Common Misconceptions

[Mr. Krystal]

Common statements that almost everyone seems to believe at one time or another because they are "well known facts." Upon further investigation, they are completely false. Add your own!

Torture is not a reliable means of extracting information.

Here's torture opponent Sen. John McCain explaining how torture worked to extract information from him.

Public punishment is not an effective deterrent for crime.

Not necessarily a capital punishment issue. But think of it: you see a prisoner taking lashes, or even as simple as chained convicts picking up trash on the side of the road, I personally am reminded once more of just how much I don't want to break the law.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Apparently said by Mahatma Gandhi. Two problems with this one:

1. Doesn't take into account public determent (above).

2. When such laws were in place not only was the whole world not blind, not even a majority were blinded (or had arms cut off or whatever).

[fox1235]

Uhhh the first 2 I believe are violations of Human Rights.

[Mr. Krystal]

Uhhh the first 2 I believe are violations of Human Rights.

That is immaterial. I'm not saying these are good things to implement (though they may be). I'm just saying that these statements, which often form the bases for counter arguments against such policies are simply wrong.

[Milkyway64]

I have a ton of these on the tip of my mind, but nothing is coming up. D:

[Sabre]

You are sort of right about torture, but for the wrong reasons. Torture ISNT an effective means of getting MOST information.

eg. Time sensitive information is hard to get because the guy has to hold out long enough for it to become irrelivent.

The other issue is most people think of troture as something like 24 where a guy is tied to a chair and slapped around until he gets the bomb location.

Finally, torture is mostly used to get false confessions which is not getting information, it's coercion.

"Public punishment is not an effective deterrent for crime.

Not necessarily a capital punishment issue. But think of it: you see a prisoner taking lashes, or even as simple as chained convicts picking up trash on the side of the road, I personally am reminded once more of just how much I don't want to break the law."

Wrong. YOU are detered from crime, but would you have done crimes anyway? Before police and long term prisons were invented the only punishments were fine and death. Crime was rampent. Not just big stuff like murder, but petty crime. When you broke the law, you became an 'outlaw' where you didn't get protection from the law, but if you are a career criminal, that probley won't bother you.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

??? That's a saying from the blood fued days when they were being phased out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_feud

[Mr. Krystal]

You are sort of right about torture, but for the wrong reasons.

I don't claim any reasons, I'm simply stating that the phrase itself is false.

Wrong. YOU are detered from crime, but would you have done crimes anyway? Before police and long term prisons were invented the only punishments were fine and death. Crime was rampent. Not just big stuff like murder, but petty crime. When you broke the law, you became an 'outlaw' where you didn't get protection from the law, but if you are a career criminal, that probley won't bother you.

Maybe, eventually, probably. People with good moral centers USUALLY don't commit MANY crimes, but what about all the people without those moral centers? The only other option is some form of deterrent.

As for rampant crime, it is still rampant. Overall crime is going down, but petty crime is probably just as high as it was in the old days. Moreso in unintentional crime, due to a the sheer quantity of laws today and some of their relative lack of logic. We are both probably breaking some obscure law right now, but almost no-one would know it due to the millions of pages of laws and court rulings, many of which would only make sense in exactly one scenario. Unfortunately, they conveniently apply to everyone because the lawmakers weren't perfectly specific.

Career criminals are not born. They have to go through years of fearing the consequences before they learn to ignore it.

??? That's a saying from the blood fued days when they were being phased out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_feud

No, it is originally from Mahatma Gandhi. The phrase upon which it is based is originally from the Hebrew Bible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye

[Sabre]

I don't claim any reasons, I'm simply stating that the phrase itself is false.

Here's torture opponent Sen. John McCain explaining how torture worked to extract information from him.

Seems like a reason to me. Otherwise, you are just using argument from athority and the link is irrelivent.

Haven't blood fueds been around longer then the bible?

[Sarita]

No, it is originally from Mahatma Gandhi. The phrase upon which it is based is originally from the Hebrew Bible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye

The original phrase is actually from The Code of Hammurabi, the wiki page you linked to goes on to say that. It had very strict laws for criminals, and for harming other people. It's the earliest known set of laws (ca. 1700 BC) to include an eye for an eye. I do believe that Justinian's Code also included it, but I'm not sure about that.

EDIT: I didn't say that to make you look stupid or anything, but just in case someone decided that you were for not knowing and used it against you. ): Sorry if it came off that way.

