Popular misconceptions about your area(s) of expertise...

[disgruntledgamer]

Graduated with a degree in Archaeology a few years back. The amount of people who had asked me if I had dug up any dinosaurs....

Are you serious? People confuse ancient human civilizations with paleontology.

Yeah it happens. I just tell them I don't dig deep enough to find dinosaurs. Saves me trying to explain that the study of dinosaurs is a different thing entirely.

I'd just start making up fake dinosaur names like Barack-a-sore-ass and tell them it's a new discovery that's at the closest museum and they should call and make inquires about it.

 

[Ieyke]

Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian mythology -
I'm not an all-encompassing master of these mythologies, but I am VERY well-versed compared to the average person, especially Greek myths.
People just....they don't know shit about mythology.
Everything they think they know comes from some twisted completely messed-up pop culture reinterpretation that has very little relation at all to actual mythology.
For example:
- Hades/Pluto, Dis Pater, Anubis, Thantos, etc etc, being evil.
- Kratos being a god of note.
- The Kraken being a Greek monster that Perseus fought.
- The list goes on and on....

Ninjas -
I'm not an all-encompassing master of knowledge about ninjas either, but I AM a lowly trained ninja, and have been taught a decent amount of actual Ninjutsu history as part of that. Just as with the various mythologies, most people don't know diddly crap about ninjas.
- The number of times I run into people who think ninjas are entirely fictional is...sad. I can understand the idea that ninjas might no longer be around, since, while we're not secretive, we don't really do anything to make the public aware of our continued existence, and we certainly operate in a completely different capacity from the dedicated spies and assassins we once were....but to think that ninjas are as mythical as goblins and dragons...that's just weird to me.

Video Games -
Most of us here are gamers, and that makes video games and "expertise" of ours compared to the non-gaming public.
Beyond the run-of-the-mill gamer, I've also spent years learning from game analysts and critics, and becoming very VERY familiar with the inner workings of the game industry, the way it "thinks", what patterns it follows, trends it gravitates towards, etc etc, and I've recently started going to school for Game Design.
- I'm sure I don't have to tell you guys all the horrible stupid crap the non-gaming public believes about video games. The list of stupid, mind-numbing idiocy we hear about video games from Fox News ALONE....it's painful.
- A lot of ordinary hard-core gamers have really poorly thought out criticisms of various games/franchises.
Not understanding things like certain strengths of a given game being the result of perceived weakness of the game.
Not understanding that time and hardware limitations mean that a game like:
Metal Gear Solid 4 can have almost flawless graphics and super-realistic animation because it's VERY linear and has relatively simple gameplay.
Assassin's Creed can have super-realistic animations and beautiful graphics AND a massive open world at the price of being glitchy as all hell and having a narrow range of gameplay/story options
Fallout and The Elder Scrolls can have pretty graphics, huge open worlds, and a bazillion options and variables, but at the cost of having horrible animation, glitches, and very generic gameplay (it's just a really straight-forward first person RPG control set up).


Ultramarines in Warhammer 40,000 -
People only have a very very shallow comprehension of them based off of simplified descriptions aimed at new players. Or they have a comprehension of them based on the "Ultramarines Series" of books, which are written by an author who appears to be utterly incapable of writing about actual Ultramarines.
The long time Ultramarines players, who've read about the Chapter until they've most all available sources, end up with the understanding that:
- The Ultramarines are about as FAR from a bland "vanilla" Chapter as they could possibly be. They may perfectly fulfill the "bare minimum" requirements of the "standard" Chapter, but they don't JUST fulfill that bare minimum. They do everything as grandly and efficiently as possible. They take all those same parameters and fulfill them all to the max, and THEN add that on top of their vast and elaborate Greco-Roman cultural themes.
- Graham McNeill can't write Ultramarines fluff what meshes with the canon to save his life.
- etc
- etc
- etc
- etc
- I could go on forever
- Eventually you realize that even Games-Workshop is slowly losing grip on the details of the Ultramarines.



