Funny (political, religious) pictures
- Thread starter strawman
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You know, this might sound like he's admitting they can't win without suppressing votes, but i'm not so sure it's not actually just trying prime his base into slowly accepting alternative ways of electing officials to the whole democracy thing...
What words would have been muted, out of curiosity?
figmentPez
Staff member
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Staff member
This one always bugs me, because honestly...they're right. The first paragraph is actually correct. The second is handwavey, but not necessarily wrong either. In fact, the first paragraph is exactly how we define electricity physically. We only know that particles affect each other with a force, and that force relates to some property we cannot further describe called a "charge". All the equations are defined in terms of that force.
I believe the criticism directed at it is because, no matter how technically correct the text may be, its flow is not one of, "let us quantify and measure the things we can know about" but instead feels more like a drive to instill (and magnify) doubt about electricity in the reader, as if to say, "After all those millennia wasted devoted to the pursuit of science, we still know so very little about (something so ubiquitous as) electricity, so is Science (itself) really a discipline worth wasting even more time on? Drink Bud Dry."
--Patrick
--Patrick
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figmentPez
Staff member
If I described your post as: "Just a bunch of words, strung together, trying to have meaning, but ultimately a matter of semantics" that would be technically correct, too, but I hardly doubt you'd find it an accurate depiction of what you meant. Framing is the concept we're talking about here, and it's an important one. Framing is why I hate it when people meme the Futurama joke "You're technically correct, the best kind of correct", because way too many people miss that the joke is about how terrible it is to be only technically correct. It's not the best kind, it's the fucking worst.
I don't think it's in any way helpful to call what they're saying "right". They're intentionally twisting the truth by framing what they say in such a way that it suggests that science is unhelpful and lacks the ability to accurately describe the world around us. No matter how much we don't know about electricity, focusing on that to the exclusion of how much we do know about electricity is disingenuous, at best. It would be like talking about celery by listing all the nutrition it lacks. Celery has almost no protein, no vitamin D, and is too high in sodium compared to how much iron, zinc, or carbohydrates it provides. A large portion of the calories it provides come from sugars. Based on that, the obvious conclusion is that celery is an unhealthy food that no one should ever eat, right?
fade
Staff member
Y'all sure are reading a lot of stuff that I don't see on that post. I can't see the "and therefore science is bad" anywhere on that post. Am I missing something? I can't really say I find the celery analogy compelling, because one of the reasons I sort of shrugged at this image is because it's almost the same way my undergraduate electricity and optics text begins, and that's a well accepted textbook. If you told me a widely regarded nutrition textbook also started out by saying celery was non-nutritive, then sure I'd find it equivalent.
figmentPez
Staff member
You're comparing an undergraduate textbook trying to engage readers and lead them into advanced concepts with a gradeshchool textbook trying to teach the fundamentals to children that are about 9 years old.
Are you fucking kidding me?
EDIT: Also, celery is nutritive. It's only the framing that makes it seem otherwise. Celery is high in fiber, the sodium is balanced by potassium, magnesium, calcium, and other electrolytes, it's not high in calories so it doesn't matter that most of it's calories come from sugar (and the absorption of that sugar will be slowed by the digestive fiber it provides). Almost no vegetables are high in vitamin D, so it's meaningless to point that out. Are you intentionally misunderstanding the entire concept of framing? Celery is not a bad food to eat. At the absolute worst, it's neutral. Can you really not understand the difference between spin and reality?
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Well, i don't know about the others, but you can definitely feel electricity.
If you don;t believe me, just stick your tongue in one of these bad boys:
This is why the framing is important. You are not actually "feeling" electricity like water or rock or even air by touching it with your skin, the book even implies this. You are "feeling" what electricity does, which is conduct through our bodies. The paragraph is being obtuse on purpose, twisting up the wording and definition of "feel" to make electricity seem more mysterious and unexplainable and intangible because they want to connect it to God.
figmentPez
Staff member
Are we really feeling water or rock, though? Or are we just experiencing the effects they have on our nervous system? Do objects really touch, or do their electromagnetic fields just interact? WHAT IS A MAN ON A HORSE?
But you're right about the intentionally obtuse framing. "No one has ever observed" electricity? Bull fucking shit. That's like saying "no one has ever seen a rock, we've only seen the light that reflects off of rocks". It's a philosophical argument that we shouldn't be burdening 4th graders with. "No one has ever seen fire, we've only seen the light given off by the energy produced from combustion." Yeah, well see how far that argument gets you when your house is burning down because you "couldn't see" that the stove had been left on.
Kids today don't do that. They look at me with suacer eyes when I do it.Well, i don't know about the others, but you can definitely feel electricity.
If you don;t believe me, just stick your tongue in one of these bad boys:
Celery analogy aside, as Pez sez, it's all about the framing--the subtext. An educational textbook aimed at children is supposed to help them learn how to understand the world around them, it should NOT create/amplify the idea that they should ignore their own observations.
--Patrick
Technically, you guys are actually talking about electromagnetism, not electricity as defined in laymans terms.
Especially since we're talking about a elementary school book, which i'm assuming is only about the electricity running through wires in your house, which is basically electrons moving around (or, looking it up on wikipedia, could also be ions).
And, if we're really getting into more details, you don't "feel" water or rock either, since the way everything works at the elemental particle level you don't touch anything, your atoms just feel the "charge" of other atoms. And you're mostly empty space.
The argument being made here isn’t really about any fundamental truths regarding electromagnetic theory, it is about the choices of wording and presentation being made in what is ostensibly a grade-school science textbook.
—Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
Technically I'm talking about philosophy, language, communication, etc. But I do realize that I was talking about electromagnetic stuff beyond electricity, because I thought it was more clear than arguing if seeing an electrical arc is actually "seeing" electricity. I hope we all know it's stupid to argue that you've never seen or touched a rock/fire, but I'm not so sure everyone here is on board with it being stupid to say that seeing a bolt of lightning or a sparking tesla coil isn't functionally seeing electricity.
I want to expand on this a little bit more (I had already done so, but the forum ate most of my post on mobile, grr).
So the article opens right up by saying, "Electricity is a mystery."
First of all, for a book that is supposed to be about informing and educating people (even those who are only at a 4th grade level -- ~9yrs old for non USAers) about electricity, it sure is quick to throw its hands in the air and shout, "We give up, we have no idea how it really works, where it comes from, how it's made, it's way too complicated, here are some guesses, whatever."
But second of all, the word choice here is key. The article says that electricity is "a mystery." There is specific religious meaning attached to the word "mystery," which is sometimes used interchangeably with "sacrament" and can be taken to mean "...a reality imbued with the hidden presence of God."* Try reading through the paragraph again, but this time substitute "[the] hidden presence of God" wherever you see the word "electricity" and it will take on an entirely different character, one where a "science" textbook essentially tries to tell you that the reason electrons move is [most likely] because God so wills it. It then finishes up with a Psalm quote chosen to basically drive home the idea that "Electricity = God."
This textbook is not designed for education, it is designed for indoctrination.
--Patrick
*see below
"The Church is a mystery. It is a reality imbued with the hidden presence of God. It lies hidden within the very nature of the Church to be always open to new and ever greater exploration." These words, stated by Pope Paul VI in his opening address to the second session of Vatican II, capture the very heart of one of the central documents of the Council: The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.
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