• @[email protected]
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      2410 months ago

      There are at least 9

      Pluto is a dwarf planet. Planet. You wouldn’t say that a dwarf person isn’t a person.

      • BrerChicken
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        210 months ago

        You wouldn’t call a person a dwarf, period. So don’t do that. If you ever meet a little person, they’ll probably refer to themselves as a little person. You should just follow their lead

        A dwarf planet is not a category of planets. It is a category of sub-planetary objects. This is how the term “dwarf planet” was adopted by the IAU in 2006. It did used to mean “type of planet”, but there are just too many of them, and they’re really too different from planets, so it literally does not mean that anymore. At least to astronomers.

        • @[email protected]
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          110 months ago

          Whatever a red car is still a car.

          It’s dumb to say it isn’t a planet just because it hasn’t yet cleared its orbit. The decision to make it “not a planet” was also made by astronomers, not by planetary scientists. Like people with “Star” in their name know more about planets than people with “planet” in theirs.

          Anyways it’s extra silly because if you have “real planets” and “dwarf planets” then what is the higher group containing those two? “Things that orbit the sun”? No, they should both be planets.

          • BrerChicken
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            110 months ago

            I’m not going to argue with astronomers about how they define planets. I do my job, they do theirs!

    • Twitches
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      10 months ago

      What about Uranus

      Edit: or is that a moon 🤣 I crack myself up!

      • @[email protected]
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        10 months ago

        I’m sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.

        Oh…what’s it called now?

        Urectum.

    • @[email protected]
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      510 months ago

      I’m torn on this one, cause recently they’ve been finding evidence of a ‘new’ 9th planet, way beyond Pluto’s orbit. So I’m on the fence of “there are 8 planets” and “there are 9 planets.” 🤔

      • @[email protected]
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        610 months ago

        I’m of the believe that we made up the word planet and it can mean whatever we say it means.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          That’s pretty much how it is. In ancient times, planets would have been objects that were distinguishable from stars in ways they had the ability to differentiate from. For example, with a telescope, any object that doesn’t shine like a star, that moves across the sky at a different rate than the stars, or maybe has visible rings.

          Then once science found things that past science couldn’t account for, they redefined what a planet was, according to its size/gravitational pull or other factors, and which Pluto didn’t fit. Apparently due to Pluto’s small size, it’s not even a dwarf-planet, and by that measure is basically just a really big asteroid (we even know of asteroids that are bigger than Pluto).

        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          I’m of the opinion we made up all the words, but those mouth sounds must have a strict meaning whenever possible. Words are important, they’re how you communicate concepts. Everyone should be precise with their words to the best of their understanding, if you have to redefine the word planet in every conversation the concept is diluted and you waste a lot of time

          In this case, if Pluto is a planet, we have at least 13. We might discover another 10 or 20 if there’s no planet 9 hiding behind the kyper belt and it’s all dwarf planets… Ain’t no one got time to remember 30+ planets

          • @[email protected]
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            210 months ago

            30+ planets should be pretty easy. They name them after mythology. The 50 states aren’t difficult to remember, and those don’t have any sort of naming convention.

        • @[email protected]
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          810 months ago

          The issue is, as I understand it, we either have 8 planets (or 9, if there is an exoplanet), or a whole bunch of planets, depending on how narrowly we define them.

          • @[email protected]
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            710 months ago

            Yeah this is the correct take. Either Pluto (and by extension, any object of similar size) is a planet, which would mean there’s thousands of Pluto-sized planets in the solar system; or pluto is ‘too small’ to be a planet. Which is the answer they (Sci community) settled on, because if every comet/asteroid is within the threshold definition of ‘planet’ then there would be no point in distinguishing planets at all.

            Kinda like how we have dwarf-stars and supermassive stars 1000x bigger than our sun. If they were all the same size there would be no point defining them beyond ‘star’.

