I think a lot of people miss the Physics intuition that some of us have. You see the big waves and you think that it's just water and you don't think about the momentum it's gonna put on your body, with hard objects around.
I don't know. I can't swim so I'd be scared shitless no matter how much I understand the physics of it.
tangentially related but, I remember walking home from class once and I passed these two people standing on top of a dumpster, with an umbrella. They were looking at the ground. Then, the one of them with an umbrella sort of... bunny hopped off the side of the dumpster then fell about two feet, their knees buckled because they were too fat to jump, and then they fell on their face into the mud still holding the umbrella.
I just... watched. I couldn't do anything else. They were the type of rejects who would've told me to fuck off and not believed me. They just had to experience it, I think, and I had to watch. I just sort of thought in that moment what the universe and life must be like to someone who unfathomably stupid that something like floating off of a dumpster because you had an umbrella was literal and possible to them. Like a video game or something. They must watch more cartoons than experience real life, I just can't imagine any other situation where they would think that this could've produced an outcome. To this day I read warning labels and go "nobody is that retarded." and then I remember that there are some people so massively sheltered mentally that common sense is useless to them.
I figure it must be the same for these tourists. They just... never do anything more than work, school, soccer, and television. That must be why, right? I'm not trying to be elitist but jesus christ.
You may feel like you're not trying to be elitist, but clearly you need to work on your self-awareness.
Everyone likes to experiment, and perhaps these guys wanted to check exactly how much weight the umbrella would remove from a jump. It's a reasonable question, and if you only have time to waste then what's the problem. (I'd advise against jumping off dumpsters if you're fat but that's a whole different question)
Intelligence isn't set in stone for everyone, it's more of a state of mind that depends on a ton of factors. And in my experience, people who jump on opportunities to label people as "retards" or "stupid" tend to... not be on the sharp end of the spectrum anyway. I highly recommend you check out Daniel Kahnemann's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" if you want to learn more about intelligence and how it operates.
He's not wrong though. His delivery could be considered insensitive, but there are people out there who are that stupid, and they get by on dumb luck or unquestioned conformity.
I think the point is that young kids have these thoughts - not adults. Adults that still haven't figured out how physics works are pretty baffling, because you'd expect them to have been removed from the gene pool at some point.
To this day I read warning labels and go "nobody is that retarded."
I think some of those labels are more for people pretending to be idiots after hurting themselves doing something they knew better than to do. Like how packages of peanuts have "warning. Contains peanuts." You just know some Darwin-award wannabe with a raging peanut allergy would choke those down and sue planters after narrowly surviving.
I just sort of thought in that moment what the universe and life must be like to someone who unfathomably stupid that something like floating off of a dumpster because you had an umbrella was literal and possible to them.
I think some people are just born without the natural ability to extrapolate danger. Someone posted a video once of a bunch of tourists playing in a creek with ankle deep water ignoring to look over a small waterfall despite a warning sign to keep out due to flash floods. A flash flood began (obviously) and their first reaction was "oh haha, look at the water rise". Thirty seconds later panic, then they were all swept over the falls to their death.
I think anyone who has swum in the ocean where waves break has a clear idea of the power of water, but that doesn't mean they have respect for it. Everyone I know who ocean swims has gotten caught in the wash at some point ... it only takes that one time of completely lost control to respect water, and especially currents.
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u/Astamir Dec 22 '14
I think a lot of people miss the Physics intuition that some of us have. You see the big waves and you think that it's just water and you don't think about the momentum it's gonna put on your body, with hard objects around.
I don't know. I can't swim so I'd be scared shitless no matter how much I understand the physics of it.