What is something many people believe but is not true?

At the risk of upsetting people, most if not all religions. They can't all be right.

I think that a lot of Atheists oversimplify religion. (NB: I'm Atheist myself.)
"True" and "false" only apply to statements about reality (epistemic). And sure, religion has a lot of them: "God exists", "if you fornicate you'll go to Hell", "the world was created in seven days" etc. I think that most of them are false.
However a religion isn't just its epistemic statements. It's also morals, practices/rituals, and a community. Those things cannot be true or false, because they are not statements about reality. You need another ground to refer to them, as "good" vs. "bad" (deontic).
haha it depends, for religious people their credence is everything in their life, is their true. Of course I am with development of reason and science, but, as Adorno said once, if you retire a system of credence from people who have not known something more than religion, their entire life loose all its content... that's why I also learned to be more shy to argue about others people religious feelings, believings, because it is something very respected and symbolized. Also, Hegel said that religious thought is like a "phase" of "society thought", a phase that has be to analized and lived by every person (and lived by the society itself)...
- Yea I more or less agree with that sentiment. I myself am an athiest but I view religion in general as a coping mechanism, and real or not if you take away coping mechanisms then you risk doing actual harm to people(psychologically), which is why I try to be as anti-evangelical and secular as I can. I just wish people would stop using it as justification for the shitty things they do. I wouldn't mind more people thinking like I do but they have to come to that conclusion on their own.
I have the same thought, and is the primary reason why I'm agnostic. I commented this elsewhere in this thread that might be relevant here too:
I'm an agnostic and I read this book called "The God Theory" by Bernard Haisch. The author is a man of science and approaches this problem from a (semi) scientific perspective.
Over the course of the book, he makes hypotheses and challenges them and eventually arrives at a theory that seems a workable explanation of the state of the world and religion in general.
It's a very interesting read and I would 100% recommend it.

I always think about when I was taught about taste and the human tongue back in grade school, they had these diagrams about zones on the tongue corresponding to sweet, sour, bitter, etc. like a "taste map". I'm not sure how many generations were taught about it but turns out it just isn't true at all. So, not like it's important but you got a lot of misinformed folks out there in regards to taste lol

I wonder why they teach it too. Why teach misleading information that has no benefit but give people a wrong impression on how taste works
- Most school science is oversimplification by design. It’s part of the learning process. Yo first learn colors, then when you are ready can learn about wavelengths, color spaces, biology of the eye, color psicology and many many other knowledge fields.
  Even when you get into the anatomy of the eye you get “false” information, like the “perfect” cones that only percibe one color, or the misconception that every color is equal. More advanced education gives you more context and nuances.
  In the taste and tongue case can be useful to explain that senses are the product of discrete sensors. That you don’t taste with your tongue but with specialized little taste buds. The different concentrations are mostly real, so the tongue map is a first step, even being so so far from the objetive and complex truth.
  The problem is people that think they only need whatever high school education they got to be experts in pandemics, gender, biological sex, business, economics, history, politics and everything else.
  Take note that I’m not only talking about a formal education. You can really learn a lot (most things? Maybe everything?) by yourself. But you have to be critical with your sources. You have to know how to learn. You have to understand how little you know about everything and how much you still have to learn.
  Most “do your own research” people in the internet do not do actual research, don’t know how to do research and I don believe they know what research is.
- I guess a combination of things. Bad early science that was easy to present in a little diagram. Then when it's disproved, nothing similar to replace it with but the unglamorous fact that it all just sort of tastes the same.
That always confused me as a child, since it was super easy to just test it for yourself. Turned out salt tasted salty regardless of where on your tongue it was, the same for the rest of the flavors.
- Yup I remember thinking to myself at the time that I must be tasting incorrectly or somehow my tongue is different from everyone else lol.
For anyone interested https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taste#Functional_structure

That learning styles exists

... people say they have visual photographic memories, and I know musicians who can sit at a piano and play a song they only heard one time. But I don't have any idea of the percentage of people who have these talents.
With !neurodivergence@beehaw.org you can clearly find patterns of minds who have problems with language processing. I personally do better with reading than I do auditory language.
- the internet is full of people with problems with language processing 😃
Wait does that mean I'm just dumb?
Man I was taught this shit when I got my education degree then later learned it's bullshit. Made me so mad
Thinking that there are different learning styles probably helps poor teachers develop better content though.
Exactly.

They are good drivers.