            • Skua
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              10 months ago

              Pluto being too small isn’t actually the grounds on which it got demoted. The size requirement is just being massive enough to reach hydrostatic equilibrium - that is, be heavy enough that it’s round. Pluto does meet this one

              The one it fails is clearing its orbit. This basically means being much heavier than everything else in the same orbit. Be gravitationally in charge of your orbit. The other eight are all hundreds if not thousands of times heavier than everything else in their orbit (not including moons, since they’re gravitationally bound to the planet anyway), whereas Pluto is less than a tenth of the total mass in its own orbit. Ceres is actually more gravitationally dominant over its orbit than that, although still nowhere near the eight planets.

              This one sounds a bit weird at first, but I kinda like how it has such a massive delineation between the things we instinctively think of as planets and everything else.

          • @[email protected]
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            210 months ago

            It’s also the fact that Pluto doesn’t have its own orbital slot. It is clearly something that escaped Uranus at some point, that’s why their orbits intersect. A planet doesn’t just have to have a certain size, it also has to have its own distinct orbital path.

      • Zagorath
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        310 months ago

        Recently? I’ve been hearing about a possible large trans-Pluto object since before Pluto lost its status as a planet.

  • @[email protected]
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    2910 months ago

    Might work for some countries, but the problem is that schools in the USA completely lack centralization: each school district is its own separate governing body. Jason was taught that Pilgrims to America were persecuted Christians seeking adventure and made treaties with Natives, while Derek was taught about socioeconomic nuances of 17th-19th Europe leading to incentivized settlements particularly attractive to hardcore religious extremists who then waged relentless war on the Native Americans.

    There are no Universal Lies that everybody was taught, except for Dark Matter.

      • @[email protected]
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        510 months ago

        That was just a bit of snarky commentary, no need to read into it.

        Dark matter fits what we observe the best out of all of our models, but we’ve never observed it despite the many massive detection chambers we’ve built or probes we’ve sent out.

      • @[email protected]
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        410 months ago

        There’s a big debate now about whether dark matter really exists or there’s a better explanation for how most of the mass of the universe seems to be unable to be perceived. Related to gravitational waves lately I believe.

        Take this for what it is I’m not a scientist I just occasionally read science articles.

        • BrerChicken
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          10 months ago

          I think you’re getting confused with dark energy. There is very little debate about dark matter–it’s an observation that many many many people have made.

          Dark energy is the name for whatever is causing the explanation expansion rate of the universe to increase. There’s quite a bit of debate about whether the expansion rate even IS increasing. And the amount of increase is different according to how you try to observe it. So yeah, there’s a lot of debate about whether dark energy is actually a thing, but there is very little debate on whether there’s more matter than we’re able to observe, something that we call dark matter but which we don’t really understand. Similar names, but totally different concepts!

            • BrerChicken
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              110 months ago

              It’s an interesting idea, but it assumes that physical forces are getting WEAKER over time, and that’s a pretty big assumption. It’s not very parsimonious.

              • @[email protected]
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                110 months ago

                I’m not a subscriber to this particular theory, but I do think model error is a more plausible explanation than magical, undetectable mass.

                • BrerChicken
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                  210 months ago

                  The mass is definitely detectable–it’s just not visible. And it’s detectable in several different ways that all match, that’s the key here. This is definitely an observation.

      • @[email protected]
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        310 months ago

        It’s long been stated by astronomers it’s an ad hoc theory until they figure out what’s going on.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          Dark energy yes. But lots of cosmologists seem convinced dark matter is proven fact. Why are they so certain?

  • @[email protected]
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    2510 months ago

    ITT: People misinterpreting the idea as “facts that your school taught wrong”, when it’s really saying, “things that have changed since you went to school” (either through a change in definition or by new research).

    E.g. If you went to school before the early 2000’s, you were taught that Pluto is a planet, while that is no longer true since it was recategorized in 2006.

    • matlag
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      2810 months ago

      This is the wrong aporoach.