I'm sure I can add a bunch more things to this list if I really sat and though about it.
This is just what occurs to me while sitting here in my Game Development class.

 

[AgentNein]

I'm a musician who's band recently signed a record contract with an indie label. People who find out (who aren't in the music world much) absolutely freak. Alright, I appreciate the enthusiasm! It IS a cool thing, it's a great step in the right direction! Not all labels are fucking, I don't know, Virgin Records or EMI however. We're not set for life. It might be a while if ever I get a dime off these folks. No the mansion and the BMW are not in the mail.

Also on the same page, getting my hair cut the other day, chatting it up with the scissor brandishing lady telling her about some of the stuff going on, and she informs me that the secret to bands making it? Getting on the radio. It's so simple! Just get your music on the national radio stations! OH THANKS LADY. WHY DID WE NOT THINK OF THAT. Genius.

 

[WolfThomas]

Or my favourite the blobbogram:

The X axis should read "Results of test" or words to that effect and have a middle line for the control to show how the tests deviate from the norm either negatively or positively. This what real science looks like people. On the blobbogram the middle is the placebo. The middle of the horizontal lines represents what that test showed (worse or better) and the length of the line indicates how far the real result could deviate based on the limitations of the test.

Unless data is correlated like this and involves EVERY test you can find that fits on that axis your conclusion will be flawed. People who take a single test (Im looking at YOU news article "X CAUSES CANCER") to try and show "Science" supports anything annoy me. Thats really shitty science.

And the fact that Cochrane's Symbol is that of a real systematic review and meta analysis that showed giving corticosteroids to mothers of premature infants would save lives. Hurray for (factually correct) Science!

 

[AgentNein]

Because I'm a musician and in a rock band, people call me a rock star. Ignoring the fact that I absolutely loathe that phrase (I'm a punk guy, what can I say?), it also makes no sense to call me that. Do I have millions of fans? No. Do I have millions of dollars? No. Do people generally know who the fuck I am? Hahaha no. My other beef is when people say that having a guitar gets you girls. Yeah, if you're playing Jason Mraz. Not so much if you play Stooges and Mudhoney.

Yeah, I wanna vouch for all of this too. I mean, the "rock star" thing, I understand it's coming from a place of flattery. Totally. But yeah, I'm not rich and I'm not famous and I really don't wanna associate myself with that whole shtick. "Rock star", ew. In my myriad of musical ventures I've experienced enough "aspiring rock stars" to last a life time. Getting young teen girls trashed so they can lure them out to their van and have their very own groupie, treating music like a competition, treating the different scenes of the country as tools to be used instead of various interesting people to interact with get to know and enjoy a mutual love of music... no thanks. You can keep that term.

 

[Vault101]

I study Biomedical Sciences, so the oft-heard misconceptions about human health, biology or science in general piss me off to no end:
-You only use 10% of your brain!
-Eating sugar makes you hyperactive!
-All the vaccination conspiracy loons

you get energy from plants because of photosynthasis!...

or so I heard

 

[NinjaSocks333]

Tanks....YUM. Chobham armor FTW. Chobham with a layer of depleted uranium...drool.

Slightly off topic... but do you know the construction of Chobham armour? (Spelt with a 'u'... it's British after all!)

And why would you want depleted uranium in vehicle armour, out of curiosity? '

Mostly because depleted uranium is dense as fuck, making it very effective armour.

OT: When people break their computers and have no idea what to do, yet look at me like i am an idiot when i tell them. Case in point, anyone who ever got a virus from a torrent ever!

 

[thejackyl]

I've worked in photographic enhancement, and the number of times I've been presented with a shitty little thumbnail and requested to somehow turn it into a high quality, poster-sized image is beyond belief.

I'm sorry, this ain't CSI.