Hey now

That looking too closely at the screen will blind you or damage your eyes. This myth originated decades ago in the 1960s from an advertisement by a television manufacturer. Basically in 1967 General Electric reported that their color TVs were emitting too many x-rays due to a factory error, so health officials recommended keeping children and pretty much anyone else at a safe distance from the screen. The problem was soon resolved, but the myth endured.

If you ask me I would say that x-ray radiation has little to do with going blind, I have no idea if radiation can actually make you blind, but it's funny how somehow eye diseases got in the way as the only possible consequences in the myth just because we use our eyes to watch TV.

CRT screens generate bremsstrahlung (x-rays) from slowing electrons, so the front piece of glass is normally made of lead glass, or barium-strontium glass to block it.
After the General Electric incident, testing showed that nearly every manufacturers TVs were emitting too many x-rays. This led to the recommendation to stay 6 ft. away from the TV when it was on. The FDA then later imposed limits on how much radiation a TV was allowed to emit.
With the these regulations, if you were to absorb all x-rays from a CRT for 2 hours a day, every day, you would get 320 millirem per year (comparable to the average US background radiation of 310 millirem per year). See here, as well as this article.
Edit: Also, significant doses of x-rays can blind you. Radiologists in medicine particularly have to shield against it, since they are exposed to it every day, and exposure builds up. See here and here.
Edit again: Wasn't paying enough attention. That last source talks about ionizing radiation specifically, so not x-rays.
Good ol' desktop particle accelerators.
Mmm. I worked on CRT screens when I was in the US Navy and had some CRT monitors in the past.
After a long session, my eyeballs 100% felt 'burnt' inside.

That the average person will swallow 8 spiders a year in their in their sleep.

Spiders Georg really threw the average off
Every one knows that its closer to 1000 spiders.

That trans women on hormones have a significant advantage in sports

From: https://www.bbc.com/sport/61346517
*Tucker: When boys reach the age of 13-14, things start to change physically and we see increased muscle mass, bone density; [it] changes the shape of the skeleton, changes the heart and the lung, haemoglobin levels, and all of those things are significant contributors to performance.
Lowering the testosterone has some effect on those systems, but it's not complete, and so for the most part, whatever the biological differences are that were created by testosterone persist even in the presence of testosterone reduction - or, if I put that differently, even after testosterone levels are lowered.
It leaves behind a significant portion of what gives males sporting performance advantages over females.*
So i guess it depends on when the transition happens?
- Nah. There's a million studies that look at isolated physical traits, but mostly have one of two common problems. 1) they are often written by people with an explicitly anti trans inclusion bias and 2) they look at physical traits in isolation without attempting to quantify if and how those traits apply to sports.
  If trans women can out perform cis women, it only takes one to set a women's world record, yet that just doesn't happen. There are often articles claiming this has happened, but when you look closer, it turns out that they're talking about age/regional/federation specific records that are mis presented as world records.
  If trans women out perform cis women, we should expect to see them more likely to end with podium finishes than the cis women they're competing with. It should be pretty trivial to gather the data and show that advantage. But it doesn't happen, because the truth is, trans women are on average, more likely to under perform compared to cis women.
  No study that looks at a trait in isolation and makes educated guesses about the effect of hormone replacement on that trait is ever going to tell you how real world sporting outcomes will be impacted.
  The only thing that will tell you that is actual real world sporting results, and the limited results we have so far don't show any hint of an advantage. If it is in there, it's small enough that it's not immediately obvious. We both know that if it was obvious, the media would be screaming it from the hills.
  Some numbers. There are 50,000 athletes in the Olympics each year. From memory, there have been 4 or 5 Olympics in which trans people have been able to participate. So, that's at least 200,000 athletes participating in that time. Now, trans people make up 1% of the population. Lets say that trans people are 10x less likely to get involved in sports though due to external factors. Using those numbers, 1 in 1000 of those 200,000 athletes should have been trans, which comes out 200. Lets say trans people are 100 times less likely to participate in sports. Even then, we should have seen 20 trans athletes. And those athletes should have got more gold medals than you would expect. Instead, we have had exactly 1 trans woman athlete in that time, and she came last in her event.
  That's what people are afraid of.
  No amount of articles about testosterone and puberty change the reality that people are trying to exclude a vulnerable minority to solve a problem they can't even show to exist in the first place.

