What's something you believed to be true but recently learned is actually false?
What's something you believed to be true but recently learned is actually false?
109 comments
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Not recently, but when I was in High School, we were taught that Shakespeare's plays weren't written down until later. They were cobbled together from people who could remember the lines and wrote them down later.
When I went to college I learned a) not even remotely true and b) High School is basically bullshit to keep you busy until you go to college.
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I hear people say the phrase “it’s high school biology” a lot. Yeah, high school biology is simplified to the point of being just plain wrong.
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I remember doing really well in high school chemistry. I learned all about the electrons orbiting the nucleous. I take chemistry in university and am immediately told that's an outdated model from the 1900s nobody uses. Why the fuck did I study it then? Because quantum physics is complicated? So you just teach the wrong thing because the actual truth is complicated?? It's really no wonder people have no scientific literacy when high schools explain how the world works like nobody has discovered anything new since 1913.
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I sheepishly left a class on Shakespeare I signed up for in college because it became immediately apparent that my high school classes on the same subject did not actually prepare me for the next level and I felt like a complete fucking idiot just listening to the lecture.
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Probably a jumbled up recollection of the pirated plays people would scribble down to sell to printers or to competing theatre companies.
The First Folio and other "good" sources were probably not directly from Shakespeare's drafts either, but from revised working scripts that the King's Men had around. Still a vast jump from there to "weren't written down until later."
In general, there's a lot of needless mystery and "bardolatry" surrounding Shakespeare, when in fact he was reasonably well documented for a commoner, has had every single scrap of evidence for his life and career scoured over a dozen times, had works of uneven quality, and most of what's unique about him jibes perfectly well with a half-educated prodigy coming in from the country and working in a milieu that was kind of edgy and open to experimentation.
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Maybe the thought was that even Shakespeare took themes and plots from earlier work and even from stories that come from oral traditions?
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I used to believe that common sense existed. You know, the usual stuff, like water is hot and fire is wet...
But then it occurred to me a few years ago, that what people believe to be 'common sense' are actually the things that nobody bothers to teach the next generation.
Meaning that common sense is only as common as one's elders teach you. So when the elders assume that you automatically know certain things, they won't bother teaching you.
Hence, common sense does not exist.
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One of the most difficult things to learn about past societies is how the average person lived, because nobody would actually write that down.
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It's happening again too. Gen X, boomers, and late millennials grew up thinking the young had a natural talent for computers, so they cut funding to typing and computer classes. Turns out we (the older tech talented folks) grew up with tech and were taught along the way with how to type and how to use computers.
Kids however are growing up on ipads, with UIs specifically designed to be easy to use. They're going into college not knowing how to type, how to make a PowerPoint, or even how to navigate a directory structure. Everyone assumed it was now common knowledge and it's setting them up for failure
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So true. I do a bit of teaching and kids have recently lost all computer skills I thought was basic.
"Where's my work gone?"
"Where did you save it?"
"What do you mean?"
"At the end of last lesson, show me exactly what you did"
"I clicked the X here, then clicked ok"
He clicked OK to the "do you want to close this document without saving?" box. He is 19. I had to give a really detailed lesson on how to save something to not only him, but half the students I taught this year.
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Would you say that common sense changes with the generations? What was once common is no longer, and what was uncommon becomes common?
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Besides all of what you said being wrong...
You think "a few years ago" is recent?
"Common sense" literally just means stuff most people are likely to know.
It used to be common sense to not sneak up behind a horse in the dark. But most people today have no idea why that could literally cost you your life, unless if they watched GoT or something and remember what happened to Hodor.
If horses were still everywhere, it would still be common sense. Because common sense stuff didn't need to be taught. An average person would have learned that by a certain age regardless of if anyone ever tried to teach them.
Either they'd have been kicked by a horse, or they'd have seen/heard of a person being kicked.
Most of the time when I see people make the complaint you just did, it's because they're older and don't understand information that was important for them, is no longer important for the next generation.
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“Common sense” literally just means stuff most people are likely to know.
Here's the problem, who are "most people"? Have you surveyed whatever group you pick?
"Common sense" is more often than not just whatever your personal bias of "obvious" information is.
For people in my general circles it's "common sense" to use a password manager, git, etc. For plenty of people they'll just give a glazed over quizzical look/not even know what I'm talking about.
So as to say, common sense exists in some sense, but it doesn't "exist" in the meaningful way many people would like it to.
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I think you've misunderstood the comment you replied to. You're agreeing.
