- #1
MHuiq
- 3
- 0
I thought I'd let my first post be a non-physics one. It's a long one, sorry for that ;).
I wonder how often you guys run into heated arguments with non-phycists. I sometimes get a bit annoyed when another person is unable to follow my arguments.
For example some time ago I had a discussion with a friend of mine, she studies psychology. It was about free will and I was trying to make a point that hypothetically one could say we don't have free will. I tried making her understand the idea that if we would be able to know all forces and positions of the particles we could calculate the future and so therefore it was already laid out for us. (Off course ignoring Quantum Physics to ease the discussion.)
However! The only argument I got back from her was: "If you want to change, your brain changes in structure eventually and that is measurable by MRI." So off course I answered that also those changes in your brain are already laid down in the physics and are inevitable (hypothetically), but she again responded, "no that can't be true since I learned otherwise at my studies. If you want to change, you're brain changes too so the initial structure is not laid down. So you have free will." It kind of continued from thereon until I was annoyed and she was too.
The funniest thing I once heard from another psychology student was: "You can't apply statistics to individuals!" So I asked, "So if 90% of the workers in a factory has little education, then if I take one individual out of the group there must be 90% chance that this individual has little education." I got the response: "You are wrong, you can ask your statistics professor, this is what I learned and I studied really hard for the statistics exam. You can't apply statistics to individuals." (Off course she was confusing a whole different thing here. I guess she learned you can't say someone has 90% Alzheimer, but a 90% chance of developing it and even then the person will eventually have it or not. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that when you consider a group you don't know the individual differences so that some in the group will develop Alzheimer for sure and some will not.)
I've run into these kind of discussions more often and while these examples are not of particular importance to everyday life some of them are and I can be amazed how weird and sometimes frustrating the logic of some non-physicists/mathematicians can be. (Don't even ask me about the time I had a discussion with a theology student.)
Does this sound familiar to you guys, or am I just too stubborn to even try haha? It's just that I sometimes am bazzled by the way people think, even if they are otherwise smart individuals. The girl from the last example has an IQ over 130 apparently. But then again, psychologists invented that too.
(And if I seem arrogant, well.., I will admit I have had plenty of good and valuable discussions with similar people too.)
I wonder how often you guys run into heated arguments with non-phycists. I sometimes get a bit annoyed when another person is unable to follow my arguments.
For example some time ago I had a discussion with a friend of mine, she studies psychology. It was about free will and I was trying to make a point that hypothetically one could say we don't have free will. I tried making her understand the idea that if we would be able to know all forces and positions of the particles we could calculate the future and so therefore it was already laid out for us. (Off course ignoring Quantum Physics to ease the discussion.)
However! The only argument I got back from her was: "If you want to change, your brain changes in structure eventually and that is measurable by MRI." So off course I answered that also those changes in your brain are already laid down in the physics and are inevitable (hypothetically), but she again responded, "no that can't be true since I learned otherwise at my studies. If you want to change, you're brain changes too so the initial structure is not laid down. So you have free will." It kind of continued from thereon until I was annoyed and she was too.
The funniest thing I once heard from another psychology student was: "You can't apply statistics to individuals!" So I asked, "So if 90% of the workers in a factory has little education, then if I take one individual out of the group there must be 90% chance that this individual has little education." I got the response: "You are wrong, you can ask your statistics professor, this is what I learned and I studied really hard for the statistics exam. You can't apply statistics to individuals." (Off course she was confusing a whole different thing here. I guess she learned you can't say someone has 90% Alzheimer, but a 90% chance of developing it and even then the person will eventually have it or not. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that when you consider a group you don't know the individual differences so that some in the group will develop Alzheimer for sure and some will not.)
I've run into these kind of discussions more often and while these examples are not of particular importance to everyday life some of them are and I can be amazed how weird and sometimes frustrating the logic of some non-physicists/mathematicians can be. (Don't even ask me about the time I had a discussion with a theology student.)
Does this sound familiar to you guys, or am I just too stubborn to even try haha? It's just that I sometimes am bazzled by the way people think, even if they are otherwise smart individuals. The girl from the last example has an IQ over 130 apparently. But then again, psychologists invented that too.
(And if I seem arrogant, well.., I will admit I have had plenty of good and valuable discussions with similar people too.)
Last edited: