It would be interesting to see how many of these people are religious, too.
Perhaps inspired by TV favourites such as Doctor Who and Ashes to Ashes, nearly a third of Britons (30%) believe that time travel is actually possible. The results were revealed in a survey, launched at the start of National Science and Engineering Week (11-20 March) by Birmingham Science City, which aimed to see just how blurred the lines between science and fiction really are.
Other findings included:
1. Over a fifth of adults incorrectly believe light sabres exist.
2. Nearly a quarter (24%) of people are wrong in their belief that humans can be teleported.
3. Nearly 50% of adults wrongly believe that memory-erasing technology exists.
4. More than 40% of people incorrectly believe that hover boards exist.
5. Nearly one fifth (18%) of adults have the incorrect view that they can see gravity.
That’s how Obama got elected once.
50% of the population is below average.
But all these things are true. It’s the international conspiracy that is hiding them from us!
Actually, 50% of the population is below The Median, not necessarily The The Average.
@Taxed Enough Already Dude
RE: #12, #17 and #19
OK, Enough with the political stuff. Not everything in this blog needs political commentary. We all know that you don’t like liberals. Your stupidity shows when you can only relate things to some sort of political jab or making insults. If you want to talk politics please go to political blogs or at least stick to the political posts on this blog.
Thank you.
The big question is … Where does Adam Curry fit in this survey?
In The Morning. …. The science is In!
My personal opinion is that with quantum physics, nothing is impossible. We are still learning so much about our universe.
With regards to mind erasing technology, it’s called a hammer to the head.
#23 Taxed Enough Already Dude said,: No nation that produced Churchill is stupid?
Surely you jest! Churchill was a decent enough war time leader but the rest of his over-privileged life was complete and total fuck-up!
See: http://independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html or read any biography of his life!
#2 – from where I’m sitting it would look to be the case with all your presidents and its only getting worse.
IN other news, thinking that a magical guy created the life and the universe state because some old books say so is perfectly ok.
mind erasing technology == marijuana
Wish I had some so I could forget this topic.
Imagine how stupid if Bush got elected twice.
It’s no wonder, when these people pay more attention to movies than they do to school.
Here is the test: http://bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12758575
Sorry to bust someone’s bubble but take a look at this:
http://physorg.com/news/2011-03-large-hadron-collider-world-machine.html
The title of the article is:
“Large Hadron Collider could be world’s first time machine”
Looks like the Brits are smarter than the article’s author!
Another scientific myth – Americans think they have “High Speed” Internet !!! What are we really ??? Like 20th in connection speed !!!
Looking at this through the other end of the telescope (as most consensus science interprets the world anyway..)
-you could say this (rather flawed study) shows the percentage of people who dare to *think* outside the box mainstream society has nailed to their heads.
-Or, it reveals the dogmatic box the creators of the survey and mainstream science must stay in if they still wish to collect that coveted (gubermnt) paycheck next week..
-s
This is why I love my fellow Britons – when given a dumb survey we always go with the comedy answers just to mess with people. Its like the national census, something like 30% of people claim Jedi as their religion 🙂
>> Taxed Enough Already Dude said, on March 16th, 2011 at 6:15 pm
>> #21 My “Britons are stupid” was merely argumentative, a counter to “uncle Dave.”
The British may not be nearly as superior as they think they are, but I would never call them stupid.
I’m not going to bother but I would guess that this survey is flawed.
>> No nation that produced Churchill is stupid…No doubt his place in the White House will be restored in 2012.
Churchill was more resolute than brilliant. He was great for Britain during the war but his leadership was horrible for Britain in the post war years. He was in total denial about the inevitable end of British colonialism.
He totally misread Gandhi for example. For being a “big picture” guy, Churchill totally got the post-colonial big picture wrong which led to a serious of needless crises and deaths.
Of course, if you are student of Churchill you know this although if you are a Gingrich-style historian, you are very selective in what you chose to believe.
BTW: Taxes are at a 60-year low and Obama cut them even further. So, it’s time to change your posting name to, “Grateful to Obama for the tax cuts Dude.”
http://tinyurl.com/2umr87g
Fox News has done a good job of erasing memories of how spectacularly bad the Bush years were.
To get back on topic…
“That’s really fucked-up.
