Damn your misconceptions!

[hobbsyoyo]

Alright let's talk about common pop-culture misconceptions or outright lies that really grind our gears. It's damn near impossible to stop a deep-rooted misconception once it's taken root, but let's show the ingrates THE ONE TRUE TRUTH.

Here's one that needs to die in a fire:

You only use 15% of your brain.

It pops up all of the darn time and I'm pretty sure it got traction after being mentioned in, or even being the premise of, some movies. People repeat things they hear in film as god's perfect truth and it's very frustrating. I know this was in the movie Inception and I'm sure it's been in plenty of others. I am not sure where it originated from, but it's an idea that certainly has a life of its own. Let's examine why it's something that only people who actually use only 15% of their brain should believe:

1) Think of the evolutionary costs! Our brain is a massive calorie hog. It uses, if I recall correctly, something like a third of the average person's caloric intake just to maintain. Why would we develop something at such great cost if 85% of it is never used or redundant?

2) Why do people with traumatic brain injuries often suffer from some sort of mental handicap? Surely the other '85%' can pick up the slack. Right!?

3) You should doubt everything you see in a fictional movie just as a matter of course.

4) Name one case where someone actually tapped into the 'hidden 85%' and developed super powers. Just one please.

5) If this were true, why is it that in this age of boner pills don't we have researchers racing to find some way to tap into the '85%'? Sure, there are pills that some research suggests can improve cognitive function in ordinary people but as far as I know you never hear of genuine attempts to tap into the useless chunks of gray matter.

6) Why is Alzheimer's a thing? See 2).

7) Even if we had an untapped well-spring of mental ability, why is it that this also means that we have innate, physics-defying abilities like telekinesis if we could only use our whole brain? Is the other '85%' made out of unobtanium or something?

8) Why would God bless his most perfect creation with so much dead weight in untapped potential? We're made in his image, right? So does that mean God could only violate light-speed if he were using his whole head? Could he show us the secret of the hyper-cube if only he could tap into the fullness of that sweet baby Jesus noggin of his?

9) I'm sorry, but no matter how hard you try you're never going to tap into power I don't have. Sorry to burst your bubble, but even the smartest people aren't 85% smarter than the rest of us and if you believe this falsehood, you aren't one of the smart ones to begin with.

10)

If he can't lift a brick with his mind then no one can.

_________

I actually had a friend who believed this and we had a bitter argument over it. What's really funny is that after that he went home and while he was sleeping, the hidden 85% of his brain must have kicked in and convinced him not only was I right, but also erased memory of every having believed this misconception to begin with. The next time it came up (we saw it in a movie we were watching) he laughed about how stupid people that think this is true are and denied ever having agreed with them.

 

[sophie]

Uhh...a lot of assorted baseball Things.

"Elizabeth I was a good queen" is one that commonly gets me.

Mischaracterizations or generalizations about a "nation"'s "historical character". For example the old "Britannia ruled the waves and always has" trope.

Pretty much anything having to do with "civilization", and especially civilization as opposed to "barbarism"

 

[Kyriakos]

_________

I actually had a friend who believed this and we had a bitter argument over it. What's really funny is that after that he went home and while he was sleeping, the hidden 85% of his brain must have kicked in and convinced him not only was I right, but also erased memory of every having believed this misconception to begin with. The next time it came up (we saw it in a movie we were watching) he laughed about how stupid people that think this is true and denied ever having agreed with them.

Well, i guess you could say, that sounds like a misconception to me.

Spoiler :

 

[AlpsStranger]

Link to video.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Uhh...a lot of assorted baseball Things.

"Elizabeth I was a good queen" is one that commonly gets me.

Mischaracterizations or generalizations about a "nation"'s "historical character". For example the old "Britannia ruled the waves and always has" trope.

Could you explain how some of them are wrong for me?

Well, i guess you could say, that sounds like a misconception to me.

Spoiler :

More like an inception. wut?

 

[Kaitzilla]

The 5 second rule really grinds my gears.

Have you seen some peoples' floors?



If you drop something on the ground you do NOT have a small time window to simply pick it up and have it be ok.

 

[sophie]

Could you explain how some of them are wrong for me?

Which ones? The baseball ones or the historical ones?

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Let's get a lot of these out of the way. This should be required reading before posting in a thread about the theory of evolution.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Which ones? The baseball ones or the historical ones?

Both. Whatever suits your fancy. You don't have to do a 10 point write up but I would like to know a bit about what grinds your gears mang.

Let's get a lot of these out of the way. This should be required reading before posting in a thread about the theory of evolution.

Can you summarize maybe?
Argh I guess I'll give it look-see.
Edit: Oh yeah, TV tropes are fun. Any favorites?

Link to video.

Japs use magicks, duh.

That was actually a very good video.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Japs use magicks, duh

Wow that was pretty racist of me. I should have said:

Japs use Shinto magicks, duh

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Can you summarize maybe?

No.

Spoiler :

It's really more to jumpstart discussion. Even I don't remember all of these points, but someone might be able to speak more about particular ones.

Any favorites?

Already linked to the evolution ones. Those would really cut down on a lot of the posts I see in related threads here.

 

[warpus]

- That Columbus proved or was trying to prove that the Earth was round. There was nothing to prove - it was known at the time that the Earth was round. Yet it seems like schools continue to teach this, for some reason.

- Vikings did not wear helmets with horns on them.

- Napoleon was slightly taller than the average height at the time.