That they're right. You should be able to question your own opinions. A lost art, it seems

This
Beware of imposter syndrome, though. Believing you're infallible is unhealthy, but so is the opposite.

You have to completely decharge batteries before recharging them.

For modern lithium batteries, that is even harmful for the battery.
I think it depends on the battery type but I am not sure
- Yeah it's a thing for Nickel-Cadmium batteries which aren't used much anymore.

Nearly anything abouth Pre-Columbian North and South America. Turns out, there was no homogeneous "Native" culture, just as there was no "European" culture. Every different group had their own traditions and stories. They all were complex people, not one-dimensional savages or pacifists. We should simply view them as any other people.

That there are heroic countries in the world.

I mean define heroic, it's super subjective

That by not being ridiculously overtly bigoted, they have actually interrogated and rejected their own bigotry. The former is basic and mostly relies on social conditioning. The latter requires reading history and people who are criticizing things with which you may identify and therefore take very personally. The latter is not taught in school and school does not provide the tools (outside of literacy) to do so, so it's a difficult, painful, abd regrettably rare thing to see, usually requiring sone trauma to change.

Going through the process of discovering I was trans and surrounding myself with trans people really made me re-examine how little work I’d done on issues of race, among other things. So many of the little passive aggressive things I found myself getting annoyed at cis people doing, I also found myself doing to people of color. Nothing particularly awful, but definitely inconsiderate.
- In this regard I'm probably an ignorant simpleton, so what would be an example of common behavior that people think is fine but is in fact inconsiderate or offensive to others?
- 100%! And it's structurally ingrained, so it involves a very un-fun process of relearning certain habits that don't feel that bad until you force doses of empathy on yourself, the latter of which I think is in the neighborhood of your experience. It means you have to criticize, forgive, and change yourself, which I personally don't enjoy even though it's so important.
  PS happy pride!
Pffffft maybe you, but I don't have cognitive biases! Anchor pricing doesn't work on me either because, raises nose, I know all about it.

That global warming is not true, but they are totally taken by right-wing extremist propaganda.

The government is looking out for your best interests

It will if everyone votes for politicians willing to do so. We get the government we vote for.
- "Go Vote!" Rings more and more hollow every day we have watch the country crumble. I am begging you to think outside the box of electoral politics because it is where dreams go to die.
  Nobody voted to put kids to work at meatpacking plants and we will almost assuredly not be allowed to vote on a solution but there are children suffering dangerous jobs right now. The capitalists that run the country do not care about your votes they care about profits and they have so many more resources than us to tip things in their favor.
  Voting has not and never will be enough. It is literally the bare minimum you can do and you should not pat yourself on the back for it.
- But what if every option is corrupt?
I came here to say that.

Religions/God

- well no, its not an equal position. we have 0 evidence of the existence of a god. we have a lot of evidence that there is no need for a god.
  otherwise somebody could claim that santa claus is possible ebcause it wasnt disproven. you cant disprove things that dont exist.

That the 13^th amendment outlawed slavery.

That people were killed in Tiananmen Square itself, that the soldiers were the first ones to kill, and that the death toll was something like 10,000. It gets played up on Reddit because of red scare propaganda and plain old chauvinism.

I wasn't going to say that at first [simply because it's a bit obnoxious] but since other people are courting drama and I was collecting links from another conversation so it's convenient to do, so I'll repost them here:

There was a great deal of violence and many students (along with other protestors, as well as the militants and soldiers) died, so I'll mark each link with an appropriate content warning, though that's mostly because the last one is rough, while the ones before it are unlikely to cause people issues.

First, here are video interviews with some of the former student leaders, the first one with Chai Ling actually being before the incident took place. There is some gunfire and yelling that a western news program uses for "ambience", but nothing is shown. Chai Ling describes a bloody scene, though that specific scene is patently fictional (this is established by the others who are interviewed).

Next is an article which discusses the subject, partly quoting student leaders above. It describes violence in broad strokes but doesn't have any pictures. It also talks about statements made by a British reporter who was there.

Third, here is secondary reporting leaked on documents from the US Embassy in Beijing and the actual report from a Latin American diplomat that was leaked. The latter revealing contains in its summary: "ALTHOUGH THEIR ACCOUNT GENERALLY FOLLOWS THOSE PREVIOUSLY REPORTED, THEIR UNIQUE EXPERIENCES PROVIDE ADDITIONAL INSIGHT AND CORROBORATION OF EVENTS IN THE SQUARE." (source text is all caps). There is very little description of violence, just mention of gunfire being present, people being wounded, etc.

