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Comment by naikrovek | Hacker News Reader

this is just more proof to me that we, as a species, are far more confident of our maturity and understanding than we should be.

there is so much that we think we know, but that we actually don't, or are just plain wrong about.

Almost anyone familiar with human jaw muscles last week would have bet all the money in their wallet that all the muscles connected to the jaw were known, in their entirety.

Every single one of those people were incorrect.

What else will time prove that we are wrong about? not just as a species with a collective scientific pool of knowledge, but as individuals?

where are we each placing our misplaced confidence, and are we open to correction?

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>Almost anyone familiar with human jaw muscles last week would have bet all the money in their wallet that all the muscles connected to the jaw were known, in their entirety.

I suppose that really depends on what you mean by familiarity, if it means a superficial knowledge I suppose you're right but if it is more than superficial knowledge then given this quote from the article:

"A look at historical anatomy studies and textbooks reveals that the structure of the masseter muscle has already raised questions in the past. In a previous edition of Gray’s Anatomy, from the year 1995, the editors also describe the masseter muscle as having three layers, although the cited studies were based on the jaw musculature of other species and partly contradicted one another."

and a few other quotes, it seems likely that quite a few people would at least have refused the bet.

I learned the wrong physics like the atom model for years and aren't using any of that knowledge. Well, it is wrong anyway.

Luckily, I don't have crippling student debt coming with that useless knowledge.

> I learned the wrong physics like the atom model for years and aren't using any of that knowledge.

To be fair - this is fairly common for most subjects and models are exactly that: models. I think of them as precise-enough framework to help an introductory learners to wrap their minds around the topic.

In biology we teach the structure of the cell (golgi, nuclei, etc) in introductory classes and students are typically left with the impression that ALL cells are like this. It hit me that not all cells are like this when I took embryology :)

> To be fair - this is fairly common for most subjects and models are exactly that: models.

At least, I would have expected the model to be either right or useful.

Neil Bohr's atom model is neither.

It's just a simplified model. It's often used for teaching the context of chemistry (1900s?) and is used as a stepping stone for teaching orbitals and energy states so I think it's a useful tool for pedagogy at the very least :)

> Neil Bohr's atom model is neither.

It enables stoichiometry, at least...

What is the "right" physics model ?

I’m not sure whether or not what you’re saying about jaw scientists (that a thing?) thinking they knew everything is true, but regardless, the fact that we are able to adapt to new discoveries and discuss them seems positive, not negative.

There’s a shit ton we don’t know or get wrong, but you gotta start some where.

ESP (extra sensory perception) coincidences have been too many in my life that I feel there must be a way for us to communicate telepathically.

If you're not open to correction then you're not doing science, you're doing dogma.

well there are a lot of scientists doing dogma and calling it science, I'm sure.

it's endemic with every profession and it drives me nuts; the immensity of the arrogance required to say that you truly know something (with any complexity at all) to the fullest extent it can be known.

We tend to be extremely overconfident in our knowledge and it usually takes a few disasters for new technologies to stabilise such that we don't regularly hurt or kill people. It's one reason why we should be extremely cautious in adopting new medical techniques. It should be at an almost glacial pace. That's all I'll say for now for reasons you can probably figure out.

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