[Mr. Krystal]

The original phrase is actually from The Code of Hammurabi, the wiki page you linked to goes on to say that. It had very strict laws for criminals, and for harming other people. It's the earliest known set of laws (ca. 1700 BC) to include an eye for an eye. I do believe that Justinian's Code also included it, but I'm not sure about that.

From WikiPedia:

The phrase, "an eye for an eye", (ayin tachat ayin, literally 'eye under eye'), is a quotation from several passages of the Hebrew Bible.

That's what I get for not reading original sources. Note that it is the earliest KNOWN record of it, not necessarily it's inception.

Seems like a reason to me. Otherwise, you are just using argument from athority and the link is irrelivent.

It's a counter-example to the phrase's claim. Though, upon further consideration, I misspoke when first writing the phrase. I should have originally said "Torture doesn't work." as the false statement, as it clearly does work in at least one case (someone who says it doesn't work has it work on them, freeing it from possible bias or misinterpretation). Using words like 'reliable' implies that all people react the same way, which isn't true.

Haven't blood fueds been around longer then the bible?

People have been fighting and seeking revenge on each other since the beginning of human history, regardless of when you actually think that occurred. The Bible was not written at one time, as it contains at least 66 books (depending on whether or not you believe in Apocrypha should be included) written over more than one thousand years by various authors. So, if you're asking if blood feuds existed prior to the creation of a printed book known as the Bible, the answer is definitely yes. However, since the Bible claims to write about various historical moments, some of which predate humanity's existence, one could make the claim that Biblical knowledge predates blood feuds. Regardless, as shown in other posts above, the originating phrase "eye for an eye" existed both in the Code of Hammurabi and the Bible prior to 1300 BC. That is, of course, just the first known time that it was written down. The "eye for an eye" concept may be much older. It's certainly an old concept at the time the Bible mentions it, a few hundred years after Hammurabi.

None of the above is important, however, because I'm referring to the piggy-back phrase: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." This is a statement by Gandhi, sometime between 1869 and 1948 AD. It is false. The statement "An eye for an eye" makes no claims, it is a rule. It is neither true nor false.

[Sabre]

With that cleared up, here's a couple of misconceptions about guns learned from films.

"Silences make guns quiet"

Not true. At best they make it harder for an enemy to judge the distence, making people harder to track down due to sound. Also putting a silencer on a revolver does nothing.

"Guns 'click' when you move fast" (eg. Whenever leon points a gun at someone in RE4)

Unless it's broken or otherwise has a loose part, guns almost never do this.

This one is hard to explain so I will explain in steps.

-In films, the hero escapes gunfire by swimming under water

-The common belief is that the good guy would be filled with holes as water can't possably stop a bullet

-The films are in fact correct. With the exception of ye olde guns the bullets would in fact rarely make it more then a foot through water.

"Taking cover behind a car door in a gun fight is a good idea"

Not true. All guns (again, with rare exceptions) will easily shoot through a car door.

Finally

"It is possable to hear a gunshot and get out of the way."

Not true. Bullets move faster then sound.

[Mr. Krystal]

"Silences make guns quiet"

They're called silences over there? We call them silencers. A gunsmith friend of mine has access to silencers (because it's legal if you have the correct, though hard to obtain, license, apparently). He said that for one particular gun, it made the gun quiet enough that the only thing he heard other than the hammer click was the sound of the bullet hitting down-range.

Everything else, concurred.

[Sabre]

No, but my keyboard keeps dropping keys and I sometimes don't catch it.

Even so, I find that story hard to believe outside of an airgun or some other none standard weapon like a paintball gun.

[Sylum]

Highly possible. A well made, not cheap china piece of shit silenceR will make (depending on caliber) a gun silent.

A 9mm or 22 can go completely silent with a well made silenceR.

SilenceRs just have to made extremely well with a small to medium caliber. Speaking of, I need to get a silenceR for my 1911.

:D

[DZComposer]

Highly possible. A well made, not cheap china piece of shit silenceR will make (depending on caliber) a gun silent.

A 9mm or 22 can go completely silent with a well made silenceR.

SilenceRs just have to made extremely well with a small to medium caliber. Speaking of, I need to get a silenceR for my 1911.

Let me translate:

[Vy'drach]

"Silences make guns quiet"

Not true. At best they make it harder for an enemy to judge the distence, making people harder to track down due to sound. Also putting a silencer on a revolver does nothing.