{Caution} Lastly, here's an article written arguing that the event is misrepresented in mass media. I link it mainly because it includes photographic evidence that is very difficult to argue with for reasons beyond it being difficult to look at. Graphic depiction of stripped corpses of soldiers that were strung up after death.

Obviously there's more than this, but these were the links I collected recently. Chai Ling says things that are even more unhinged in footage I think they excluded from that excerpt of the interview.

GOOD POST
{Caution} Lastly, here’s an article written arguing that the event is misrepresented in mass media. I link it mainly because it includes photographic evidence that is very difficult to argue with for reasons beyond it being difficult to look at. Graphic depiction of stripped corpses of soldiers that were strung up after death.
"Here are photos that show things other than soldiers shooting civilians proving that soldiers didn't shoot civilians!" isn't as convincing as you might think it is. And wow, that article doesn't even pretend to not be straight up propaganda.
- No one, myself included, said that soldiers didn't shoot civilians. Soldiers did shoot civilians. The purpose of the photos is to establish that there was killing of soldiers prior to that point that was evidence of a (likely small) group of very aggressive militants among a faction of the protestors, ones who seemed to be intent on instigating violence. The event was much more complicated than soldiers firing into a crowd in cold blood, and as internal reporting that I linked above mentioned, many people repudiated the image painted in westerners' minds of soldiers wantonly firing into a crowd of huddled protestors. Their aim plainly was not to kill the peaceful protestors but to capture or kill militants who demonstrated a willingness to kill in cold blood. The civilians who were killed were caught up in that crossfire.
  The photos are helpful, but beyond that I think the strongest source are those reports from the US embassy and LA diplomat and the interviews with the student leaders themselves. I would encourage you to look at those.

That cold water will boil faster than warm water.

It's a confusion. You should always cook with cold tap water, not hot, because hot tap water can contain excessive amounts of lead.

There are several instances where hot water can freeze faster than lukewarm water. I believe people saw this on shows such as Bill Nye and then forgot the specifics.

Wait what's this about hot water and lead? I love me some hot showers, is it making me dumb?
- According to the Minnesota Department of Health, if your house was built before 1940, then you should let the water run for 3-5 minutes before drinking it or cooking with it. Showering is probably fine, since they recommend doing showering and running the dishwasher first as one way to let the water run before cooking.
  This should especially apply if the water has been sitting in the pipes for a long time (e.g. after a holiday).
- If you have a standing hot water tank it will build up with minerals and other stuff over time, it can also harbor bacteria. It's safe for washing with, but you shouldn't make a habit of consuming it.
- It's to add extra flavor.
- I dunno if it contains lead so much as it contains extra minerals from sitting in your waterheater.
I will believe that warm water freezes faster only if I see it with my own eyes. It just goes against everything I know about thermodynamics.
- I heard hot water freeze faster when thrown in freezing cold air, because it evaporates faster - making smaller droplets and increasing the surface area
- It requires very specific circumstances. Given the same ambient temperature hot water will cool at a faster rate than cooler water because of the greater temperature differential.
  Hot water will lose more mass as more will evaporate as it cools.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect
  It's one of those "wacky" physics facts.

“The human eye can only see 30 [or 60] frames per second.” Truth is, there are some events only 1ms long that a human eye can see, so the real upper limit is [edit: at least] 1000 frames per second. There are diminishing returns, but there is plenty to be gained by getting to at least a significant fraction of that limit.

so the real upper limit is 1000 frames per second.
This is basically the same misconception just kicked further down the road. The truth is that the human eye simply does not see in any way similarly to the way a camera sees and can't be compared. There is no upper limit.
- There certainly is a limit. The sensitivity of light-sensitive cells is finite, the speed of transfer through the optics nerve is finite, and the speed with which information can be processed is finite.
  Furthermore it needs to be synced to at least some extend, so information needs to be discarded to limit noise, echos and ghosts, not unlike how VSync limits what can be displayed.
  It's more advanced than that, variable and individual, but there certainly are limits. I doubt that the "eye framerate" could go over 1000 fps in any way other than noise.
The eye-brain system is totally analog. The shortest perceivable events have to do with how bright they are and how depleted the photo-receptors are in your retina. You could see a single 1/1000s pulse in a dark room but a 1kHz square wave would appear to be a continuous light.
And even if that were true, you would still benefit from a higher framerate because a) in games, you get lower input latency, and b) modern displays have an aweful lot of persistence blur which causes things in motion to appear less sharp. This effect is smaller the higher your framerate is.

