Re: Experiencing God


- .. -- Tim .-. wrote:

I have found that dowsing rods do actually work, too. There will be a
scientific explanation, I am sure, it's just that we don't know what it is
as yet. Likewise it is commonly observed that in the Northern hemisphere
water usually tends to swirl down the plug hole in a clockwise direction,
whereas in the Southern hemisphere it usually tends to do so in an
anticlockwise direction. As of yet this (AFAIK) has not been scientifically
explained.

As Mike's already explained, this is exactly backwards: it's not that
we observe this but don't know why it might happen, it's that there's
a plausible-sounding scientific explanation why it might happen (the
Coriolis effect), as a result of which many people believe that it does[1],
but in fact the effect is very very very weak and which way a given bath
drains on a given occasion is almost entirely determined by factors that
have nothing to do with hemisphere.

[1] Aided and abetted by confirmation bias. If you believe that
water goes one way in the Northern hemisphere and the other
way in the Southern, then you'll probably think that's what
your observation shows even if you've actually seen it go
each way equally often in each hemisphere. This is why actual
science makes so much use of objective measuring devices,
careful recording, double-blind testing, peer review, etc.;
it is *shockingly* easy for us to fool ourselves if we aren't
obsessively careful not to. (And easier than you'd hope even
if we are obsessively careful.)

(It probably does, however, correlate with things like which tap is on
which side, so if that happens to be different in, say, the UK and
Australia then that will give spurious evidence for the Coriolis thing.)

--
Gareth McCaughan
sig under construc


.

Relevant Pages

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