I am asked this on a daily basis. Or they have a picture with a sign that's blurry, and ask me to simply "unblur" it. Another time I was asked to remove a group of people from in front of a sign. When I did (I edited the spot they were in with the background of the sign, so it looked like it was missing lettering. And edited the rest of the sign blank.) And they came back asking why the sign is blank. They didn't seem to understand that a picture taken from a camera is flat, and thought if I just erased the people the sign would be 100% intact. Until I explained it with a piece of paper.

Twice every year, I'll be asked to blow up a wallet-sized photo and turn it into an 8x10 photo with no quality loss. Their defense is simply "The photographer can do it, why can't you?". And my step-dad (who owns this business) doesn't understand why I don't want to take over when he retires.

 

[Vault101]

I am asked this on a daily basis. Or they have a picture with a sign that's blurry, and ask me to simply "unblur" it. Another time I was asked to remove a group of people from in front of a sign. When I did (I edited the spot they were in with the background of the sign, so it looked like it was missing lettering. And edited the rest of the sign blank.) And they came back asking why the sign is blank. They didn't seem to understand that a picture taken from a camera is flat, and thought if I just erased the people the sign would be 100% intact. Until I explained it with a piece of paper.
.

I can't wrap my head around the Idea like in that case people think cameras are some kind of arcane magic...you can't make things in the photo apear out of nowhere, until we get cameras that take photos that are fully formed 3D environemnts...that would be trippy

EDIT: if I recall correctly girl with the dragon tatoo was actually a little more acurate in that regard

 

[TakeyB0y2]

I guess "retail clerk" isn't much of an area of expertise, but:

- Customers assume that every clerk in the store is 100% knowledgeable about EVERYTHING in the store, even if it's a big department store with 10,000+ different products. And not just that, but they know the behind-the-scenes processes of the store and how it works, how it's managed, everything... No, just, no...

- Customers also seem to assume that retail associates have no lives and no biological needs or functions. I had one lady tell me I was "disgraceful" because I wanted to go on break during a busy hour; I was overdue for my break by over an hour, and was starting to feel dizzy from being hungry and doing so much talking, not to mention dealing with said lady who was going nuts because she lost her receipt yet expected a full return on an item. So here I am, feeling like I'm about to throw up and pass out, and have some lady telling me I'm a disgrace for wanting to leave the til when lines are long. Sheesh lady, I'm just a retail clerk wanting to go on a short break, I'm not a doctor abandoning his patients or something.

 

[B-Lavaunit]

I have to...not disagree with you but kinda agree with the people you are disagreeing with.

As an artist I deal with tons of misconceptions about art. The big one that bothers me is when people say something like "I was just never talented enough to be an artist." No one was ever born with innate artistic talent. Becoming an artist means learning all the techniques for rendering an image, developing thematic and philosophical content, practicing a lot, and having the patience to work on a painting for the ridiculous amount of time that it takes to make a good painting. It's not talent, it's hard work, and it's frustrating to hear that get dismissed.

Yes art is a skill that can be learned, but to be any good at it, being naturally talented would certainly help, especially with the whole learning the skills. (i dont mean like gifted, i mean "having the knack", i personally cant even draw decent stick figures)

And while I don't work in pure abstraction myself, I do find it offensive when people outright dismiss artists like Pollock or Rothko because they don't understand enough about the art world to know how to look at them in the first place. Yes, there are some talentless hacks who have used abstraction to get away with being lazy, but that's no reason to dismiss an entire genre inhabited by some truly driven artists.

I understand the passion you must have to actually be offended by people not liking art, but some people just dont like it. I for one cannot begin to understand what any of pollock's work is supposed to mean, or make me feel, or even what it is. Art appreciation is a personal thing, and some people just dont get it. I like my art to be of something that i can relate to, not an abstract idea or feeling, and it is possibly to do with the way i look at it but so be it.

Basically what i am saying is that art is not for everyone, in the same way that not everyone appreciates all types of music, or books, or food or anything. Its not something to get offended over, its not even really their fault.

