3 ms·
I think you are the problem. Don't lie. Ever.
by sanxiyn 5y ago
I think you are the problem. Don't lie. Ever.
- Retric 5y agoLies of omission are unavoidable when talking to a general audience about any deep scientific or technical issue. A physicist actually explaining Magnetism takes years. If a PHD gives you a short answer their simply lying to you. For example, no ferromagnetic materials aren’t simply all atoms arranged in a specific fashion that’s a monumental simplification.
- Breazy 5y agoAn omission really only becomes a lie of omission if somebody would feel deceived upon learning of the omission. Nobody would reasonably feel deceived by your omission of the 0.000000001% cosmic ray hypothesis.
- generalizations 5y agoThere's a pretty stark difference. The PhD would retain their credibility if someone explained the difference between the short answer and the complete answer. But that weather dude will lose his credibility, because his audience will feel deceived, not educated.
- Retric 5y agoI have gotten the short answer and a significantly longer answer from a climatologist. The short answer while wrong still seemed like a reasonable summery and quite understated. I can’t say if the full answer would change my opinion, but it seems unlikely.
- labster 5y agoThis exactly. After a year of high school physics and a year of mechanics and electrodynamics, they finally get around to telling you: that was kind of all lies, here’s relativity. And then a month later they do it again for quantum, and finally admit they don’t know what is really going on. But Newtonian mechanics is useful!
- _y5hn 5y agoThey should state the truth in first year: We have absolutely no final answers for you, and these years will soon be forgotten. You'll earn more earlier taking any job now. Education is overrated in business anyway.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Retric 5y agoI think we can reasonably treat collage students as adults capable of making informed decisions. Most people failing to finish the physics PHD end up in reasonable places, it’s hardly the trap most people getting a 200,000+$ history degree would be in.
- naasking 5y agoSimplified models are not lies, they are true within a defined domain of discourse. That's not what you were describing.
- bottled_poe 5y agoWhen the message needs to be reduced to a headline in order to get seen, you’ll never pack the whole truth into it.