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To me that sentence doesn’t mean “the scientist didn’t know Mars was probably red”, but rather means “the scientist didn’t pick red to try and color match Mars,
by ncallaway 4y ago
To me that sentence doesn’t mean “the scientist didn’t know Mars was probably red”, but rather means “the scientist didn’t pick red to try and color match Mars, but for a different reason”
- osigurdson 4y agoIt seems unlikely to me. I get that he wanted to do greyscale since that is all of the information that the sensors provided. However, picking a non-red colour set, knowing that the planet is red is absurd.
- ncallaway 4y agoEh, maybe? We can’t reach into his mind. I really don’t see a motivation for them to lie in this particular context (literally no one would be mad if they said “we choose red markers because we thought Mars was probably red”). And I can understand being in a frantic state of mind to decode the first image of Mars as fast as possible, and the conscious consideration of the color set just not coming up. That sounds perfectly plausible to me. If that story is true, I’d also be pretty inclined to believe they were subconsciously influenced to pick a red color, even while hurrying. So, I don’t think it’s a total coincidence, but nothing about the story sounds particularly far fetched to me.
- osigurdson 4y ago>> Eh, maybe? We can’t reach into his mind. No, but it is possible to question a statement in an article.
- ncallaway 4y agoRight, which is what the rest of my comment is about.