 

[Strazdas]

I got bachelors in economics. people seem to think that economics only revolves around rich people stealing from the poor. i am dissapoint in humanity.
Im getting my masters in accounting. No, we are not bookworms, we are the real control of the company. everything goes though us.
Currently working in national statistics department. you know, the misconception that most statistics are made up.... turns out to actually be true.....
In my free time i also fix computers (not muh free time now but i used to). whenever somoen comes with a totally dead pc and "well you just have to type some command and make it work" it really is annoying. the "i dont care what you do just make it work" is at least somewhat better.
Then again there are people who think:
fuel gets inejcted into a car.
magic happens
you drive.

- Customers assume that every clerk in the store is 100% knowledgeable about EVERYTHING in the store, even if it's a big department store with 10,000+ different products.

well thats kinda YOUR JOB to KNOW. i know i didnt get hired as retail clerk because they werent satisfied with my knowledge. so there definatelly is a need for certain knowledge, at least the basics. Actually this is the reason i almost never ask for help, usually i know more than the clerk

Case in point, anyone who ever got a virus from a torrent ever!

not to go offtopic but torrent is the safest way of downloading anything when you look at viruses. private torrents from companies are safe because well they are private, and public ones are weeded out by public almsot isntantly. the old pirating services like emule, dc++ and so on are where the viruses lurk. its a common misconception that torrents are full of viruses. they are not.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

I study Biomedical Sciences, so the oft-heard misconceptions about human health, biology or science in general piss me off to no end:
-You only use 10% of your brain!
-Eating sugar makes you hyperactive!
-All the vaccination conspiracy loons

you get energy from plants because of photosynthasis!...

or so I heard

Strangle that person, while screaming "YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OXYGEN WITH PHOTOSYNTHESIS CAN YOU NOT?" for extra effect.

 

[Spinozaad]

People who:
1) Think history deals in "facts" and how the past "really happened." Leopold von Ranke has been dead for almost 130 years. History moved on.
2) Think historians know every inane detail of everything that ever happened. We don't. In fact, if you meet someone who bores you to death with tedious little historical details, and gets angry when people are being "historically incorrect" (how DARE you depict the soldiers in that WW2 movie with 50s era machine guns!!!!111), then you probably met a historian who wasn't academically trained.
3) Think that we need to "know the past" in order to prevent "past mistakes" from "happening again." That one really gets my goat, since it is utter bullshit.
4) Who think that history is a horribly imprecise discipline. No. In fact, I would dare to argue that it is epistemologically more sophisticated than quite a number of other disciplines in the Humanities/Social "Sciences."

 

[Beliyal]

As an archaeology student, I must say that the amount of misconceptions is astounding. One of the most common things is when people ask me if we found gold during excavations and if we took it home. I literally get depressed when people say that because robbing and destroying archaeological sites is still flourishing and most people don't even think that's something to be concerned about, and they ask if I took some gold from the site. Society is in serious need of education about what it means to steal from archaeological sites and what archaeologists really do there.

And for the love of God, we don't dig dinosaurs! I'm not even kidding, people still think that. Once I found some toy set for excavations in a store which clearly stated that is was for paleontology and had dinosaur bones included, but the store advertised it as an archaeological set. Even after I notified them that it's wrong, they didn't change it.

And of course, the amount of people who imagine that archaeology is what they saw in Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider never ceases to surprise me.

 

[A BigCup of Tea]

As someone studying a science degree, it pisses me off when some people seem to think that science is all about making random guesses.

You mean it's not done like that!! dear god i've been doing it wrong my whole life!!

Well i work with disabled children and it seems most people if not everyone seems to think they're a danger, i'd say 85% of the kids i look after are the sweetest kids you will ever meet, yeah ok sometimes they can get upset but so do most kids who don't have a disability

 

[Kpt._Rob]

As an artist I deal with tons of misconceptions about art. The big one that bothers me is when people say something like "I was just never talented enough to be an artist." No one was ever born with innate artistic talent. Becoming an artist means learning all the techniques for rendering an image, developing thematic and philosophical content, practicing a lot, and having the patience to work on a painting for the ridiculous amount of time that it takes to make a good painting. It's not talent, it's hard work, and it's frustrating to hear that get dismissed.

