To think some people are so thick it’s almost beyond parody

[Annecydrone]

Photo on local history Facebook group. A beautiful Georgian mansion, taken in the 1930s. The post clearly explains that the mansion was demolished in the 1950s after a devastating fire destroyed most the structure, at which time it was in private hands. There’s a second photo of the shell of the building post-fire, clearly showing all but one wall standing.

Comments underneath include people
blaming the council for not preserving the mansion, demolishing it for “profit” at the behest of “developers” (despite the council not owing it, selling it or giving permission to build on it); how the failure to preserve the mansion was “woke” and shows the left’s disrespect for our heritage; several entirely serious posts about the land probably being used for a Mosque.

The land where it stood is still empty and still privately owned (as far as I can see).

Are people genuinely this stupid or are they keen to shoehorn their political views into literally anything?

Aww ... If we're doing Stupid Me confessions, someone told me as a child that the Genesis story explained, or was meant to explain, why men have one less rib than women.

I never questioned it until Mumsnet put me straight - in my sixties 😏

I don't think it's that stupid, my local museum has a working giant weaving loom that they make cloth and sell in the gift shop. I suppose it depends on whether he meant 'somebody' as in a local heritage org or the council could consider resurrecting it, doing demos etc. as a visitor attraction (fine) vs random residents deciding to learn a 500 year old craft including DIY-ing their own loom as an easy side hussle (slightly unlikely, although still not impossible!)

Haha, good question, can I? (Not a scientist, or a teacher). I think we may be approaching the limits of my explaining skills now. Suddenly realised that it's one of those "I know what I mean but struggle to explain it" things. I just googled it and got an AI response that included the following examples:

• Falsifiable: "All objects fall to the ground." (Falsified if you find an object that floats up).
• Unfalsifiable: "There is an invisible, undetectable ghost in the room." (No test can prove this wrong because the ghost is "undetectable").

Proper science should be falsifiable, which doesn't mean there IS an example which disproves the statement that is being made about a scientific principle, but that there (theoretically) COULD be, if that makes sense. There's evidence to prove something, so there could be evidence to disprove it (and if such evidence was found, scientists would change their minds). Unfalsifiable things are ones that can't be proved in the first place, nor disproved, so not really scientific. That doesn't necessarily mean it's not true. I mean, I might have a memory that's totally accurate, but nobody can hook machine up to my brain and "read" it and prove that it is. My claims about my own thoughts and feelings are unfalsifiable. It doesn't mean they're untrue, but they lie outside the realm of science, as it stands. Different kind of truth. We can all believe that our ideas on moral / spiritual truth are right ("my religion is the truth"), but we have to accept that it lies outside the realm of SCIENTIFIC truth. Science is about proving things.

I don't think that's a brilliant explanation but it seems to be the best I can do. Help me out, science people.

What I was saying about IQ tests was that they're not, in my view, entirely scientific because they rely on some assumptions, which are not proven facts, about human intelligence and what intelligence actually IS and how best to measure it and so on and so forth. Because if intelligence means "the ability to understand / interpret / cope with the world you live in", that means different things in different times and places. And some IQ questions rely on prior experience / knowledge that you may or may not have already acquired (it does try to avoid that, but I don't think it's possible to entirely succeed; there's always going to be some cultural bias sneaking in). And because people and how they think can change over time, in response to culture, environment and all the rest (in a way, that say, the laws of physics or the behaviour of numbers do not). I started off commenting on how numbers / averages (any numbers, about anything) work, and then got derailed a bit when someone, I think, commented on IQ tests specifically and I threw in some caveats about possible problems with IQ testing. I'm definitely on firmer ground when thinking about the first one (that's just about numbers).

BTW, I only saw your question by chance when having another look at this thread. If you want someone to get the automated email to tell them someone's responded to them directly, either use the quote function or put an @ in front of their username.

Hope that helps at least a little bit.

latetothefishing
".... my local museum has a working giant weaving loom that they make cloth and sell in the gift shop."

Ah but there may not be any working giants around the op's way, particularly not any who can do weaving.

He totally meant the random residents - but he was specific about the fact that he thought there would still be some of the old equipment "hanging about". He told me he had just been on a tour at the local Town Hall which mentioned the cloth being important to the history of the town until the 16th Century, so he definitely would have been told that it hadn't been made since then!

Years ago someone in the House of Commons, or maybe a Commons committee, made a massive fuss because an MP had used the word 'niggardly'.

Now, I abhor any kind of racist language or language which might offend individuals or groups, but really! Get a ruddy dictionary. This word means mean and miserly, and has no connection of any kind with the N word. The whole incident was excruciating in exposing the embarrassing ignorance of the complainer.