What is something that sounds 100% true but is actually 100% false?

74 comments

The world population has quadrupled in my lifetime, so I would be willing to believe the old bit about “more people are alive now than have ever died.” But it’s bunk. Estimated count of all people ever is 100 billion. There weren’t that many people in the past but our species goes back 50,000 years and that makes it up.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-living-outnumber-dead/
- The book is over half a century old now, so the numbers may be a bit off, but this sort of conversation always reminds me of this quote
  "Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth."
  -Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
  Kinda reminds me of this
  Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.
- We're even older than that! There is compelling evidence that Homo Sapiens has existed for 400k years, and there's unprovocative evidence that we've been around for 250k years or so.
  
  Yes. True. I was trying to be conservative.
- More adults are alive now than adults who died.
  Most of humanity didn't survive to adulthood.
  
  Which is why the average life expectancy was in the 30s forever. If you made it past childhood you were likely to make it to old age, but the infant mortality rate was through the roof which brought the average down to less than half of what it is today. People regularly lived into their 70s-80s before, but the average of 30 years makes people think that's all the longer people normally lived.
- If the population quadrupled in your lifetime you must be over 100 years old?
  
  Yeah you’re right it’s more like doubled.

"The days get shorter in the winter."
Actually winter begins on the shortest day of the year so the days are getting longer in the winter.
- Plus, I'm pretty sure that days are always about 24 hours long 🙃
  
  Ok you silly pedant
- Depends a lot on your definition of winter. In Scandinavia, winter is defined as starting December first.
- I think what's meant by this is daylight and it's actually true up north.
  
  Just a heads up. You might want to read the comment you're replying to.
  They're saying winter starts on the shortest day (daylight wise I believe they mean), meaning any days after that must be longer.

In Shrek 2 Pinocchio is trying to avoid lying by using double negatives. He knows where Shrek is. He says "I don't know where he's not." This is actually a lie (though his nose doesn't grow). If he knew where Shrek was he would know everywhere Shrek isn't. You can't just randomly throw negatives into a sentence and expect it to be a double negative.
Edit: It was Shrek the Third, not Shrek 2.
- I guess it depends on if the nose grows with untrue information, or lies.
  Because if it's lies all he needs to do is THINK it's the truth and his nose won't grow.
  If his nose grows because the information is not true, then this is one hell of a power. You could get him to theorise on the meaning of life.
  
  The intent of the scene was clear. He's just trying to say a lot of double negatives and be confusing. It's not a moment of world building for the mechanics of Pinocchio's nose lol
  
  That would make an interesting story about a superhero with that power.

I'll have it done by the end of the week
- 2 weeks!

Eskimos have a kabrillion words for snow.
Indigenous Alaskan/north Canadian languages have a few more words for snow than English, but it's not that that much more.
- Oh this one for sure.

If an object isn't pushed by any force, it'll stop moving. (It'll actually keep moving at the same speed).
- Not in real life though. Only in Highschool physics class.
  
  That's because of friction and air resistance which are still forces. Repeat the same experiment in outer space where there's no atmosphere or stuff in the way and you won't see that
  There's even things like ion engines that take advantage of that by producing tiny amounts of thrust but run over long amounts of time to build up quite a bit of speed
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster
  
  Physics is about nothing but real life

Earth is flat!

The pyramids were already hundreds of years old when the last Woolly Mammoth died.
- looking here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth and here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza tells me that the last woolly mammoths died around 4000 years ago and the pyramids of Gizeh were built around 4500 years ago.
- Thousands. You can check old photos of the sphinx that show clear marks from water running vertically down the walls. The last time Egypt was that wet was many thousands of years before the official age of the sphinx and pyramids
  Robert schock if you want to research more

Emma Stone is older than Margot Robbie
- That one is true though. Emma Stone is born 1988 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Stone), Margot Robbie was born 1990 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Robbie)
  
  Damn you You caught me before I deleted. I had to question backwards I was posting something that sounds wrong but is true

The earth is flat.

deleted
- Read the titles again, bro!
- This one is the opposite

I expect downvotes and deletion.
Left vs right wing politics. Both are the same. The real conflict is between powerful and powerless. Both sides claim to be fighting against this, while pitting the middle class against either the upper (left) or lower (right) classes.
- The “left” in the US is really actually center-right. And the “right” is far-right. So yes, both the “left” and “right” in the US are basically the same. Neoliberalism is just fascism with a smart suit and empty platitudes after all.
  But saying the left and right are the same when talking about political ideology (and not the political landscape of the USA) is extremely wrong.
  The right wants to conserve existing power structures or revert to previous ones. The left wants to dismantle power structures and bring about egalitarianism.
  That is the dichotomy. To the right hierarchy, to the left egalitarianism.
  The USA has been the subject of the most powerful and long lasting propaganda machine and psyops in history.
- It'll get downvoted because it's an extremely cold Enlightened Centrist take. You're cherry picking one, albeit major, thing they have in common and ignoring the difference between the policies they enact.
  Yes at the end of the day the real battle is absolutely between the 99% and 1% but to pretend that there is no discernable difference between the two major parties is asinine.
- It depends on if you’re talking about left vs right politicians or left vs right political viewpoints. If you’re talking about viewpoints, I absolutely disagree with what you’re saying. If you’re talking about politicians, especially in the US, then sadly, you’re mostly correct. The left say they want to make tons of changes but when push comes to shove, there’s enough money in politics to stop any real changes from happening no matter which party is supposedly in charge.
  
  I would add that this is only true in general, and on a sliding scale. There are some pure of heart on both sides. True conservatives that mean well, and true progressives.
- Not sure why you're being downvoted, what you said is false.
  
  They said "I expect downvotes" and people have downvoted, so it wasn't false so people are downvoting it.
- Yes, that sounds true, but is false.

74 comments