this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Science Memes

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Exploration (mander.xyz)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Also not true, we know much more about the oceans than the moon, because the moon isn't really that interesting.

We know pretty much all there is to know about the moon. The oceans are much more complex, so there is a lot more to learn. But we also know a whole lot about the oceans, way more than we could ever know about the moon. Sure there's still a lot of things more to find out about the oceans, so percentage wise we maybe know less than the we know about the moon. But again this is because there really isn't that much to know about the moon, so you can get up to a high percentage really quick.

Now people may say we have high res scans of the entire moon and not of the bottom of the ocean, but that isn't true either. We have scans with pretty decent resolution of the ocean floor, not as good as the moon, but still decent. There really isn't that much there. Everywhere we've seen something interesting we've focused in on and checked out. Most of the ocean bottom is pretty much a dark desert under water, so no we haven't "explored" it, there is nothing there.

People use this argument as a shortcut to maybe there's a whole lost civilization of Atlantis down there. Well no there isn't because humans haven't been around all that long let alone civilization, so the Earth isn't all that different in terms of land masses compared to when the first civilization started. Also something that big would definitely show up on scans and under water archeology is a thing. But maybe there's dinosaurs down there. Again no there really isn't, if something that big were there we would have come across it a long time ago. Even if we hadn't seen it directly, we would see signs of it being there. But scientists are discovering new species every day in the oceans! Yeah but have you met scientists? They go crazy for some kind of weird jellyfish which is exactly like most other jellyfish but is technically a different species. Most people wouldn't be able to tell those species apart, only people who really know their stuff can. All of the big stuff has been found.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We know pretty much all there is to know about the moon. The oceans are much more complex, so there is a lot more to learn.

So you're saying we know more about the moon than the ocean.

Weird way to agree with the post but okay.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well no, if you think that I've failed to communicate it properly. Sorry for that. I mean the exact opposite.

Say for example we have some unit of knowledge called T. The moon has in this hypothetical unit about 1000T of possible knowledge and humans know about 900T of things about the moon. In this case the oceans would have at least 1000000T of possibility knowledge and humans know about 800000T. We thus know much more about the oceans than we could even ever know about the moon.

You might argue that we know 90% about the moon and only 80% about the oceans and thus know less about the oceans than the moon. But this fails on three parts:

First of all, we can't know what we don't know. So whilst we might guess the moon has somewhere around 1000T of total knowledge, we can't know this for sure. This means talking about percentages makes no sense. We can only say with some certainty there is orders of magnitudes more to learn about the oceans than there is about the moon.

Second of all, we can estimate the total number of knowledge about the moon is a relatively low order of magnitude compared to the order of magnitude of total knowledge possible about the oceans. This means the percentage is meaningless as even relatively little knowledge leads to a high percentage.

Third of all, knowledge isn't linear. There is always low hanging fruit that can be learnt with little efforts and says a lot about what a thing is. Then as it is studied further, more details emerge which fill in the gaps. The gaps in knowledge get smaller and smaller, and the overall picture stays more and more the same. As I said we've studied the overall structure of the ocean and focused down where interesting stuff is.

Thus comparing knowledge based on percentages makes little sense.

These kinds of things are often used to justify things that aren't grounded in reality. Such as the lost civilization. It's in the same vain as something having a non zero chance of happening means it can happen. For example there is a non zero chance your atoms scatter within the next nanosecond. It's theoretically possible but can't happen in the real world.

Hope this makes more sense to you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I feel bad that you went to such lengths to explain it (I appreciate the effort don't get me wrong) but I already knew what you meant.

I was just poking fun at the wording since technically if I know 100% about a pebble then technically I know more about that pebble than the ocean. Because I don't know 100% about the ocean.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You know there's more in space than just our moon, right?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but the post was specifically about the moon?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Shit I thought I had a chance to be snarky