A cool guide of commonly believed myths
A cool guide of commonly believed myths
Iirc trees aren't a cladistic group; "tree" is a word that describes a phenotype. Bananas absolutely grow on trees because "a tree-like herb" is a tree.
Edit: adding salt to water does change the boiling point. The amount is simply not enough to be significant most of the time. Similarly, the coriolis effect does affect the movement of water in toilets, just not enough to be noticeable.
Edit2: multi-personality disorder isn't a thing. Disassociative Identity Disorder (DID) is what's being referenced.
A pretty good number of these are just pointing out differences between colloquial language and specific language.
Botanical language is useful for botanists to communicate with each other but I’m not putting tomatoes in the fruit salad. Thinking of tomatoes as veggies in your kitchen isn’t some MYTH! Calling a tall plant a tree is useful for you and I to communicate. That does not mean we are deceived or attempting to undermine the work of our botany friends.
Palm "trees" are a type of grass. That one fucks with me.
The coriolis force affects water in toilets, but about a thousandth as much as the shape of the toilet/the way water enters the bowl.
A couple of these are interesting, but for my own sanity I have to refuse to accept most are commonly believed at all. Some are myths either way, like Satan ruling Hell or not isn't real so it's kind of a strange thing to include. I think the only one that really surprised me is the banana tree one, which is some interesting trivia but is so pedantic that if someone said that to me in person I'd just want to leave the room.
The banana argument is dumb, too, because there is no taxonomic definition of what a "tree" even is.
I've also commonly heard "Palm trees aren't actually trees, they're grass," which is correct from a taxonomic standpoint but ignores the fact that "tree" isn't an official classification of anything. It's simply a term applied to any tall plant with a woody trunk, which banana definitely counts among.
Mate, I’ll be honest with you here - I grow bananas on my property and I can definitely tell you the last term I’d use to describe their trunks is ‘woody’. They’re so moisture-laden and ultra porous that anyone who’s ever had to cut or cull banana will know for sure that they’re not made of wood. You can easily carve through a 15-20cm trunk of a banana plant with a sharp machete and one strong swing - try that on anything generally considered to be a tree and you’ll be lucky to get a fair chip out of the trunk.
I’ve got no skin in the game as to whether or not they’re trees, or what the fuck a ‘tree’ even is, but anyone who’s dealt with growing bananas is pretty unlikely to consider them in the same group as woody trees. Damn things grow like weeds anyway!
Like when people say that spiders aren't bugs. Bug isn't a scientific term, it's just slang for creepy-crawlies. They usually mean that spiders aren't insects.
First one that got me was the black hole. If I dig a hole in the ground, is that not really a hole? If I find a hole in your logic is that not a hole? If I model the flow of charge with positive 'holes' between electrons, are they not holes? And... do people really commonly think a 'black hole' is a traditional sort of hole? 'Hole' seems a perfectly reasonable name for what it really is.
Now what a black hole really is is fascinating stuff, but not in a "see, people are so ignorant to think it's a hole" kind of way.
Even worse, we don't know what black holes really are.
Is there a discontinuity in spacetime? Is the discontinuity point-like or spherical, or even toroidal? Do physics even exists within? Is "within a black hole" even a reasonable concept? We don't know! We're still arguing about wether black holes can delete information from existence.
Jezus, this is bad.
So many of these are widely known and make up a misconception that doesn't exist (bananas not on trees... you don't say??)
Others are bad plays at words
(we have 5 external senses, people often leave the external part out when they talk, so what?)And then some are just weird, like the great wall of China being nature (and not visible from space, why go after a random joke from the 90's?) or how the sizes of the circles are so unnecessarily different, sometimes overlapping with the text
Just all around, this is bad
EDIT Oh, and some are even wrong (bats' vision is so bad compared to humans that they'd be legally blind; sugar gives a energy boost I'm not sure wtf the text is on about with ADHD; evolution is a theory, it just is)
The sugar one drives me nuts. Like yeah sugar doesn’t cause DSM-5 “hyperactivity”. Like of course not! It does give a little energy boost. And the rugrats will use the highly available energy and become a hilarious unmanageable dufus for a half hour or so.
If you actually thought that candy was going to give your child a diagnosable psychiatric condition… you’re a huge fucking idiot. If you haven’t ever noticed that giving a kid a bag of sour patch kids gets them riled up, you haven’t spent much time with kids.
My dog gets riled up when you give her a carrot as a treat. The kids aren't bouncing off the wall because candy gave them a bunch of energy, they are bouncing off the wall because they are excited about the treat they have received.
I don't think you understood most of those things correctly.
The graphic says the circle size is based on Google search hits, not arbitrary.
Evolution is a scientific theory, which is different than the layman's idea of a "theory".
Bats are definitely not almost blind, like most nocturnal/crepuscular animals they have fairly good night vision.
