9 things I want my son to know

[Gob]

9 things I want my son to know.

[Big RR]

Fight Club is the best film? Seriously?

[MajGenl.Meade]

I'd start with "please" and "thank you"... and the movie choice is just ridiculous. Everyone knows 'Fargo' is far superior.

[Big RR]

There are probably a thousand movies that are far superior, Fargo is just one.

[rubato]

I think its just a draft and he'll come up with some better ideas.

This was a keeper:

There’s a marvellous essay by the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, called “The relativity of wrong”, which was written in response to someone who told him that, just as the wisest minds once thought the world was flat, so everything we think we know now could be overturned. Azimov’s reply was:

John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

This is arguable:

If evolution, or relativity, or any of the great theories of science, are wrong, this is how they will be shown to be wrong: Not by being overthrown, but by being refined, made less wrong. But the basic discoveries, that living beings have evolved by natural selection or that time and space are two aspects of the same thing, will remain true. There are too many strands of evidence showing that to be the case, and it is only wishful thinking or ignorance that makes some people unable to accept that.

Sometimes science progresses by huge leaps like the advent of Quantum Mechanics and Plate Tectonics.* Sometimes an old theory is wholly subsumed into a new one like Newtonian Physics becoming a special case of relativity and quantum mechanics. It works perfectly to predict the behavior of things which are relatively a lot larger than atoms and a lot slower the speed of light and quits working at all as you approach those boundaries.


yrs,
rubato

* See Thomas Kuhn "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"

[Big RR]

Or even in regions of high gravity, which is why Newtonian physics predicted another planet that affected the orbit of Mercury. but I agree, within its limitations, the Newtonian physics model functions quite well. And I agree that the progress of science can revolutionary or evolutionary or anywhere in between. Sometimes the scientific world needs to be stood on its head (as the 19th century physicists saw), sometimes is can proceed more slowly and deliberately, but it will move forward.