Just cause they’re ignorant doesn’t means its okay for us to be ignorant.” – Chris Rock
I believe that Jack Daniels has been producing a memory-erasing technology for some time now. The Brits may know their local version as “Tanqueray” or “Guiness”.
Okay, let’s see:
Time travel? Please. E=Mc2 provides for one way time travel. So, indeed it is possible, just not both ways or as easily as hopping into the nearest DeLorean.
1. Sure light sabers exist. They exist in the Star Wars movies. 🙂
2. See above, but substitute “Trek” for “Wars”.
3. Memory erasing “technology” perhaps not. But torture someone long enough and they will agree to forget damned near anything. And, of course, we don’t really need technology. Biology takes care of it just fine. It just happens as you get older and or drink more.
4. I’m not sure what a hover board is.
5. I can see gravity in the state of human affairs based upon the results of this survey.
#59,
Only if you drink their koolaid.
Interesting how often these ‘surveys’ leave out the MOST important bit.
Namely, “60% of people [interviewed for this survey] believed that……”
Notice that none of these Mickey Mouse surveys actually give any information on the reliability of the survey. i.e. “The reliability index was…”
Or, “The population surveyed were tested for their views on a number of other topics and were found to be within the boundaries of conforming to average by….”
In Ireland for example, if you ran such a survey in Kerry, the rest of Ireland would fall about laughing if you told them this was typical of Ireland. Your teeth would be on the floor of course by this time and you with them. Irish humour takes strange forms.
In the US I’m sure that Hollywood isn’t typical of anywhere (I do exaggerate don’t I? How about any of Uncle Dave’s stories from Wacky Florida).
All these stories are notable for their Verificationist approach. Here’s a crackpot idea, I’ll see how many of those interviewed agree with it.
It isn’t science, that requires a critical approach, notably missing from all such studies.
I once flew faster than the speed of light, when we landed, I couldn’t stand it, I was back home the previous night!
Alf, it was a good day. I went to this nice little church today. I met this nice little minister and I will admit the minister and his minions were quite polite, at first. As far as state air and solid waste regulations the fines should not exceed about 30K. It could have been worse the asbestos could have been covered in lead paint. A word to the wise. If you plan on getting rid of asbestos (or lead paint) you should probably check on the regulations.
Now granted that those are only the states suggested fines. As long as they don’t pull one of those hippie, liberal, tree hugging, activist, democrat judges in St Louis they should be OK on our end. I will not even pretend to know how EPA will handle their end of things. They tend to have less of a sense of humor than state regulators. As I said the preacher was very nice. On the down side he went damn near apoplectic when we shut down the christian school they run. I guess they weren’t as concerned about the hatchlings exposure to asbestos as they were about the tuition. Off to public schools they go until it can be shown the school is frangible asbestos free. Hell it should not cost those white, affluent, conservative, god fearing, law and order, folks more than oh say six months with the right contractor and about 130-150K to take it out or encapsulate it.
Some days it a bit of a pain being an agent of the state. But sometimes, just sometimes I get to stand on the mountain top and scream I LOVE MY FUCKING JOB, today happens to be one of those days.
The cherry on top of the day, it was sunny, 82, and I pulled enough flex time to be off tomorrow, three day weekend! ya gotta love it.
Your very happy happy atheist, So what.
Do a sunshine request with the st Louis regional office of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.
You probably want to wait until Monday as I will not be in the office today, and I WILL be the one you talk with.
“Nearly 50% of adults wrongly believe that memory-erasing technology exists.”
This does exist. It’s called vodka.
Sea Lawyer said, on March 16th, 2011 at 7:40 pm
“#32, KD Martin, things are only impossible if you assume our understanding of physics remains constant. We don’t know what we don’t know.”
True. But we do know that Gen. Rel. has survived every experiment so far, and although it does have problems with infinities, the universe it describes does not allow time travel in the negative direction and the infinities don’t affect that. Godel spacetime theory shows that it could be possible in a universe with a negative curvature and a zero Hubble constant, but we live in a flat universe with a non-zero Hubble constant. Hawking et. al. have also noted that time travel might only be possible in a region of spacetime that is warped in the right way, and that if we cannot create such a region until the future, then time travelers would not be able to travel back before that date.
Wikipedia has an interesting article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel