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There should be a list of commonly known facts that people who are new to the internet have to read so they don't think things like this are novel.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Which among many other things, mentions the Lemming Suicide myth:

> Lemmings do not engage in mass suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating. This misconception was popularized by the Disney film White Wilderness, which shot many of the migration scenes (also staged by using multiple shots of different groups of lemmings) on a large, snow-covered turntable in a studio. Photographers later pushed the lemmings off a cliff.[234] The misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th century.


Thanks for this list.. you have killed my productivity this afternoon.


This is one of my favorite wikipedia pages. I'm not aware of any other resource that does so much to fix our broken epistemology.


That's not epistemology... epistemology is about the fundamental nature of truth and knowledge, like whether reality is shared and knowable. I think you mean 'common sense.' Though nowadays always spoken of positively, originally 'common sense' referred to the sense of commoners, being incomplete and unreasoned and just an accumulation of happenstance. That's pretty much what common misconceptions are.


I know what epistemology is, but apparently you don't. "the fundamental nature of truth and knowledge, like whether reality is shared and knowable" is not epistemology but metaphysics. Epistemology may dip into metaphysics, (and vice-versa) but they are generally distinct fields.

By "our broken epistemology" I mean "our broken methodologies of evaluating the truth of our beliefs and the certainty of our knowledge". The brokenness of our practical epistemology is why these common misconceptions not only exist, but continue to dominate.

I could have been more precise and said "our broken epistemological systems",


I hate to be the guy that posts xkcd links.. . But: https://www.xkcd.com/1053/


There's an appropriate xkcd for most any conversation. Posting them is far more beneficial to the community than downvoting them.




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