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I always thought peanuts were nuts and grew on trees. Oh how utterly, devastatingly naive I've been...
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Yeah, I mean can you imagine what squirrels would do to peanut trees? They’d mess them up. Squirrels are basically tiny chimpanzees.
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I had to look it up.
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Mosquito hawks don't eat mosquitos or larvae or do anything against mosquitos.
It always seemed odd since they fly like they're drunk but I figured mosquitos aren't much stronger fliers so maybe they're just 'good enough' to catch mosquitos. Nope- it's just a dumb name for a crane fly. I always gave them room even when they bothered me because I figured they're doing good work eating the enemy, but now I know they're not allies I swat them like any other pest.
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I used to believe narwhals were a fake internet cryptid, but no, real ass aquatic mammal.
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Great, now I have to think about unicorns, dragons, and giraffes as cryptids.
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hahah wait, wait a minute....
.....dragons too ??
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hahah wait, wait a minute....
.....dragons too ??
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I was always told that the reason you used to see an Olive Garden next to every Red Lobster is because a husband/wife couple owned both chains and wanted the restaurants placed next to each other. Then a decade ago when they kinda stopped doing that it was because they divorced.
I can’t find a single piece of evidence that supports this claim online. The two restaurants were just owned by the same parent company and Red Lobster got sold off in 2014.
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They're franchised so that could have been true for the town or region you were in 🤷♂️
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Something like that happened in my town. A husband and wife owned two Chinese buffets across town from one another both called Hong Kong. They divorced and each kept one, but the husband renamed his Blue Fin. Blue Fin shut down about a year later but that other Hong Kong is going strong.
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We had that in my town with Walgreens and Osco Drug. You'd literally see them across the street from each other, and you'd rarely see a Walgreens without its Osco... Then suddenly all the Oscos went out of business and were gone forever. It's kinda amusing whenever I visit the old home town, because there are multiple buildings that still look like no one has taken the buildings over after almost two decades cuz you can still see the outline of the old Osco signs.
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Huh, I always assumed it was just because they target the exact same people. The only differentiator is pasta or seafood, in my mind.
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This is it. Modern planners use GIS and data analytics to place new stores. In my region Publix and Starbucks are a common thing and usually going for similar demographics, so it's not unusual to often see them in the same shopping plaza. Similarly dollar stores, Walmarts, and Dunkin' Donuts always seem to find a place in the same neighborhoods too (in my experience). Those Dollar & Dunkin' neighborhoods almost never have a decent grocery either.
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Oh there's a lot.
- When I was a kid, parents and teachers used to teach, if you have sore muscles a day after an extensive workout, you need to work out even more in order to reduce the soreness. In fact, however, you need to rest those muscles.
- I thought, pepperoni was pepper. (Like bell pepper, just smaller; similar to chilli). Then my girlfriend enlightened me after a confusing conversation, that pepperoni was a kind of salami. And then recently, at a company event before ordering pizza and after a very confusing discussion of what toppings we order, it turned out pepperoni was actually a kind of a salami, but not everyone agreed. So by now I've learned that pepperoni is neither of them. It doesn't exist. It's listed on pizza menus, and when you order it, you'll get something for sure, but you won't know in advance what it would be.
- This isn't new, the realization was several years ago, but fits this list nicely: I thought, perfume was something for women. It turned out, there was perfume for men too.
- Parents used to teach, if you read in the dark (on paper, not on a screen, I must add), you're ruining your eyes. But if you think about it: wtf does low light do to your eyes? By that logic, you're constantly ruining your eyes while sleeping.
- For some reason I used to think, you could simply delete related entities bound by foreign key constraints in postgres, if you ran the query in a transaction. Once when I finally needed to do this, I learned the hard way I was wrong.
There's a lot more than this, probably I'll update this comment in the future. Or not.
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I love how this comment covers super common misconceptions, but then throws a super specific database issue in at the end. Gotta have that cascade on delete, unless you want orphans.
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Or nullable FK , with on delete set null.
Or have a default value for the FK, and on delete set default.
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Parents used to teach, if you read in the dark (on paper, not on a screen, I must add), you’re ruining your eyes. But if you think about it: wtf does low light do to your eyes? By that logic, you’re constantly ruining your eyes while sleeping.
The theory is that frequently straining your eyes is an issue, so reading in conditions that are difficult to see in will weaken them, not that dark itself hurts your eyes.
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That was just a theory from coincidence but in reality we figured out that we need ir from the sunlight outside to tell our eyeballs to stop elongating as people grow.