      You should build a mockup site, use it to raise 2M$ for the startup behind it you just created arguing you’re about to collect personal data about the age, education level and place, curiosity, etc. with overinflated numbers on their real values.

      Then you hire a bench of students, or better: launch a competition for the best “fact you were told that turned out wrong” with a 1k$ prize that you eventually give to some biz angel’s investrent adviser’s child.

      Once data are acquired, claim the company is now worth 10M$ and raise that much in a new round.

      Finally, sell the company for 20M$ either to a tech company that will enshitify, paywall and crater it.

      You still don’t have your website, but now you’re rich and you no longer care about these things.

  • confuser
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    1110 months ago

    I sent the Twitter image to chatgpt to convert the image to text and then I put that text into websim which generated a website that does exactly that and it even handles if you graduated recently and it will link you to a timeline of debunked “facts” here’s the link, enjoy! https://websim.ai/c/GeEMLk9DuUC23jV9S

    • @[email protected]
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      810 months ago

      I got: “We only use 10% of our brains. Modern neuroimaging has shown that we use most of our brain.” In the 90’s I thought this was not in fact, but urban legend, the whole time.

      Also: “Christopher Columbus discovered America. Indigenous peoples had been living in the Americas for thousands of years before Columbus arrived.” I didn’t realize that it was implied no one was here when he came.

      • @[email protected]
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        210 months ago

        Vikings discovered the North American continent long before Columbus. Fucker got credit for copying someone’s homework.

      • @[email protected]
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        310 months ago

        I think that brain one was from a game of telephone with the real fact that a large portion of our brain is dedicated to image processing and object identification. Another portion would be dedicated to sound recognition with a decent amount of circuitry going into the recognition and parsing of speech. Memory will also take up some of the capacity as well as mapping desired actions to sequences of signals for muscle activation. After all the things our brains need to do just to accomplish all these things we take for granted are accounted for, it doesn’t leave much capacity left over for thought.

        Though, at least in my experience, the most powerful analysis the brain can do is in the subconscious. So many times I’ve faced a difficult problem where I’ve been unable to make any progress, take a break, then later return to a much easier problem. Or even with skill development, try doing something too hard for a bit, then sleep on it and try again the next day and it might suddenly be easier. This works best for dexterity skills, I’ve noticed it a lot in Beat Saber.

        So it’s like you can take whatever was left over from the first paragraph, then take a small amount of that and that’s your conscious thought capacity and the rest is given to subconscious processing.

        • confuser
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          210 months ago

          hmm I do this all the time for anything to do with solving problems, I work on the problem relentlessly until my head is clouded and clearly fried and then I come back later and try again

      • confuser
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        410 months ago

        yeah idk how good the website it made really is but it sure is interesting that it could just do that on the fly

      • @[email protected]
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        210 months ago

        yeah the issue with “discovered” is cultural interpretation, not factual. If you assume that indigenous people don’t count, or if non-aristocrats going there doesn’t count as discovery, or if it was discovered by Asian peoples but not yet by Western peoples…

        I dunno if a fact-checking website can get into it as it is figuratively and literally critical race theory (ooOOOOooOOOoh!) to have that discussion.

    • @[email protected]
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      110 months ago

      I think having something that gets vetted by experts would be better, but this might be a good starting point.

  • BrerChicken
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    710 months ago

    An even better idea: make your OWN list! Don’t expect someone else to tell you the truth if you’re not working to search for it yourself!

    • @[email protected]
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      310 months ago

      Curious how you would go about this process of creating a list of your own knowledge that is outdated.

      • BrerChicken
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        110 months ago

        By being a life-long learner! Seriously, learning is an active thing, it’s not something we have to be sitting in a room to receive. So as we read and learn more, we realize that some of the things we learned are different from what we thought. It’s something we should all be doing as we learn and reflect.