That the first amendment and free speech are the same thing

I know it's low hanging fruit, but religion.

I think what does it for me, is that they can't be all right at the same time. That implies, that atleast one is wrong.
- “All religions are true but none are literal.”
  "mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical."

That "Nike" rhymes with "Bike".

I will start pronouncing bike like nike
- Wait, it's not pronounced like that?
- Now the question remains: will you pronounce the "Bi" of "Bike" like "Be" or "By"? :D
True, it doesn’t rhyme with “Nike”. It does cough through the tough bough, though

Also see Wikipedia's list of common misconceptions. And related: xkcd.com/843.

"your money" is in an account at the Social Security administration.
police have a duty of service toward any particular citizen

The Bibel

I'll add that most people think Noah took two of each animal onto the ark. It was seven of the male and female of the clean animals, and two of the male and the female of the unclean animals.

Birds!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

The Russiagate https://jacobin.com/2020/04/russiagate-christopher-steele-dossier-trump-election

edit: all the people being mad and downvoting just goes to underscore that once people internalize nonsense, no amount of evidence will change their minds

Gun control benefitting them

How else can we stop all the shootings?
- When did gun control ever stop any shootings? 🤦‍♂️
Why limit that to just gun weapons. Do you think nuclear proliferation rules benefits Iran and North Korea?

You'd be shocked at how many people think the moon's phases are caused by earth's shadow

I've never even thought about it, had to go read about it!
I mean, this is not that hard to imagine. Its like saying that most people believe pineapples grow on trees.
- How would a planet cast a shadow like this? How does that even begin to make sense? https://i.imgur.com/Sw1NP2i.jpeg

That ivermectin is a hazardous medicine..

It's actually donated by Merck since 1970's to African countries to fight river-blindness! The safety profile is well established and it's safe. https://mectizan.org/

The problem was that people were taking the variation that was not specifically for humans.
- Also taking a toxic drug that is meant to kill parasites surely has side effects, so you maybe should not give it to people who don't need it, especially if they're already sick.
- i'd make that:
  The problem was that people were taking the variation that was not specifically for humans because authorities denied them access to the variation for human use.

Wearing a cap will make you go bald.

There are a lot of misconceptions about hair growth. Another one is the myth that if you shave, the hair will grow back thicker.

People believe that picking 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 as your lottery ticket numbers is insane, because that would have a insanely low/lucky chance of being picked like that. If all numbers are chosen randomly, it is the same chance. No matter any combination of any numbers chosen, 1 ticket has 1 in 13,983,816 chance of being the jackpot numbers. (For US Powerball, specifically)

However, don't the odds of splitting your winnings increase if you pick something more likely to be chosen by others?
- Well yeah, but splitting winnings is secondary to actually winning. With the amount of people who religiously avoid sequential numbers, I guess you'd have less odds for picking it with someone? 'Cause at least here, the quick lotto ticket where they pick numbers for you avoids sequential numbers for this very brain worm that isn't true.

That you shouldn't drink milk when you're sick. As it turns out, a bit of dairy won't kill you!

Antipsychotics are believed to prevent violence. It causes sleepiness, but I have seen multiple fights on them. FDA gives some black box warning for increasing danger to self or others.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will

Free will in the neoliberal system is how much do you have to access to everything through money.

That you own your PC

WiFi/Cell phones give you cancer. Both devices operated in the microwave spectrum, at or below 1 watt of power. That's about the same amount of power as the flashlight on your phone but in a wavelength so unenergetic that you can't even see it. You could put the phone in your mouth and get absorb less energy than just walking outside into the sun.

I get your point but the sun does give you cancer.
- Hmm, that sweet glow of Atom

Americans: You’re not tired after eating Thanksgiving dinner because of tryptophan in the turkey, you’re tired because you ate a lot of food.

Global warming, but it is totally propaganda-based stupidity
You don't have to trust everything you read online or see on TV to notice for your own self that the weather is getting weird in recent years, compared to how it used to be. Typically warmer, and it's happening pretty much no matter where you live.
- sorry, in fact, i wanted to say the total opposed. Sorry, my new comment is now available.

That humans use 10% of our brains. We use 100%. Intelligence is correlated with the type of brain matter present.