5 ms·

I'm rather shocked at the fairly visceral reactions a lot of people are having here. This is pretty classic conversational shenanigans. We had a blast with this

I'm rather shocked at the fairly visceral reactions a lot of people are having here. This is pretty classic conversational shenanigans. We had a blast with this in college; either you play along or counter with something equally preposterous or unprovable. Looking up the answer is cheating. It's like a game of verbal Calvin Ball or Mornington Crescent. As noted elsewhere in this thread (edit: at least one level up it seems (I got lost, apparently)), the goal is to specifically not make it win/lose, since that ends the game and is boring. Or, if you know your friends well enough to guess what they're going to say, it's the art of picking the third or fourth dialog choice from the top, Monkey Island style. And if you're really friends, they'll do the same and it'll work. And then there was the other side, where you tried to derive the answer. One of my favorites was attempting to determine if you could neglect the earth's core in modeling gravity; ferocious debate for an hour and a half by a dozen engineers. Best lunch ever. Really, this is more about people being boring. Jumping immediately to the obvious instead of enjoying a meandering argumentative stroll. It's a way to play. Simple as that. Otherwise you're just the adult saying, "that's not lava, that's carpet." Killjoy is the word, I think. Edit: Ah, here we go: Mornington Crescent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjOsOB4erZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjOsOB4erZI

Evolved 12y ago
Would this qualify as well? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68VXKMZT1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68VXKMZT1Q I think you nailed it with the shenanigans reference. So long as it doesn't cross the border into inappropriateness or blatant insults it's just lighthearted humor to break the ice or stimulate conversation. After all, if we wanted boring robots to talk to there's always SmarterChild.
maxerickson 12y ago
I realize you may have omitted some nuance, but to me, "debating" whether you have to consider the entirety of a mass when modeling gravity sounds incredibly boring. If you use 9.8 m/s*s you are papering over all the nuance, and otherwise 2 masses and a distance is pretty obviously fundamental. Was the real conversation better than that?
- HCIdivision17 12y ago
  Oh, it was a meandering conversation. Really, it revolved around what the implications were if one neglected the core such that it was a valid premise. How would you torture a model of the earth to allow a person to compensate for not bothering to keep track of the core in a model? Gravity is the most obvious start, which you can get away with some perverse shell geometries (which has the added benefit of ruining the shape of the planet). And there's all manner of heat and magnetics (I think we largely assumed those were also neglectable, which in retrospect is poor planning due to solar wind). It wandered like that. It was a direct result of our introduction to modeling in the early core engineering courses. Wherein we abuse the power of deciding what gets into the model. (It all started with one person noting that we frequently neglect gravity in electrical engineering.)

Evolved 12y ago

Would this qualify as well? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68VXKMZT1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f68VXKMZT1Q I think you nailed it with the shenanigans reference. So long as it doesn't cross the border into inappropriateness or blatant insults it's just lighthearted humor to break the ice or stimulate conversation. After all, if we wanted boring robots to talk to there's always SmarterChild.

maxerickson 12y ago

I realize you may have omitted some nuance, but to me, "debating" whether you have to consider the entirety of a mass when modeling gravity sounds incredibly boring. If you use 9.8 m/s*s you are papering over all the nuance, and otherwise 2 masses and a distance is pretty obviously fundamental. Was the real conversation better than that?

HCIdivision17 12y ago
Oh, it was a meandering conversation. Really, it revolved around what the implications were if one neglected the core such that it was a valid premise. How would you torture a model of the earth to allow a person to compensate for not bothering to keep track of the core in a model? Gravity is the most obvious start, which you can get away with some perverse shell geometries (which has the added benefit of ruining the shape of the planet). And there's all manner of heat and magnetics (I think we largely assumed those were also neglectable, which in retrospect is poor planning due to solar wind). It wandered like that. It was a direct result of our introduction to modeling in the early core engineering courses. Wherein we abuse the power of deciding what gets into the model. (It all started with one person noting that we frequently neglect gravity in electrical engineering.)