Yes art is a skill that can be learned, but to be any good at it, being naturally talented would certainly help, especially with the whole learning the skills. (i dont mean like gifted, i mean "having the knack", i personally cant even draw decent stick figures)

That's just it though. Everyone starts with stick figures. You seriously would not believe how many times I've heard that exact line. It is always stick figures. But it's beside the point. I'm not saying that you should learn more if you're not interested, but anyone who has the basic motor skills necessary to hold a pencil, and the basic intellectual skills necessary to understand the techniques, could learn more, practice, and become better. The fact that you don't know it yet, doesn't mean that you couldn't learn it. This may seem like a silly point to stick on, but honestly I think that it's really discouraging to aspiring young artists to hear people speak as if there was no way that they could learn to paint or draw better. I feel like it's really important to try and dispel the myth of natural talent, because it gets ingrained in us as children and it leads people who might otherwise be interested making art to never try for fear that it will be an impossible task.

And while I don't work in pure abstraction myself, I do find it offensive when people outright dismiss artists like Pollock or Rothko because they don't understand enough about the art world to know how to look at them in the first place. Yes, there are some talentless hacks who have used abstraction to get away with being lazy, but that's no reason to dismiss an entire genre inhabited by some truly driven artists.

I understand the passion you must have to actually be offended by people not liking art, but some people just dont like it. I for one cannot begin to understand what any of pollock's work is supposed to mean, or make me feel, or even what it is. Art appreciation is a personal thing, and some people just dont get it. I like my art to be of something that i can relate to, not an abstract idea or feeling, and it is possibly to do with the way i look at it but so be it.

Basically what i am saying is that art is not for everyone, in the same way that not everyone appreciates all types of music, or books, or food or anything. Its not something to get offended over, its not even really their fault.

Well, hold up just a bit. I didn't say I'm offended by their not liking it. I said I was offended by their dismissing it without giving it consideration. Those are two very different things. What I'm talking about is the sort of person who will say something like "I don't like Pollock because any three year old could paint something like that." What they're saying sounds intuitive (despite being demonstrably false) to someone without any art training because they don't understand what they're actually looking at. I think what you're saying here is different, and while I feel like you're missing out on something which I dearly love, I can't get offended by it. You're not saying "this is bad art," you're just saying that you don't know enough about it to make a judgement, and it doesn't interest you enough that you'd want to learn enough to make a judgment. It's kind of disappointing to see that sort of attitude towards abstract art, but I'm not going to be offended by it in the same way as I would be offended by someone who makes a judgement without having tried to weigh all the evidence.

 

[Dangit2019]

Graduated with a degree in Archaeology a few years back. The amount of people who had asked me if I had dug up any dinosaurs....

Haha, that's stupid. Everyone knows that an archaeologist's job is to dig up mosquitoes in amber, and then the dinosaurs come afterwards, right? Right?

 

[baconmaster]

The fact that I plan to study Theoretical Physics does not mean I'm like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory... Ugh.

Also, playing a generic rock beat at a high tempo does not make you a good drummer. Playing one at a high tempo while still keeping time might make you a passable punk drummer, but that's it.

 

[Quaxar]

As an archaeology student, I must say that the amount of misconceptions is astounding. One of the most common things is when people ask me if we found gold during excavations and if we took it home. I literally get depressed when people say that because robbing and destroying archaeological sites is still flourishing and most people don't even think that's something to be concerned about, and they ask if I took some gold from the site. Society is in serious need of education about what it means to steal from archaeological sites and what archaeologists really do there.

Please, at least consider getting a whip and a hat. Think of the children! And especially those of us that were children when the movies came out.
And it wouldn't hurt purchasing fake gold relics...