It didn't say sugar doesn't cause energy spikes, it says excessive consumption during childhood doesn't contribute to hyperactive disorders.
Your knee-jerk reaction to this post is weird. It's okay that you didn't know some of these things. You don't have to try to tear it down because it made you feel dumb.
No that's exactly my point; a lot of these headlines are about as technically (in)correct as the myths they try to debunk; evolution is a theory in the scientific sense so it is a theory, sugar causes a energy spike which people tend to call hyperactivity, different bats see in different degrees and some of them rely so much on echolocation that they see much worse than humans which technically makes them medically blind.
All of these play very heavy on the literal definition of the words. This makes a lot of these “debunked myths” moreso pedantic wordplay than they they actually debunk anything.
we have more than 5 external senses tho
The guy you’re replying to doesn’t realize this post is written for people like him, while OP doesn’t realize that dumb people who think we only have 5 senses don’t believe in science anyway.
Which are the other ones? When I try to look it up, I find 20+ senses but except for the five traditional ones they're all internal senses such as balance and hunger
EDIT I see pain, itch and pressure are separate from touch, well TIL!
evolution is a theory, it just is
I realize the person I'm replying to has no interest in the truth, but in case others are interested, read the first paragraph here to get a sense of what a scientific theory is. The myth/misunderstanding is that a scientific theory is a theory in sense 3 here. Not only is it a myth, it's a very common and very dishonest way to dismiss evolution without having to address the fact that it's a fact.
Humans and dinosaurs absolutely co-existed (e.g. chickens). The misconception is that dinosaurs are extinct.
That's only true in the cladistic sense though.
The real question is which pre-human dinosaur would be best with stuffing and gravy.
I question the salt in boiling water one. Sure it probably doesn't change the temperature or energy required but shouldn't it aid in nucleation to make the boil more bubbly?
Or are the existing impurities in most tap water such that salt doesn't add anything meaningful?
Salted water boils at a higher temp vs. unsalted water - this is known as boiling point elevation. But I don't know offhand (there's a formula) how much salt would be required to meaningfully raise the boiling point.
You would need enough salt to make a brine to noticably affect the boiling temperature. It takes about 30 grams of table salt per liter of water to raise the boiling temperature of water to 100.5 Celsius at sea level.. The only difference you would actually notice is your food is now inedible because you have used an entire restaurant table shaker of salt in your food.
If you throw it in just before it's boiling yes, you will see the water bubble up for a moment for the reason you said... once dissolved if anything at those amounts, it raises the boiling temp a little
A solution should theoretically boil at a higher point of vaporization and melt at a lower point of fusion ( becoming liquid from solid) .
MSG = headaches is actually true for many people.
"Effect of systemic monosodium glutamate (MSG) on headache and pericranial muscle sensitivity :
"We conducted a double-blinded, placebo-controlled, crossover study to investigate the occurrence of adverse effects such as headache... there was a significant increase in reports of headache..." SOURCE
In addition, if you add oil to your cooked and drained pasta, it absolutely stops it from sticking vs. not adding oil. Just don't add it to the water, as it's just wasteful.
If you look at the sources, they corrected it.
Oh, wow. I can't even see that sources are listed when using Voyager because if you swipe up to see it past the voting overlay, it closes the image.
Glad they corrected it 🤗
Saying a Jihad just means "Struggle" is like saying a Crusade is just an expedition of people marked by the cross.
Like, sure, if only translate it literally and you ignore all the historical context.
I mean not really. Greater jihad is a fully inner struggle to be a good person. Lesser jihad is about converting others, the lesser jihad of the pen/tongue is about debate and proselytizing, onky jihad of the sword is about violence and only those in active combat. For all Muslims the greater jihad is the most important part, and for 95% of Muslims the jihad of the pen is the only relavent part. In the Qur'an there are roughly 30 references to greater jihad, and 10 or so for the lesser jihad.
And most Christian Crusades are about making gay people scared, not conquering Jerusalem
The "we have more than 5 senses" insistence, while interesting, misconstrues what is typically understood as a "sense" by the average person.
When children are taught what the 5 senses are, i.e. seeing, hearing, touch, taste and smell, these are more literary senses than scientific ones. (In another vein, it's like disagreeing whether a tomato is a vegetable, fruit, or both -- scientists and cooks have different definitions!)
Proprioception, the unconscious spatial perception of your body parts, falls under "feel." Hunger and thirst do, too. I feel hungry, I feel that my leg is below me, I feel off-balance. These scientifically-defined senses fall under one literary sense or another.
Since this is just a mangling of definitions, it's almost irresponsible to call the five-senses thing a misconception. That being said, it did interest me; did you know that endolymph fluid in our ears uses its inertia to tell us what's going on when we turn our heads? ツ
It turned out Purple Aki was actually real though.