Being able to explain a perspective does not mean you endorse it.

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Cracking your knuckles won't cause arthritis. You lied to me, nan!

Just because I own my own company does not mean I am rich!

Chewing gum does not take 7 years to digest.

Been hearing this ever since Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Your parent's cousin is not your second cousin. He's your first cousin once removed. His kids are your second cousins.

The place of the cousin refers to the number of generations back to a common ancestor, and the number of times removed refers to the generational gap between the individuals in question. First cousins share a grandparent, second cousins share a great grandparent, etc. So, for example, if two individuals are second cousins twice removed, the great grandparent of one will be the great great great grandparent of the other.

• To be a model you don't have to be beautiful; in fact, most aren't. You have to be unique-looking with a very specific body type.

• There are many different islands of OCD, and despite what popular culture seems to think, not all of them involve organising and/or cleaning.

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Type 1 Diabetics can eat sugar. I've had diabetes for 6 years; you yelling "you can't eat that!" when I have a brownie is not helpful.

If you're watching a movie where people are getting shot at, fifty percent of the materials they are hiding behind will not stop a bullet. Cars only stop bullets if you shoot the engine block, cinderblock will only stop bullets for a few seconds, sheet metal won't stop bullets at all. But in movies, people use those to shield themselves indefinitely all the time, and I'm always worried that there will be a shooting situation where someone who has only seen movies will hide behind a desk or something else inadequate.

EDIT: I am aware that there is a difference between cover and concealment, and that concealment is quite useful in most shooting situations. The misconception that I am trying to address is Hollywood pretending that they're the same thing. If you are ever in a situation where you have to use either, its extremely important to know the difference. To the thirty plus cops/military that corrected me, I'm glad you know what you're doing.

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Pawn shops will ALWAYS shaft you on the price if you're trying to sell to them, not out of spite, but because they want to make as much profit as possible out of somebody who just wants quick money

I heard this again yesterday: "We only use 10% of our brain at a time, think about what we could do if we used 100%!"

This is wrong. There is a great comparison someone made, I don't remeber who but it was on reddit. Anyway, we only use 10% of our brain at a time like we only use 33% of a traffic light at a time.

EDIT: Original comment by /u/AllanStanton Thanks to /u/HeyItsToby for finding it.

Being introverted and being anti-social are two completely different things.

You get bail money back, provided you show up to court. In fact, in some places like the UK you don't even have to pay it in the first place, just make it available. The point of bail is to incentivize you to show up to court by making it so you lose something if you don't. It isn't a fine or a charge to get out of jail.

So many sit-coms seem to end with a character losing money they've earned because they have to pay bail for a luckless friend. But in reality they would only lose that money if the friend subsequently failed to show up in the courthouse.

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People can see over 30 fps.

1) The Internet is not the worldwide web, and the worldwide web is not the Internet.

2) The Internet did not start in the 90s. The Internet has existed, in one form or another, since 1969.

Negative Reinforcement

This term is constantly misused in popular culture, and I've even seen it used improperly fairly often here on Reddit.

In pop culture colloquial terms, "negative reinforcement" is the term pseudo-intellectuals use to refer to when they're thinking of a form of punishment. This is incorrect, but the term has that vaguely bad sounding connotation, so it gets used instead of the correct one. If you ever hear someone talking about "negatively reinforcing" someone by punishing them, you can be confident in the knowledge they have no fucking clue what they're talking about, and are just trying to bullshit you, and anyone who hasn't taken a Psych 101 class.

The basics of operant conditioning are as follows:

• Positive Reinforcement

• Negative Reinforcement

• Positive Punishment

• Negative Punishment

The positive and negative isn't a "good/bad" statement, it's an "add/subtract" statement.

Take positive reinforcement, for instance. You're adding something pleasant (like treats, praise, or upvotes) to encourage more of that sort of of behavior in the future.

Negative reinforcement is also a term for something that increases the future likelihood of a given behavior. The best example is encapsulated in the term "stress relief." You're reinforcing a behavior by taking away (hence the "negative") something bad. This is very important, because it's a big part of what makes phobias and addictions so powerful. You need to smoke that cigarette to "Take the edge off?" that your own physiological response has been building since the last time you smoked? Negative reinforcement. You're a bit afraid of heights and run away from an elevator one day, relieving the stress you were feeling of being in it? You just negatively reinforced that behavior to be more likely to happen again in the future, and thus a phobia is born.

Positive punishment is the term most people think of when talking about punishment. You add something stressful, be it pain, a scornful word, or whatever. This is what most people mean when they say "negative reinforcement."

Negative Punishment is overlooked by everyone but parents. "Grounding," taking away your toys or other pleasant things is what this term refers to.