There's two things out there that fall under silencers. Silencers and suppressors. The difference is so marginal though that they are usually just considered one in the same. Also you have to take into account ammunition and length of suppressor. A suppressor only a few inches long won't do much, but a foot long one, or a couple of feet for long guns, makes the gun near impossible to hear when next to it. And you need to fire subsonic ammunition out of the weapon to keep it from being traced back to you, as that keeps the bullet under the speed of sound so it doesn't make that crack that can give your position away, which is why anyone that threads a PSG-1 barrel for a suppressor is a fool, as it can not fire subsonic ammo. But the MP5SD, VAL, VSS (essentially the same as the VSS, just fixed stock and slightly different version of 9x39mm ammo), and many others are so quiet the loudest noise the gun makes is the cycling of the bolt. The projectile makes all but zero noise on the exit. And the Russian P99 pistol is silent without a suppressor, as the primer causes a piston inside the casing to operate, which slams the bullet out of the gun. Again, the noise that's loudest is the slide operating. You can fully silence just about any gun, just it's a matter of whether or not you'd be getting into

region. Rather than suppressing that gun, there'd be an alternative weapon that is easier and more effective when suppressed.

[Sylum]

Oh and about the whole all guns shoot through car doors......uhhhh no. A 22 can barely go through bone much less some kind of metal. I don't think I could see a 9mm either. Possibly a .45. Anything higher will pretty much go through but certainly not all guns! And if you want to get super technical, airsoft guns, paintball guns, and nerf guns can't do shit to a door. That's just me getting in between the cracks though

[Sabre]

Vydrach, I stand corrected.

Oh and about the whole all guns shoot through car doors......uhhhh no. A 22 can barely go through bone much less some kind of metal. I don't think I could see a 9mm either. Possibly a .45. Anything higher will pretty much go through but certainly not all guns! And if you want to get super technical, airsoft guns, paintball guns, and nerf guns can't do shit to a door. That's just me getting in between the cracks though

9mm hand guns do. You also have to remember doors are a very thin bit of metal and a thin bit of plastic. Guns are piercing weapons. Other then extremely weak guns, and as you say, nurf guns, pretty much all of them can go through doors. You can do a youtube search and see for yourself.

[Sylum]

I have no doubt most do. it's just that you said all and i most certainly think that part is false. Like i said, a 22? Ffffuuuuuuuuck no. Lol

[Mr. Krystal]

75 percent of the people who had ever been born are alive today

This is apparently a quote from the 1970s of unknown origin. I heard it a few years ago and immediately questioned it outright, because it seemed to me absurd that the thousands of years of living people in the past would be outstripped by the number alive today. After all, even the past generation (the number of people alive 100 years ago or so) would be a fairly large percentage of the current day's population (in terms of numbers, not the people themselves). Compounding that knowledge through history, the number people alive today would be VERY small compared to the number of people who ever lived. Regardless, actual facts are needed. Now, no-one can know for sure exactly how many people have ever lived, but I found a group of people who took the time to do detailed population estimates of most major sections of history.

Their results:

106,456,367,669 - People who have ever lived (as of 2002)

6,215,000,000 - People who live today (2002)

5.8% - People alive in 2002 as a percentage of all human life

Source

More people have died in the name of Jesus (or Christianity) than any other name

I'll start by saying that I would never support religious violence for the sake of the religion itself (the Crusades, Muslim-based terrorists, etc), barring a specific instruction to commit violence (of which there are none in the Christian New Testament, to my knowledge).

With that can of worms out of the way, I have had a terribly difficult time with researching this one. It appears as though atheists like to use this as an argument against Christianity and/or religion in general. For all their claims, I can't find one source of information that supports this claim. There are lots of examples of atrocities committed that are then blamed on one religion or another, but there is a lot of faulty measurement here. For example, I found people trying to claim that World War II, and all the atrocities contained within, count as a Christian war because Hitler once claimed to be a Christian. Others have blamed the destruction of major South American tribes on Christianity because the explorers who brought smallpox to America happened to be Christians. There was even one passionate individual that believed that ALL disease is caused by religion, because "If it weren't for the anti-science opression and ignorance of Christianity, we would have cures for EVERY SINGLE DISEASE by now..."

I believe these claims are faulty, because almost every person, government, and event in the past 2000 years can, with enough imagination, be linked to Christianity easily ("there was a Christian cabinet member," "Christian missionaries were helping the local population when the country went to war," etc). Even if there was a Christian influence on all of these events, the war or slaughter of people is almost never for the purpose of conversion or establishment of Christian states (aka, the meaning of "in the name of Christianity"). The most famous exception is, of course, the Crusades.

