be gay. :smack:
I guess that’s kinda a matter of opinion. I think people should be able to choose… and I don’t really like the idea of “mom, I think I’m gay…” “woah honey well don’t do anything drastic, let’s go get you tested”
also… people seem to think you can tell if someone is transsexual by looking, which isn’t generally true.
What the average person believes about statistics is pretty far off what’s actually true. It doesn’t help that we teach introductory classes as collections of polite fiction…
Being a cowboy was not a prestigious job. It was the equivalent of digging ditches - hard physical grunt labor with long hours and low pay.
As a result of the above, it wasn’t a popular job and the people who were hired were often at the bottom of the social order - blacks, Mexicans, and immigrants.
And it wasn’t a common job. There were more miners in the old west than cowboys. And the most common job in the old west was being a farmer.
The idea that evolution has a direction; such as the idea that evolution means everything getting “better”, and that there’s some end goal to it. The related idea that we are “more evolved” than other animals, and that predators are more evolved than herbivores or for that matter parasites/plants.
If by “men” you mean the average banker, bartender, or clerk, you’re quite right. Cowboys did, indeed, wear “cowboy hats,” although if they had a formal portrait done they were likely to find a more formal style. I have numerous photos of cowboys wearing Stetson hats from the 1890s on.
Quite true, although being a rancher was. As the old saying goes, every woman thinks she wants a cowboy. When she gets one, she realizes she really wanted a rancher.
Every question in that poll is based on how people feel, not on what they’ve actually experienced or even what someone they know has experienced. So what it quantifies is not the actual crime rate, but how scared people are by crime. It has absolutely no relevance in a discussion of how much crime is actually taking place.
But it’s not a discussion about how much crime is actually taking place. It’s a discussion about how much crime people think is taking place vs. how much is actually taking place. That is, the thread is about common misconceptions. The data show what people think, which runs counter to reality.
Until a few years ago, I thought chiropractors were just “back doctors”, that the spine really does need to be realigned periodically, et cetera. Pretty much everything about that is wrong, but I think it’s a common belief around here.
Unfortunately there’s no short version, and it gets quickly into some open questions. I wish I had a better explanation for the layperson, but I think it’s going to take the field a while to get there.