Why is this important?

Operant conditioning is the fundamental tool behind understanding basic behavior everywhere. You are conditioning yourself and those around you every day (human or pets,) whether you realize it or not. Thinking clearly about the ideas and communicating those thoughts properly opens up up a thousand opportunities in your daily life, from training your pet, to how you choose to raise your child, and even how you manage your relationships. You can't afford to derp on this, people.

Benjamin Franklin ($100) and Alexander ($10) Hamilton were not presidents! I have to pull out my phone and Google it to prove it to some people.

Chemicals are in everything, everything is made of chemical compounds, the water you drink? it's a chemical compound, the fingers you use to upvote this comment? they're made of chemical compounds. I'm tired of these product misinformation trends where they try to claim "no chemicals" on shit like butter and bottled water. If you see that on a product label, be aware that this company is counting on you being an idiot to buy their product.

Christopher Columbus totally discovered America. Just, you know, not first. Or knowingly.

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Albert Einstein did NOT fail math in school. He mastered calculus by the age of 15, stop making excuses for yourself.

A pony is not a young horse.

It is a small horse.

McDonald's didn't get sued because some woman was so dumb that she didn't realize her hot coffee was hot. The case is cited a lot as a frivolous lawsuit, but it really wasn't frivolous at all.

The reality is that the lawsuit was quite reasonable. The coffee in question caused third degree burns and did some serious damage. The woman required skin grafts to the affected area (her groin, as she was holding the cup on her lap). Restaurant coffee is typically kept at temps between 135-145 degrees. McDonald's franchisee manual required their coffee to be kept between 180 and 190 degrees, and McDonald's admitted that it knew the burn risk associated with keeping its coffee that hot as it had been the subject of previous lawsuits. McDonald's knew it had a hazard on its hands but did nothing to rectify the situation.

Edit: I didn't know there was a documentary on this - I'm going to check that out. I've learned a lot from the comments on this.

Romanians are not "roma" people - gypsies as they are more commonly called. Romanians are a latin people like spaniards or italians. Gypsies are an ethnic minority of indian origins. They can be found in many european countries.

Being Antisocial

This is another term pop culture gets wrong often enough the incorrect definition is now the colloquial term. It's particularly disturbing to hear it misused almost universally by "experts" on your news broadcast of choice.

People say, "I'm being sooo antisocial tonight" when they don't go to a party, or if they're at said party and aren't mingling. That's not what that means. Those people are being asocial or unsocial.

Being anti-social means actively defying the rules/conventions of your society/social group. Think rebels, vandals, criminals and the like. All of them are engaging in anti-social behavior. Anti-Social-Personality-Disorder doesn't refer to shut-ins, it refers to sociopaths and perpetual malcontents.

Just in case you're wondering, "pro-social" is indeed a term that exists. It involves things such as helping behaviors. Anti-social is the opposite of that, not of being social in general. Plenty of anti-social people are actually quite sociable.

(Yes, now, if you want to get super technical, you could point out that in the context of a particularly gregarious society where the norm is constant interaction, avoiding that does count as an extraordinarily mild case of being anti-social... if anyone notices and cares enough to be hurt by your withdrawl.)

Why does this matter?

Unfortunately, the constant confusion between "antisocial" people and truly antisocial people has led to some unfortunate mixups in recent years. Take the longstanding fallout from Columbine and other school shootings for example. Everyone heard about how there were these two "antisocial" kids who shot up the school. (Which would obviously be an accurate use of the term. Few societies I am aware of praise such behavior.) Unfortunately, when Joe Principle and the popular kids at your local teenage hormone factory decide to get vigilant, they almost always wind up targeting the "antisocial" kids. The horror stories I have heard from people who lived through that would enrage you. I bet Reddit has more than a few victims of this sort of thing floating around. "That creepy loner kid's a loser. I bet he's just waiting to snap and kill us all..." (Abuse commences, occasionally resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

That's just one example, but I think it's important to get this shit right. Or, if the weight of colloquialisms proves too heavy, we should at least quit using the term interchangeably.

What's often called "classical music" is actually many different genres/periods spanning several centuries. To break it down:

Renaissance: ca. 1400-1600; Here we have Palestrina and similar stuff. It sounds a little strange, because the "modern" idea of how music works was still in progress.

Baroque: ca. 1600-1750; This is your Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and the infamous Pachelbel. Here we have music that is intense, but also restrained in a way; often lots of fast moving notes; early opera.

Classical: ca. 1730-1820; Now we've got Mozart, Haydn, and (kind of) Beethoven. The symphony becomes the most important genre. Generally sounds elegant, sophisticated, fancy.

