this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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When Newton worked out the laws of motion, he figured they had to be correct because they were so simple and elegant.
He had no idea that relativity was going to come in and fuck his shit up.
And then there was quantum.
Do you have any idea how fast you were going?
No officer, but I can tell you exactly where I am!
Which is also simple and elegant
And then string theory. Which . . .
The music of the universe is a symphony, damnit. That’s inherently complex!
It’s a genuine shame the vibrating strings of reality sound like tinnitus to me.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Which is also simple and elegant
"Noooooooooo!" -Albert Einstein
He did also notice that the planets didn't move quite exactly as he predicted and said "well, God must keep them in place"
"Now excuse me I'm going to go behead some counterfeiters."
TBF the laws of motion are still correct.
it's not that they are "correct", it's that they are a close enough approximation to work well enough at the scale they're used. it's not like the universe runs on math.
I mean relativity is elegant enough in its own right; it's just Newton's laws plus the constancy of the speed of light and the equivalence principle. These two additions are enough to make everything an order of magnitude more fucked up, but that's math's fault, not relativity.
now do quantum
He definitely miscalculused the turnstables...
relativity only applies at large scales and quantum at small scales.
for everything else, esp earth bound, classic mechanics is works just fine.
"applies" isn't the word I would use. It's not like nature has a line that once you pass some threshold of mass, acceleration or distance it needs to flip the relativity switch.
Probably say "becomes noticable".
The point is that he just assumed there was nothing more to know. And he was wrong (tho I'm not gonna knock the dude who invented calculus too hard).
The comic is trying to point out that bigotry is generally born out of a lack of curiosity.
And i'd fundamentally disagree. plenty of curious people use their curiosity to perpetuate and develop new forms of bigotry.
history of science is loaded with people using new concepts to perpetuate and reinforce racism, sexism, etc. and that is still very much done today.
it's a naive to assume curiosity is a cure for ignorance. some of the most curious and smart people I know are also the most racist/sexist and pridefully ignorant. some of the dumbest/least curious people I know the least bigoted.
if anything, i'd say the biggest correlation is about whether or not the person believes in a sense of a social pecking order/competition. those who deeply believe in it are furiously trying to crab bucket their way up it by pushing others below them. those who don't... just don't care about people's perceived status no matter it's basis.
knowledge is a cure for nothing. it's just knowledge. and knowledge changes over time.
Interesting take. Thanks for sharing.