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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
>no source
>"it was thought"? cool weasel wording; who thought it?
>tiny snippet offering zero context
>and then people parrot it uncritically
This is why I hate "le epic trivia!!"-style accounts; even when they're right (and they're often not), they're intellectual junk food designed for mindlessly consuming rather than learning.
Before the first verified individual migrating birds in the 1800s (via finding storks with spears still in them after migrating to and from Africa) people had a lot of weird ideas about why birds weren’t there in the winter. “They fly so far it’s literally off any map you’ve seen” probably made as much sense to the average person as them flying to the moon, or burrowing into the mud at the bottom of ponds to hibernate.
The latter probably made the most sense to many people who lived rurally, because bank swallows (sand martins elsewhere) actually do nest in tunnels they’ve dug into the sand near bodies of water. To anyone who went without seeing one all winter and then suddenly saw one leaving a burrow in the spring, ‘it slept there all winter’ is a lot less of a leap than ‘it flew thousands of miles round trip and got back when you weren’t looking.’
The OP provided in the link under context
Such fiction became science in the 1600s, according to Harrison, and greatly influenced Morton’s theory of the moon migration. But in 1676, a man named Francis Willughby set us down the path to avian truth when he published Ornithologia, a masterwork of bird science we can file with such classics as John James Audubon’s Birds of America. While Willughby, like Morton, refuted Aristotle’s notion that swallows hibernate, he wasn’t under the impression that they instead went to the moon. More modestly, it was to the warmth of northern Africa.
Though, it's funny you mention the mud, given Aristotle's belief that eels - which apparently lacked genitalia - just spontaneously generated from mud. Eels are weird, so I don't fully blame him, but it's so goddamn funny to think that they just spontaneously form into existence when it rains.
QI has a team of researchers based in Holborn, London - but they are ultimately a comedy and entertainment vehicle so all their facts need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Yeah, and to be clear, I actually really like trivia! The front page of Wikipedia has a section called "Did You Know?" (DYK) that has six or seven pieces of daily trivia. These are also researched and follow a similar format. The key differences are that: 1) the corresponding article is right there if you want to immediately verify what's been said, and 2) this article lets you understand the full context of the trivia if you want.
In this case, the most egregious part isn't the trivia itself; it's the kind of culture around trivia that it foments.
I wouldn't laugh at those old scientists
We still have huge organizations with billions of members in the world that believe their saviour is going to come back soon, destroy the world, dragons, demonic horsemen, fire, brimstone, people magically disappearing and rising up to heaven and everyone else getting thrown into a lake of fire.
And some of their more fanatic believers control the worlds largest economic military powerhouse. 🤷♂️
Must be doing something right.
Joke's on them - George R. R. Martin ain't coming back.
Billions of people don't actually believe that. Not even close. They might say they believe in a religion, they might even think they believe in it, but if the sky lit on fire and they started floating into the sky the vast majority of them wouldn't think "yay I win the Rapture!" they'd think "oh God oh fuck what is happening?!"
If Betelgeuse goes supernova tomorrow, I wouldn't believe my eyes either.
... you would if you genuinely believed it was supposed to happen tomorrow...
It could happen tomorrow. I would still initially react with "holy shit look at the sky".
That's not how belief works. "It could happen tomorrow" isn't a belief, it's just a vague, noncomittal thought.
"The rapture will happen in our lifetimes" is a belief, and the vast majority of people - religious or not - simply don't believe that.
You laugh... but isn't some of that happening right now?!
Some of that has been happening, to varying degrees, since about the dawn of humanity.
Well why not? That's where I go. Off-season rates!
I was watching an early episode of the Twilight Zone last night and an astronaut was asked what it was like in space and he replied "Like here but beyond" and I was thinking wtf what a weird way to describe space. Then I realized it was an episode that aired before humans had ever left earths atmosphere and they didnt have a proper understanding of how space really was at the time
I mean, yeah, the moon’s right over there, so birbs should have little trouble popping over for a bit when it gets cold here. Sense, friends, use it sometime, eh?
Meanwhile the birbs are like: "sometimes humans go to the moon." "Yeah right".