        • @[email protected]
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          110 months ago

          Right… And the suggestion in OP is for someone to create an efficient tool supporting life-long learning. One doesn’t imply lack of active learning in the other. So get of your condescending high horse.

    • @[email protected]
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      10 months ago

      My teachers told us, with all honesty, than the reason “the blacks” (yes, they said it just like that in a tone you expect) are better athletes is because they have an extra muscle in their legs.

      This was while there were African American students in the class. In second grade.

  • @[email protected]
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    I could throw a site together if the community is willing to help curate the data.

    From what I read here are some keys to follow:

    Year Taught: Year of irrelevance: Country: Fact:

    I could throw a form together for submissions to feed this site. Thoughts?

    • arc
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      10 months ago

      You’d probably need to verify all submissions

      Unless you throw an LLM into the mix

      Or maybe there’s already some resources giving you all debunked facts with their dates

      • @[email protected]
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        410 months ago

        LLMs are not magic, otherwise one just have to request that any submission will have references to reputable sources.

      • @[email protected]
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        210 months ago

        I would probably start out by proofing or approving them before they post to the site. It say I get a notification read it do a little reading over it and get to a point where I can use a large language model to siphon the submissions.

      • optional
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        1310 months ago

        You believe an LLM can be used to distinguish facts from fiction? I wonder up to which year that misconception was taught in school.

        The whole point of LLMs is, to convince their users that the “facts” they generate are actual facts.

        • arc
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          210 months ago

          They can browse the web, and I never meant it would be 100 accurate just easier. Don’t think this is going to be a mission critical website

          • @[email protected]
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            310 months ago

            That just it, these “facts” won’t be on the web for stuff approximately 2005 and before. No where on the web is the racist and homophobic shit I was taught in the 80’s and 90’s listed on some wiki.

            LLM’s are mostly useless anyways at distinguishing real information, they are just shit summary tools and poor search engines.

    • @[email protected]
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      510 months ago

      For America, you’ll also need to have a drop-down for states. I graduated from high school in California in 2009, and I’m currently working on a medical degree, so I’d be delighted to contribute to this. I’d especially like to help with a sex ed section for Americans.

      • @[email protected]
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        610 months ago

        I’m not sure I’d want to get that granular because of the same fact was taught across the country there’s no need for the redundancy. Also trying to make this a global website helps removing that level of granularity from the states as well.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          The differences in curricula across states mean that some states would have gotten the correct information while others may not have. I know the science and history classes in my state were pretty different from some other states.

            • @[email protected]
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              110 months ago

              That’s part of my point. My American education was pretty limited on the internal politics and civics of other countries, but my husband who went to high school in a different state did get a decent amount of information about how modern/current European countries are structured. So I guess it’s safe to assume that other countries will also have differences across regions.

        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          Design it so that it can get that granular later(when someone else wants to do that work)

          As long as it’s got the capability it can grow into that later. Assuming unexpected and explosive popularity/growth it would be great if wikifoundation acquired it someday as a dataset if nothing else, but having a structure that can be expanded globally at a granular scale baked into it from the beginning would be awesome

          Sorry I’m not great with computers or i would offer more of a technical opinion not just design commentary

  • @[email protected]
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    1210 months ago

    I’ve actually seen a website that is exactly this.

    Can’t remember the URL, but can confirm it exists (existed?) and it was an interesting website to read.

  • @[email protected]
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    510 months ago

    Okay but should I put in the year I graduated or the year of our textbooks/curriculum? Because my U.S. history textbook had an assignment for the “present day” to write about the “ongoing” war in iraq under “current” president George W. Bush. Spoiler, I did not go to HS when bush was president.

    • @[email protected]
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      310 months ago

      I was in high school during that time

      It’s really weird to see actually witness history becoming “history”

  • @[email protected]
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    510 months ago

    I think that already exists? I remember seeing it on Lemmy some months ago. I’ll try to find it.

    • nek0d3r
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      110 months ago

      I remember seeing one on reddit a few years ago exactly like this.