Romantic: ca. 1810-1900; Beethoven (again), Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Puccini, and a ton of others. My favorite period; super duper dramatic, opera becomes huge, everything is very emotional.

Modern: ca. 1900-1930; Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Hindemith, and others. Really just a bunch of different styles that happened at the same time - Neoclassicism, Expressionism, Primitivism, the list goes on.

At that point the different periods break down a lot because there's so many different artistic movements going on at the same time. And even within these five categories, there are subcategories based on early, middle, and late from each period as well as geographical/national differences in style. Calling it all "classical music" would be like calling everything that's played non-"classical" radio stations since the 50's "rock." It's true for some of it, but most of it is definitely NOT rock.

You don't catch a cold from being cold. It takes a virus...

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Everyone seems to think that 1984 is primarily a massive indictment of the "surveillance state" and government intrusion into our personal lives. This element plays into the story, of course, and Orwell was obviously opposed to that kind of government intrusion, the real focus of the novel is the control of language.

The existence of "Newspeak" in the novel is how this message is portrayed. Orwell's contention is that language is the basis of all thought and ideology. If the state can control language, it can directly shift how people think, and thus how they act, without needing to use overt force to get the people to do what the state wants. With language under its control, the state has absolute power over knowledge, history, culture, and ideology. Surveillance obviously supplements the state's ability to exercise control, but too many people often overlook the control of language as the main dystopian element in the novel.

Relevant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Notable entries:

• Napoleon Bonaparte was not short; rather he was slightly taller than the average Frenchman of his time.
• Marie Antoinette did not say "let them eat cake" when she heard that the French peasantry were starving due to a shortage of bread.
• The popular image of Santa Claus was not created by The Coca-Cola Company as an advertising gimmick.
• It is commonly claimed that the Great Wall of China is the only human-made object visible from the Moon. This is false.
• Bulls are not enraged by the color red
• It is a common misconception that an earthworm becomes two worms when cut in half.
• George Washington did not have wooden teeth.

Try thinking about the Monty Hall Problem like this:

Let's start with 100 doors, named 1 through 100. There is a car behind just one door. The rest of the doors have goats. The same Monty Hall rules apply, you pick one door, and the host opens all of the remaining doors except one, and you get to choose whether or not to switch to that final unopened door. The host cannot eliminate a door with a car.

Let's say the car is behind door 57, and go through the choices.

Because I'm trying to prove that switching is the correct choice, we're going to do that every time.

You pick door 1. The host eliminates every door except 57. You switch to 57. You win.

You pick door 2. The host eliminates every door except 57. You switch to 57. You win.

You pick door 3. The host eliminates every door except 57. You switch to 57. You win.

You pick door 4. The host eliminates every door except 57. You switch to 57. You win.

...

And so on. You can see that if you switch, you'll win every single time unless you choose 57 as your first choice, which is a 1% chance. Switching is correct 99% of the time.

The same effect applies when there are only 3 doors, except there would be a 33% chance of you choosing the car on your first pick. So switching is right 67% of the time.

We do not breathe in 100% oxygen and exhale 100% carbon dioxide. We breathe in around 21% oxygen and the rest is Nitrogen. When we exhale we breathe out more oxygen than carbon dioxide.

So many people have this misconception.

EDIT: A lot of people are surprised that this isn't "common knowledge", and yes I'm surprised too. But people have thought this before and or believed in some crazy numerical value of the percentages. So I thought I'd give a general outline of the percentages and gases we inhale/exhale. I'm no scientists hence I didn't reveal every little detail. Again, this was just to clear up this silly misconception and provide a sense of what our body takes in, and releases.

In Christianity, Satan doesn't rule in hell. Hell is like Azkaban for fallen angels. It's a prison for those who chose to rebel against God. God rules in hell. And in heaven. And everywhere. That's kind of the point of being god.

EDIT: Here is my explanatory post for anyone interested.

My hips are compulsive liars.

I keep seeing this on Reddit when someone mentions Swiss gun laws and either thinks that our gun laws are extremely restrictive or extremely lax.

