Is Sun a binary system?

Rod
Rod
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I would like to share an

I would like to share an article from Nature

A Metaphor too Far

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I think it relates how our perceptions can color[/url]

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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RE: I would like to share

Quote:

I would like to share an article from Nature

A Metaphor too Far


Well, here's a metaphor : me a native English speaker, goes to Japan without any thought or preparation and thus consistently misunderstands conversations that I hear.

I think we either have a lazy journalist here who wants pat copy, or thinks the rest of the punters think the way he does. I remember working for an orthopaedic surgeon ( we did alot of fracture work out bush ) whose favorite saying was 'never underestimate the stupidity of the general populace' :-).

If you only read Mr Dawkin's book title then there's no doubt you'll get his use of the word 'selfish' quite wrong. The public can't have it both ways. IF they want 'communicating' scientists producing simplified versions ( so we don't all have to go and do the relevant uni degrees to talk with them ) then that requires a receiving end effort too. 'Anthropomorphizing' is fine provided that's utterly visible and understood to be so .... including the meaning of 'anthropomorphizing' :-) :-)

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Yeah it's an analogy, or a simile or whatever .... see how lazy I can be? :-)

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

mikey
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RE: I would like to share

Quote:

I would like to share an article from Nature

A Metaphor too Far

_______________________
I think it relates how our perceptions can color[/url]

People in general have been using metaphors or examples ever since they first realized that they can sway the opinion of others based on how something is presented. We have all been in the very boring lecture class that although factual and full of info is so boring as to be a waste of our time! We have also been in a class where many different metaphors and examples were used making the class very exciting, but the info presented was all BS!

Rod
Rod
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RE: I think we either have

Quote:

I think we either have a lazy journalist here who wants pat copy, or thinks the rest of the punters think the way he does. I remember working for an orthopaedic surgeon ( we did alot of fracture work out bush ) whose favorite saying was 'never underestimate the stupidity of the general populace' :-).

I think the authors intent here is to inform scientists to be mindful. Sometimes the message being transmitted is not the same message being received.

Edit: There really nothing that can be done to fix it other then a mind meld.:-)

Metaphors in particular are a concern because they invoke an emotion. Everybody's past experience is different..

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

Rod
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Back on Subject:) Where's

Back on Subject:)

Where's Tyche, the 10th?? 9th planet??

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

Matt Giwer
Matt Giwer
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RE: RE: The other side of

Quote:
Quote:
The other side of it is that the closer they pass the more earth perturbs their orbit so if there were a "perfect" knowledge now it will rapidly become imperfect. Which gets us back to getting a handle on the statistics of what we do know. Let their orbits be perturbed by a close pass the overall statistics should remain about the same over a longer period than we need worry about. By that I mean in a century or three our only problem with them should be adjudicating conflicting mining claims.

And of course any change in the PHA's orbit could cause it to collide with something else long before it returns to our little neck of the Universe.

Certainly. And the larger they are the more likely they appear to fracture on impact meaning turn into smaller pieces meaning less likely to reach the ground. But I'd guess such collisions are fairly rare also.

I just ran across of good measure of risk. Japan just got a big one but mag 7s are the kind that do a lot of damage when near a city. The statistic is that the rate of magnitude 7 earthquakes is about one a week some place in the world. They are close enough to a city to do enough damage to make the news every two or three years.

To make it more interesting about half of them are on the "ring of fire" around the Pacific which is where a lot of cities are built. The surface area of the "ring of fire" area compared to the surface area of the world is very small so the odds of a meteor damaging a city border on remote.

Matt Giwer
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RE: I would like to share

Quote:

I would like to share an article from Nature

A Metaphor too Far

_______________________
I think it relates how our perceptions can color[/url]

I spent a couple decades in DC at the level where one had to bridge the politics and the engineering. It made me acutely aware of the deliberate use of words to color a discussion. It also gave me the opportunity to master the art. (In political discussions I can usually inflame my opposition in 50 words or less but I only do that when I am bored or they are being annoyingly stupid. Hell, I am banned from posting on milkyway@home just for what is on my website and they won't tell me what's got their panties in a bunch. -- note using panties denigrates them before discussing them.)

Which leads to my profound dislike of journalism majors reporting science, and politicians involved in science and in cases like global melting a few scientists babbling like excited teenagers over the horrors to come. My list is longer but those are currently at the top.

There are acceptable adjectives and metaphors in science and they are almost exactly the same as those when discussing math. Anything that deviates from the accepted words and accepted usage is no longer science.

The accepted anthropomorphisms for discussing evolution grate me for the obvious reasons and because they are all species specific. It is more like predator and prey learning to improve their chess game playing each other. It is even more like teams of different predators against teams of different preys. But then there are layers of predators and prey and the species in each group play chess and members of the same species also play chess.

Even perfectly correct words applied to a single species is grossly misleading. In one sense retreating in fear to Genesis might be seen as a rational response to the shock of realizing what is really going on.

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I tried to work this into the discussion but couldn't figure a way so rather than waste it...
Cetaceamorphism, ex. So long and thanks for all the fishes.

Matt Giwer
Matt Giwer
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RE: Back on Subject:)

Factoid: The first person to observe Neptune was Galileo. He thought the moving point of light was due to flaws in his telescope. If he had been able to conceive of the idea of an undiscovered planet imagine the alternate history if he had included the discovery of a new planet in his writings.

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