The other week a co-worker asked me, in all seriousness, if the Earth goes around the Moon or the Moon goes around the Earth. After five minutes of using one-syllable words, I was able to explain the difference between rotation and revolution. Impressed by my genius level knowledge of astronomy, she then asked me a real toughy: “But all those outer planets and moons like Neptune and Pluto- what are they for?”
:dubious:
The most charitable interpretation I could put on this query was that it was a variation of the Strong Anthropomorphic argument. My reply was two-fold: “if you’re going to have a universe with human beings in it, it’s a package deal” and “no one asked for our input”. These replies were met with approval by the way.
I then related the above story to my wife. After I confirmed that the Moon goes around the Earth and the Earth and Moon go around the Sun, she then added: “And the whole universe goes around the North Star”.
:smack:
Are you smarter than a fifth-grader indeed. Do we really want to hear the answer to that?
Heh. One evening a few years ago I happened to tell a bunch of high-school students in a hotel lobby that there was a spectacular lunar eclipse visible right then. One of the students stared at me and said, apparently in all seriousness, “But I thought you weren’t supposed to look directly at them!”
One of my fondest dreams for the renewable-energy movement (particularly the solar-power subset) is that it will get people to at least have some kind of clue again about what those shiny things in the sky are doing. Hell, if most people just get so they can tell north from south, I’ll be thrilled.
Ah, I’ve waited for 16 years to find the right time to related a story about my ex-MIL to the right crowd. We were watching a solar eclipse on TV, and she asked it the sun really disappears for a second. :rolleyes:
She was really pissed because I couldn’t stop laughing, even after she had gotten miffed at being laughed at.
The local small town newspaper interviewed me regarding a partial eclipse in the 1970’s. I told them the standards view safety requirements and such… They Used my first and last names in the Interview (I was in high school, but had just wone a national astronomy award… )
So, for weeks afterward, I got calls ranging from “During the time of the eclipse, I had the shades drawn, and buried my head under two pillows… am I gonna die”
to " Did the eclipse make my cows “go funny?”"
FML
:rolleyes: Oh no, no direct impact whatsoever. Dude, do you live 24/7/365 in a fluorescent-lit climate-controlled basement, or what?
Most of us in our “daily lives” have an opportunity to notice that sometimes it’s light outside and sometimes it’s dark, sometimes it’s cold outside and sometimes it’s warm, etc. Sometimes there are bright shiny things visible in the sky in various configurations. All of these facts are closely linked to concepts in basic physics that are fundamental to how the universe around us works.
You apparently consider it totally superfluous for people in general to have even the most rudimentary knowledge of the facts and science relating to these elementary characteristic experiences of our everyday life on earth. (Well, at least those of us who don’t live 24/7/365 in a fluorescent-lit climate-controlled basement get to experience them.) And you consider it unfair to expect that people in general should have even rudimentary knowledge of them.
Well well, how nice: another valiant defender of poor persecuted ignorance. Just what the world needs, especially around here.
Which is why we have Pit threads where we can express our annoyance at annoying things without getting all worked up about them. Useful, that, except when somebody leaves the screen door open and a threadshitter crawls in.
Oh fuck off. Many people can operate their daily lives just fine without having a knowledge of even basic astronomy. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but that’s the way things are. I dont like ignorance nor am I defending it, but my point remains that people can live a healthy life without knowing the difference between a lunar eclipse and a solar eclipse, or between Sun-Center or Earth-center astronomy.
I express a differing opinion from the OP and thus I am thread-shitting. Better get a poncho then, because I’m not going to recant.
Sure. And many people can operate their daily lives just fine without even knowing how to read. So what? Why should our desired standards for basic common knowledge be no higher than the bare minimum that people need to “operate their daily lives” in their own little subculture?
Strawman argument. Nobody here is claiming that you can’t live a healthy life without knowing such things. All we’re claiming is that an educated person in an advanced modern scientifically developed society who doesn’t know such things is laughably ignorant.
Why would you object to that? After all, you don’t like ignorance and you’re not defending it, right? So why would you care if unknown people get anonymously mocked behind their backs for being laughably ignorant?
I agree that our desired standards should be higher, but I cant help but feel that it’s mean to mock people for not knowing information such as that. Yes it’s unfortunate they aren’t as well educated as our little doper society, but I just cant agree with the ire thrown their way.
You’re right, is it laughably ignorant, but it’s ignorant in a way that hurts no-one, and the OP smacks to me of proud smarter-than-thou boasting.
To tell the truth, I’ve probably just got my panties in a bunch for other reasons and am taking them out on this thread, but whatever.
I completely agree that mocking people to their faces for not knowing such things would be totally mean, rude, and inexcusable.
But in a Pit thread on an anonymous message board? Aren’t you perhaps being a little over-sensitive on behalf of people who don’t even know they’re being mocked?
Well, proud smarter-than-thou boasting is the lifeblood of the Straight Dope, you know. But seriously, I can’t quite agree that this kind of ignorance “hurts no one”. I mean, we are talking the shared fundamental experiential heritage of humanity here. Seeing the cycles of day and night, the seasons, the changes in the patterns of the sky—all that is as deeply embedded in our common experience as hearing music or laughing at jokes or embracing a lover.
To have no knowledge or curiosity whatsoever about the causes of these phenomena—to look apathetically all one’s life at the world’s cycles of light and dark and warm and cold, and say “I don’t need to know anything about this, I can operate my daily life without comprehending any of it”—is a pitiable betrayal of the human capacity for wonder, reason and understanding.
Heck, even young children proverbially demand to know “why the sky is blue” and “where the sun goes at night” and “why the moon looks different”. Don’t you think it does at least a little bit of harm if the adult that they’re asking is so impoverished with regard to the accumulated stores of human discovery and wisdom that they can’t even give the right answer to such elementary questions?
There there then, I’m sorry I snapped at you. Get some sleep and feel better, tomorrow’s another diurnal rotation.
The most charitable interpretation I can put on this malapropism is that you knew the word was “Anthropic” all along, but decided to imply that the Universe is man-shaped for humorous effect. :dubious:
Petard?
I’m siding with the ignorant co-worker on this one. For myself, I have known more about the Solar System, the different kinds of stars and galaxies, and so on and so forth, than my fellow citizen, from a very tender age. At age eight I turned in a monograph on solar eclipses that my helpless teacher had to find a science-minded man teacher to check. At age eleven I lectured my classmates on the carbon-carbon fusion cycle in stars (nothing too heavy, just TV science programme level). And it’s never put a penny in my pocket or a crust on my plate, so anyone who doesn’t want to devote their time to useless abstract knowledge will never get looked at down my nose.
