What becomes of old 'friends'..

[DataCable]

Anyone who ever played with a toy parachute as a child has a better understanding of atmospheric drag than him.

[ka9q]

You have to admit though it does look weird how the orbiter kept attached to its stack.

Much of the weirdness goes away when you remember that any space launcher ready to go has nearly all of its mass in propellant, and the space shuttle orbiter carried hardly any propellant. The tank was 760 tonnes, each SRB was 590 tonnes, and the orbiter was only 109 tonnes.

Of course, the key thing about Dunning-Kruger is that when faced with such an oddity in the universe, you assume it's the universe that is wrong, rather than your own understanding.

Absolutely. Mere ignorance does not qualify one for Dunning-Kruger; most people are ignorant of nearly all specialized knowledge. Hell, I'm thoroughly ignorant about brain surgery (if not rocket science). But at least I know I'm thoroughly ignorant about brain surgery.

[nomuse]

Mmm Space Wars.  Possibly the earliest video game ever (depends on how you count).  They had one of the rare consoles at the Silver Ball up on Telegraph Ave.  I used to log in solo on the dual-player machine and mess around circularizing orbits and playing slingshot by shooting near the sun.

[nomuse]

I'm fascinated by the puzzle of how you can know that you don't know that you don't know.

The only rule of thumb I've came up with so far is that human activities are COMPLICATED.  If people have been doing it for more than a week, then there is more to it than appears at first glance.  If there exist people with a recognized expertise, then seek them out -- particularly before you do anything that could get you hurt.

But that just brings us up to the same problem.  I was just having a conversation on some prop-making forums about CO2 effects.  It seems very simple.  Take CO2 tanks and valves, which work perfectly well when used as designed, but don't produce that nice white smoke.  Turn the tank upside down so it siphons.  Now the same tank and valve produce that lovely "fire extinguisher" cloud.  And at some random moment, a valve or bit of line shatters under 500x expansion and gives you a serious injury!

Since I work in theater, I am frequently around people who are dealing with electricity, rigging, but even simple levers in ways they haven't realized could cause injury.  What they don't know they don't know can still hurt them.  They don't know enough to know when they've left the domain of "My knowledge is sufficient/my ignorance is harmless" and entered the domain of "This could kill someone but I don't even realize it is dangerous."

[raven]

Mmm Space Wars.  Possibly the earliest video game ever (depends on how you count).  They had one of the rare consoles at the Silver Ball up on Telegraph Ave.  I used to log in solo on the dual-player machine and mess around circularizing orbits and playing slingshot by shooting near the sun.

I would say it was about the earliest not trying to digitize and provide a computer opponent to an existing game (like tic-tac-toe) or provide a simplified simulation of an existing game like Tennis for Two or the later Pong, but actually make something original.
I've played it in online emulators and it's hard, but I can see the appeal.

[JayUtah]

Mmm Space Wars.  Possibly the earliest video game ever (depends on how you count).

I count Computer Space as the first, mostly because we have one in the video game graveyard at work.

[Noldi400]

As Donald Rumsfeld said:

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

At the time, this statement was widely lambasted as being terminally stupid and/or incoherent. But I always thought it was quite clear and largely true.

And its lack of understanding by the CT crowd is, IMO, one of the things that makes them CTers.

[nomuse]

Which is more dangerous; the things you don't know you don't know, or the things you, as Twain put it, know that aren't so?

[JayUtah]

Now Tekeli is edging ever closer to his previous claim that the lunar module batteries wouldn't be able to run the circulating fans and cooling system during the Apollo 13 emergency.  Remember how he got stuck on his inability or unwillingness to compare the battery capacity to the energy consumption of the equipment?  Now he's back in JAQ mode trying to get the same information.

[frenat]

Cosmored/DavidC/Rocky etc. thinks there is a lot of "good stuff" on cluesforum.info
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144487&page=139&p=6425110&viewfull=1#post6425110

Best laugh I've had in days.

[nomuse]

I sorta want to add "FAQing around" as a new descriptive.  That is, for those hoaxies who act polite and ask all sorts of technical questions not to develop the argument de jour, but to gather up as many science-y words and easy links they can to take to some OTHER forum where they can proceed to dazzle all and sundry with their "expertise."

[Noldi400]

Hunchbacked has gotten active on YT again, but his videos these days are really so idiotic that, personally, I get bored even bothering to point out things that should be obvious to even an unschooled viewer.  I'm wondering if it wouldn't be best just to ignore him and see if he gets tired of not getting an argument.

Hell, just pointing out how wrong he is shouldn't even be considered an argument.

[ka9q]

Now Tekeli is edging ever closer to his previous claim that the lunar module batteries wouldn't be able to run the circulating fans and cooling system during the Apollo 13 emergency.

Well, it was a pretty close call...

My understanding is that they got Aquarius' average power consumption down to a few hundred watts. The pre-J-mission LMs had four 400 Ah batteries in the descent stage and two 296 Ah batteries in the ascent stage for a total of 2192 Ah @ 30V, or about 66 kWh.

[Echnaton]

I'm fascinated by the puzzle of how you can know that you don't know that you don't know.

Thankfully for most of us, it comes from the experience of failures of our imaginations to understand limits in which no one is hurt.  Nothing like practice at breaking things to make you take a second (or third) thought.

[Echnaton]

As Donald Rumsfeld said:

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know.
There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

At the time, this statement was widely lambasted as being terminally stupid and/or incoherent. But I always thought it was quite clear and largely true.

And its lack of understanding by the CT crowd is, IMO, one of the things that makes them CTers.

There is an article in Slate, from the end of the Rumsfeld era at DOD that gathered several of his statements like this and presented them as poetry.  It actually worked pretty well because of the odd rhythms that were characteristic of his off the cuff speech. 

Glass Box
You know, it's the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's—

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—

Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.