 

[Kaitzilla]

George W. Bush wasn't actually stupid.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2013/04/25/george-w-bush-is-smarter-than-you/

 

[hobbsyoyo]

George W. Bush wasn't actually stupid.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2013/04/25/george-w-bush-is-smarter-than-you/

That was a good read.

He was still a draft-dodging drunk though.

 

[Kaitzilla]

That was a good read.

He was still a draft-dodging drunk though.

And the advisors he picked all tended to be Lawful Evil.

 

[Formaldehyde]

George W. Bush wasn't actually stupid.

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2013/04/25/george-w-bush-is-smarter-than-you/

But he went through life acting like he was. So what is the difference?

 

[Kaitzilla]

But he went through life acting like he was. So what is the difference?

Well, it was a poker technique to make people misunderestimate him.

Sort of like Joe Biden.



... Oh, I see your point.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Link to video.

Nooo!!!!

I had katanas right up there with lightsabres.


Your kill'n meh dream

 

[AlpsStranger]

When you have really nerdy stupid D&D friends and used to get in a lot of arguments about "making the Katana's stats more 'realistic' compared to longswords" you tend to find the topic unusually amusing.

"Katanas should totes get double attacks and do 2d20 damage guys! They used to cripple tanks with them in WW2!"

 

[sophie]

Both. Whatever suits your fancy. You don't have to do a 10 point write up but I would like to know a bit about what grinds your gears mang.

Ok then - baseball:

People that point to AVG as a good indicator of offensive ability. AVG is heavily dependent on contextual factors like park, fielder ability and defensive positioning. There isn't a lot of correlation year-to-year and there is consequently little to no correlation between a team's batting average and a team's wins or overall offensive production. So we have a statistic that doesn't really tell you anything about a hitters ability (and can even be misleading in some a lot of cases) and yet it is used as the primary evaluation of a batter's talent.

Broadcasters/fans that view walks as a bad thing for batters (or an acceptable thing for pitchers). This one has two sides. First you'll get broadcasters who view a guy drawing a walk in certain situations as a failure for the team, and a black spot on the hitter for being "unclutch" or "unproductive". A walk always increases the odds of a team scoring runs, and consequently the odds of that team winning. There is never a situation in which a batter drawing a walk is actively detrimental to that team. On the other side of the coin you have broadcasters saying "He doesn't have to give in to that guy/he has an empty base to play around with". This is a particularly irritating one. Again, there is maybe 1 situation in a thousand where walking a guy decreases run expectancy (and that situation was named Barry Bonds).

Any generalized attempt to ascribe simple narrative solutions to players. This is part of a larger problem of baseball in general and statistics in specific. A lot of baseball fans fall into confirmation bias. To give an example, this is happening right now with Brandon Belt on the SF Giants. He's been an above average productive hitter for the Giants this year. But two weeks ago he fell into a 3-game slump. He was summarily benched for really, no reason at all. Then after 3 games he was put back into the starting lineup, and, surprise surprise, he starts producing to his talent level again. All of a sudden the lead is "he changed his grip and now he's a better hitter/competition for the starting job drove him to improve himself". This is confirmation bias. 3 days ago he wasn't hitting, now he is, it must have been something he did in those 3 days. This happens a lot in reaction to sabermetric principles too. A lot of this is just people not understanding how sabermetric principles work (more specifically what regression is). This also dovetails with the idea of "clutch" or "clutchiness". For example, a manager orders an intentional walk. A sabermetric fan would complain "this makes no statistical sense". A sabermetric opponent would disagree. The pitcher ends up getting out of the inning with no runs scored. The opponent turns and says "see, intentional walks work" as if that one occurrence proves anything. That stuff happens all the time from baseball broadcasters and more casual fans. It drives me up the wall!

I could go on forever. There are so many things about conventional baseball wisdom that annoy me. Pretty much everything on "Baseball Tonight", for example.

History:
Elizabeth I was a bad queen. She bankrupted her country, thoughtlessly thrust England into needless, frivolous wars in France and the Low Countries, burned more Catholics than "Bloody" Mary I burned Protestants, vacillated on religious matters, causing a lot of unneeded religious strife during her reign, completely bankrupted the country, contributing directly to the travails of James I and Charles I's reigns, she had poor taste in advisers and favorites, employing the [feces]stains Leicester and Essex. She oversaw the indiscriminate killing of the Irish, she failed to come to a decision on Mary, Queen of Scots until it nearly led to her death, and she failed to marry and bear an heir to continue the Tudor line. There was very little she did "right". But she was a Protestant and "defeated" the Spanish Armada(s) so she is blindly paraded as England's "greatest monarch".

Civilization - what the hell does it even mean? Is it settled societies? What about the Mongolians, Xiongnu and Yuezhi? Is it societies with a government? What constitutes a "government"? How do you differentiate one "civilization" from another? Are the Romans and Celts separate civilizations? What constitutes "Celts", and are we including Brythonic and Gallic Celts in the same blanket group? Are the Wu and Han Chinese separate civilizations? Are the Manju Chinese or Manchurian or Asiatic or something entirely different? Are Dravidian and Hindu separate civilizations? What about 2 cultures occupying the same region at different times? Are Egyptian and Arabian separate civilizations? What about Sumerian and Babylonian? German and Holy Roman Empire? Are the Dutch a civilization? Either your definition is going to be tailor-made to fit a preconceived notion of "civilization" (read: often arbitrary definitions to fit Eurocentric ideals of "polities you like") or it's going to be so broad that it's totally useless. Often these definitions are used to differentiate from "barbarous" societies (i.e. societies you Don't Like). I don't think "Civilization vs Barbarism" debates have much of any sort of a use in history.