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When I was a kid, parents and teachers used to teach, if you have sore muscles a day after an extensive workout, you need to work out even more in order to reduce the soreness. In fact, however, you need to rest those muscles.
Strained muscles need rest but when starting a new workout routine it's common to experience Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) the next day which you can relieve with light exercise.
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Pepperoni (double p) is a type of salami in my view, but TIL that peperoni (single p) are a type of sweet pepper. I knew that peperoncini are a type of hot pepper.
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how about actual italians don't know what the fuck pepperoni is. they have pizza salami, but that weird red sausage is not something you'll find in Italy
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That vapes cause popcorn lung. Only specific vape juice that isn't sold anymore or hard cbd oil in a vape caused popcorn lung.
That isn't to say vaping is good for you. It just doesn't cause popcorn lung
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Small correction: Vape juice ingredient, Diacetyl. It was in many different flavor components, and a juice can have five, six, eight components. It’s mostly in cream, custard, and butter flavors.
Source: Ecig juice maker for a decade
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Additionally, the whole popcorn lung scare was fear mongering at its best. Popcorn lung is called that because people who worked in popcorn factories used to get it after years of breathing in diacetyl for 40+ hours a week which was an ingredient used in the butter flavoring for popcorn. On top of that, traditional cigarettes contain diacetyl as well, at way higher levels than e cigarettes ever did, but you never heard of a smoker getting popcorn lung.
I'm not saying that vaping is harmless, it certainly is too early to know if there are any long term effects, but as of right now the only negative impact they can truthfully say is that e cigarettes cause anxiety as if anxiety among the general public isn't at an all time high anyway.
There was a huge smear campaign against a potential life saving device because big tobacco started losing boat loads of money. Pretty fucked.
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Are you aware of any actual cases of it?
It's probably really hard to detect popcorn lung in ex-smokers (a significant demographic of vapers) amongst the wide array of damage that smoking caused to their lungs.
Did you ever figure out if the amount of diacetyls in vape juice was comparable to LD50s of diacetyls?I vaped at the time of this all breaking, and remember trying to figure out how bad it all actually was. Or if it was a bit of "this could be better" that got blown out of proportion by ignorance and media hype.
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I used to believe business could claim tax breaks for the money we contribute when they ask "Do you want to donate to XYZ cause?"
I learned today about how businesses can't actually claim point-of-sale charitable donations that show on a receipt for a tax write-off. Also, I learned about how no one can claim tax write-off for cash donations into a charity jar.
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So I was just being a greedy asshole this whole time?
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Only you can decide that for yourself. I still donate money to causes I believe in, just not to one's thrust upon me at the checkout. I'm not a fan of guiltlanthropy.
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NaN == NaN
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Not every Corner Bakery is, in fact, located at a corner
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That I was the only idiot around. My, how wrong I was!
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Allowing a Pokémon to evolve earlier results in a stronger 'mon at the end.
I thought that was to balance the faster level gain and learning of moves, but no. The only consideration to letting a Pokémon evolve is "will it learn the move I want". I was corrected yesterday.
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It’s pronounced offen with a silent T. You may think you sound smarter with a hard T, but you’re ignoring the root etymology of the word.
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you’re ignoring the root etymology of the word
Thousands of times a day for me, you don't know the haff of it.
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The word has always had a t sound since Old English, and it's part of the reconstructed language Proto-Germanic in the form *ufta. Every other Germanic language displays a t in the corresponding word:
Scots oftin (“often”), North Frisian oftem (“often”), Saterland Frisian oafte (“often”), German oft (“often”), Pennsylvania German oft (“often”), Danish ofte (“often”), Norwegian Bokmål ofte (“often”), Norwegian Nynorsk ofte (“often”), Swedish ofta (“often”), and Icelandic oft (“often”).
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So, the dictionary is not a gold-standard.
It is, in fact, the opposite and in very simplified terms, just a book of how people currently pronounce words and their meaning today. Think of it more as a record book for the time it was printed, rather than a rule book; living languages are funny like that.
If you would like to know more, I highly recommend Word by Word written by Kory Stamper, one of the editors for the Merriam-Websters Dictionary.
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That's how I feel about helicopter!
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You and J live in a bubble in a hyperloop tunnel. You have not invented “oft” as part of any language yet. Or do You and K live in the anthro and say oof… and laugh every time someone trips on a coconut often enough it becomes mean? Either is possible, yet oft misunderstood.
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The earth is flat. I learn this because I read some book called discworld
109 comments