Xkcd dating pool equation
28-Oct-2020 01:39
Isn’t it great that there’s nothing wrong with this? ’ Then you take a sharp knife and take his manhood and hold it in front of him and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be something if [there] was something wrong with this?
There’s a tradition at least as old as Kant of investigating philosophical dilemmas by appealing to our intuitions about extreme cases.
The perversity is “Sure, this principle works in all remotely plausible real-world situations, but WHAT IF THERE’S A COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS SCENARIO WHERE IT DOESN’T HOLD??!?!
” Newton’s theory of gravity explained everything from falling apples to the orbits of the planets impeccably for centuries, and then Einstein asked “Okay, but what if, when you get objects thousands of times larger than the Earth, there are tiny discrepancies in it, then we’d have to throw the whole thing out,” and instead of running him out of town on a rail scientists celebrated his genius.
Everything in the universe has been exerting a gravitational effect on light all the time, but if you want to see it clearly you need to use the Sun during a solar eclipse, and if you really want to see it clearly your best bet is a black hole.
Great physicists and great philosophers share a certain perversity. Weed-smoking drug dealers rolling across Eurasia in a cannabis-induced haze?