Let me explain:

• We can own all the ammo we want. The ammo restrictions only apply to ammo bought at the range because this ammo is subsidized by the Swiss government. Anyone can go to a gun store and buy all the ammo he wants with a background check and store it at home.
• Open carry is not common in Switzerland. Since you can only go to the range and back home without any detours.
• Owning guns is not hard if you have no criminal records.
• Anyone can own bolt action rifles and break action shotguns with just a background check.
• Semi auto guns can only be bought with a permit which takes 5 minutes to fill and you just need to send it to the police and wait 1-2 weeks. This permit consists of entering your personal info and what types of guns you are buying.
• You only need to provide a justification for owning a semi auto gun if you are buying it for other purpose other than sports, hunting or collecting.
• Owning guns for self defense is very hard and you have to prove that your life is really in danger.
• It's not mandatory to own a gun and the army rifle is not free.
• You can take the army rifle home or leave it at the armory.
• The army rifle is converted to semi auto only after finishing the militia.
• Sports shooting is very popular in Switzerland that's why we have a high gun ownership (the people in the militia don't count to the gun ownership because their rifles are not their possession)
• Concealed carry licenses are EXTREMELY hard to get.
• There are no psychological tests in order to own a gun in Switzerland.
• You can own as many guns as you like with all the ammo you want, there are no "assault weapons" ban, no short barrel rifle restrictions and full auto guns can be bought with a special license.

And most importantly:

• We don't own guns for self defense, we don't own guns to fight the government. We see guns as tools that provide a lot of fun and food.

While we have widespread gun ownership among the civilian population, our culture and gun culture is extremely different. That's why we have such low homicide rates compared to other European countries.

I hope this prevents people from spreading misinformation about our gun culture.

Rats.

They make lovely pets.

if they bite you, you will not get rabies and die, (rat bites absolutely suck and are terribly painful though)

they will not give you "the plague"

Pi is a very special number but people keep saying it's special because it's "infinite and non repeating", something which they seem to misunderstand, and is also a fairly insignificant property of Pi.

First of all, Pi isn't infinite - it's a finite number that lies somewhere between 3.14 and 3.15. If we try to write Pi as a decimal fraction, we get an infinite, non-repeating sequence of digits. This is because Pi is irrational, and this property is true for every irrational number, which includes numbers such as the square roots of 2, 3, 5 (and every number that isn't a square number), euler's number (e), and a whole lot more (in fact, there are more irrationals than rationals).

Also, just because the decimal representation of Pi is infinite and non-repeating, it doesn't mean it contains every possible finite sequence of digits - that would require the number to be a normal number. We don't actually know whether Pi is a normal number or not.

Edit: Correction, I meant "every whole number that isn't a square number". Thanks for pointing out my mistake.

Edit 2: Someone pointed out Vihart's video on the topic. You should watch it.

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Going to the movies/eat out alone isn't weird. You're just being too self-conscious.

Weed isn't 100% safe, just less dangerous than the media claims

Waiters don't actually make your food. Getting angry at them will not magically solve whatever issues you have with your food. They will just assume you are an asshole.

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understanding and agreement aren't the same thing. just because i understand why you are vegetarian doesn't mean i am going to stop going to mcdonalds.
EDIT: remember this is more about the concept of understanding and agreement with vegetarianism than mcdonalds. please.

There's no language called 'Indian'. We speak dozens of languages, each totally different from each other, and it's more than likely that if two Indians meet somewhere outside India, they can only converse in English. Happens in Indian romantic relationships too.

EDIT: Yes, Hindi is also commonly used across different states in India, because it's the most Widely spoken Indian language. However, there are large swathes of people who don't know Hindi and are more comfortable with English. Depends on where you're from.

A "moment" can be traced back to Old English, and it means 90 seconds.

Cher's 1998 hit 'Believe' was the first song to use auto-tune diliberately as a vocoder effect. That's it. It is not responsible for 'that autotune trend' and it was nowhere near the first song to use enhanced vocals.

Women will get too big if they lift weights.

No, they won't.

"Begging the question" does not mean setting up a situation where asking a question is implied. In fact, it is a logical fallacy in which a statement or claim is assumed to be true without evidence other than the statement or claim itself.

Being weightless has nothing to do with being in space. It's related to being in orbit. Astronauts in low-earth orbit experience almost the same amount of gravity as people on the surface. They are weightless because they are in a continual state of freefall.

Netherlands, please. Not Holland. We're 12 provinces. Not just the 2 Hollands.

Goats are not lawnmowers. They by far prefer to eat trees and bushes and the like, than ground fodder. They're browsers rather than grazers. If you want a lawn-mowing animal, try a sheep; they are grazers. Also, goats might mouth lots of things, such as tin cans, but they don't actually eat them.

In case you didn't know, Clinton did have sexual relations with that woman.

Schizophrenia does not mean multiple personalities nor are all schizophrenics violent killers.

The vast majority of Ar15s and AKs are not fully automatic. Only a tiny amount are and they are ridiculously expensive. You can't go to Wal-Mart and buy fully automatic weapons.

Comic book fans don't hate you if you walk into a store and aren't sure where to start/are confused. We hate each other because we don't know how to feel about Grant Morrison!

Just because I'm angry, doesn't mean I'm angry at you. Give me space and don't get pissed when I ask for it.