Again, I can't find accurate numbers, but, I've seen numbers that range from 500 thousand to 9 million died due to the Crusades alone. These numbers at least try to count before jumping to conclusions, although several numbers come directly from anti-Christian/religious sources, some of which are apparently very wrong. The total number of people I was able to count for "death by Christians for Christian causes" is somewhere around 30 million (though involving a huge overestimation in how much of a role Christianity took).

Let's look at some other names in which people have died:

In the name of communism: over 100 million

In the name of World War II: over 60 million

In the name of ethnic cleansing JUST in WWII: over 10 million

In the name of World War I: over 9 million

Let's look at death statistics:

As of today, war, violence, and suicide (which would include all religious deaths) accounts for only 2.84 percent of death, which is amazingly less than the percentage of people who die due to accidental injury (like falling off a roof). I knew we were living in a peaceful time, but wow, people statistically almost never physically hurt each other these days.

MOST people die because of disease. This is true throughout history: the number one cause of death is disease.

It seems as though no-one knows for sure exactly how many people died due to perceived Christian motivations. Worse, even less is known about other major names by which people were killed. What about greed (and therefore the search for power)? One could argue that all non-defensive wars, even religious ones, are fought for greed. Almost all individual murders are due to greed of some kind.

As a result, I'm declaring this statement false because there is not enough information to back it up. Proponents have not done a complete study, they lack accurate data, and they have not sought alternative conclusions.

[Sabre]

America 'won' World War 2/War film or game X is a documentry

This is common among Americans. World War 2, as the name implies, was a global conflict. Since then, many films have been made and thus created this myth. Most WW2 films and games are American, or made to appeal to Americans, and as such usually depeict an American/group of Americans, single handedly saving the day. They will even take real events and replace the real nation with America. Also, most war films are made more dramatic or action packed for entertainment reasons.

Unfortunatly, for whatever reason, this has led to alot of people believing that the events in these films are 100% real. This also led to other myths such as WW2 started in 1941. The most common defence is to find someone with even the most nebulous link to WW2 and claim that makes them an expert, or to find a real WW2 vet (almost impossable these days) to say he liked the film, and thus take that to mean it is 100% undoubtably historicly accurate.

[Mr. Krystal]

This is common among Americans. World War 2, as the name implies, was a global conflict. Since then, many films have been made and thus created this myth. Most WW2 films and games are American, or made to appeal to Americans, and as such usually depeict an American/group of Americans, single handedly saving the day. They will even take real events and replace the real nation with America. Also, most war films are made more dramatic or action packed for entertainment reasons.

Unfortunatly, for whatever reason, this has led to alot of people believing that the events in these films are 100% real. This also led to other myths such as WW2 started in 1941. The most common defence is to find someone with even the most nebulous link to WW2 and claim that makes them an expert, or to find a real WW2 vet (almost impossable these days) to say he liked the film, and thus take that to mean it is 100% undoubtably historicly accurate.

Examples? Other than Pearl Harbor, WWII movies aren't coming to mind. I've also never heard this one. I had always been told that America helped win the war, but that it was a group effort of all the allies.

[Robert Monroe]

Examples? Other than Pearl Harbor, WWII movies aren't coming to mind. I've also never heard this one. I had always been told that America helped win the war, but that it was a group effort of all the allies.

It was most common in the 40s and 50s war films. You don't see it too much nowadays except for aforementioned Pearl Harbor, though it does occur every so often.

[Sabre]

Examples? Other than Pearl Harbor, WWII movies aren't coming to mind. I've also never heard this one. I had always been told that America helped win the war, but that it was a group effort of all the allies.

The most famous example I can recall is U571

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_%28film%29#.22Americanisation.22_of_real_historical_events

Any of the Medal of Honour games

Band of Brothers

Saving Private Ryan (athough could be argued as focusing on one group)

EDIT: To clarify the silencer point I made earlier. You can't just put a metal tube on your assault rifle or a coke bottle on your uzi and have it wisper quiet.

[Robert Monroe]

The most famous example I can recall is U571

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_%28film%29#.22Americanisation.22_of_real_historical_events

Any of the Medal of Honour games

Band of Brothers

Saving Private Ryan (athough could be argued as focusing on one group)

EDIT: To clarify the silencer point I made earlier. You can't just put a metal tube on your assault rifle or a coke bottle on your uzi and have it wisper quiet.

Medal of Honor isn't a film. Band of Brothers had very little to do with winning the war, it, like Saving Private Ryan, focused on a small group of soldiers, and really much of the drama focused on their failures (olololol Market Garden).

U571 was pretty bad though.

[Sylum]

That seems like a completely different point than you brought earlier, though. I though you were saying a firearm can not be completely silent with a silencer.