| Frederick The Monk
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| 290936. Wed Mar 05, 2008 12:45 pm |
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| Just thought I should add fallacies to the list of topics. Can't think of one off the top of my head but see the Forer Effect. |
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| Frederick The Monk
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| 290937. Wed Mar 05, 2008 12:48 pm |
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Here's a verbal fallacy:
Nothing is better than QI.
Eating stale bread is better than nothing.
Therefore, eating stale bread is better than QI. |
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| Flash
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| 295494. Thu Mar 13, 2008 12:51 pm |
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Although syllogistically flawed it nevertheless reaches a valid conclusion - spooky!
John McKeon posted something interesting on the outer board. I wonder if something like this would work?
Q: What happened to the canals on Mars?
F: The Martians filled them up with old supermarket trolleys.
A: They never existed, even though everybody 'knew' that they did.
| Quote: | | Quote: | At the turn of the century, the world's most distinguished astronomer was certain there were canals on Mars. Sir Percival Lowell, esteemed for his study of the solar system, had a particular fascination with the Red Planet.
In 1877, Lowell heard that an Italian astronomer had seen straight lines crisscrossing the Martian surface. Lowell spent the rest of his years squinting into the eyepiece of his giant telescope in Arizona, mapping the channels and canals he saw. He was convinced the canals were proof of intelligent life on Mars, possibly an older but wiser race than humanity. Lowell's observations gained wide acceptance. So eminent was he, none dared contradict him.
Now, of course, things are different. Space probes have orbited Mars and landed on its surface. The entire planet has been mapped, and no one has seen a canal. How could Lowell have seen so much that was not there?
Two possibilities: (1) he so wanted to see canals that he did, over and over again, and (2) we know now that he suffered from a rare eye disease that made him see the blood vessels in his own eyes. The Martian canals he saw were nothing more than the bulging veins of his eyeballs. Today the malady is known as "Lowell's syndrome." |
The term "Lowell's syndrome" has been extended in the fields of psychology and theology to include 'seeing what one wants to see'....
Lowell's Syndrome is not the result of 'seeing' blood vessels, it is the result of the image processing capability of the eye/brain system. In effect, discrete blobs in the visual field are joined up by straight lines; this is a visual artefact. I encountered this effect on occasion as a professional microscopist, teaching the principles of quantitative microscopy. (mckeonj in Fovea thread in F Series Talk)
I take it the 'straight line' effect is caused by the brain's extrapolation of points to create a 'model' of lines as a way of reducing the amount of data it has to process? (Southpaw)
... which mckeonj confirms. |
Picture Researchers: see if you can find one of Lowell's maps of Mars, showing the canals. |
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| Frederick The Monk
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| 295530. Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:10 pm |
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| There's a very nice piece about Lowell in Carl Sagan's book Cosmos. He spent years drawing and naming the canals, observing them through a fairly huge telescope but in the end it turned out he was probably drawing a map of the back of his own eye.... |
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| Flash
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| 295583. Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:34 pm |
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mckeonj adds:
| Quote: | I copied it from:http://www.doesgodexist.org/SepOct04/LowellsSyndrome.html
because it was nice and short, and largely correct.
Lowell's Syndrome is unusual in that it is named for the sufferer rather than the describer.
Lowell was an interesting chap, one of the Boston Lowells, lotsa money, paid for the Observatory and the telescope, so that he could use it whenever he wanted.
It was said of the Lowells, (who lived on the right side of the tracks):
| Quote: | I give you the city of Boston
The land of the bean and the cod,
Where the Cabots speak only to Lowells,
And the Lowells speak only to God. |
From memory, heard from my father, who was well connected to Connecticut. |
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| Flash
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| 295587. Thu Mar 13, 2008 4:43 pm |
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The wiki for Mars has this:
| Quote: | By the 19th century, the resolution of telescopes reached a level sufficient for surface features to be identified. In September 1877, a perihelic opposition of Mars occurred on September 5. In that year, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, then in Milan, used a 22 cm telescope to help produce the first detailed map of Mars. These maps notably contained features he called canali, which were later shown to be an optical illusion. These canali were supposedly long straight lines on the surface of Mars to which he gave names of famous rivers on Earth. His term was popularly mistranslated as canals.
Influenced by the observations the orientalist Percival Lowell founded an observatory which had a 300 and 450 mm telescope. The observatory was used for the exploration of Mars during the last good opportunity in 1894 and the following less favorable oppositions. He published several books on Mars and life on the planet, which had a great influence on the public. The canali were also found by other astronomers, like Henri Joseph Perrotin and Louis Thollon in Nice, using one of the largest telescopes of that time.
The seasonal changes (consisting of the diminishing of the polar caps and the dark areas formed during Martian summer) in combination with the canals lead to speculation about life on Mars, and it was a long held belief that Mars contained vast seas and vegetation. The telescope never reached the resolution required to give proof to any speculations. However, as bigger telescopes were used, fewer long, straight canali were observed. During an observation in 1909 by Flammarion with a 840 mm telescope, irregular patterns were observed, but no canali were seen. |
Includes this drawing by Lowell:
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| dr.bob
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| MatC
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| Molly Cule
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| 295941. Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:06 am |
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| i like that. |
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| MatC
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| 295963. Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:20 am |
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| As a freelance, I just want to know: did he get paid? And did he get his expenses back? |
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| eggshaped
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| Frederick The Monk
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| 314475. Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:08 am |
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| eggshaped wrote: | According to NASA, Mars may be covered by "table salt".
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We must immediately ban children from eating it then. |
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| eggshaped
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| 314494. Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:40 am |
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| Why are there no slugs living on Mars? |
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| MatC
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| 314498. Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:47 am |
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| Frederick The Monk wrote: | | eggshaped wrote: | According to NASA, Mars may be covered by "table salt".
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We must immediately ban children from eating it then. |
Let them eat green cheese, instead. They won't like it, so it must be good for them. |
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