On the road of human scientific and technological development, there have been many great scientists, many scientists are also well-known, such as Einstein, Newton, Galileo and so on. These historical cattle people have put forward many scientific theories, but you must know that science pays attention to logic and argumentation, so if you want to prove that a theory is correct, you need a lot of discussion and logic to prove. And in human history, there are many proven "correct" theories, but these theories are subjectively difficult for us to accept.
Today, we will take an inventory with you, 4 theories that have been proven by scientists, but are always difficult for humans to accept.
Barnum effect
In the mid-19th century, Barnum was a famous American circus owner known as the "king of the circus", and his circus became popular because its content satisfied the needs of different people, so that "every minute someone was deceived." This phenomenon, later known as the "Barnum effect," showed that people were susceptible to outside information, which biased their self-perception.
Fortune tellers and palmistry collectors often use this method to describe general personality traits so that everyone thinks the description is accurate. As Barnum says, "There's something on my show that everybody loves, so every minute someone falls in love with it." The Barnum effect reminds us that people are accustomed to seeing themselves through the eyes of others and ignoring the truest side of themselves. Therefore, when we are influenced and hinted at by others in our lives, we should also pay attention to our own character traits. For example, on the bus, you will find that there is a person yawning with his mouth wide open, and several people around him can't help but yawn, and a considerable number of these people are affected by the Barnum effect. Therefore, the Barnum effect is an interesting way to test how well a person is influenced by the environment and the opinions of others.
The Barnum effect is very common in daily life, taking fortune-telling as an example, many people after consulting fortune tellers feel that their fortune-telling is accurate. In fact, people who seek fortune-telling help are more susceptible to cues because when they are depressed and depressed, they lose control of their lives, which affects their sense of security. And an insecure person, psychological dependence will be greatly increased, than usual will be more likely to be deceived, and fortune tellers are good at insight into people's inner feelings, if you can understand a little about the situation of the helper, the helper will immediately feel a kind of spiritual comfort, at this time, the fortune teller's next words will also make the helper firmly believe.
A psychologist once used a general statement that can be applied to almost anyone to let college students judge whether it is suitable for them, which roughly means this: you need to be liked and respected by others; You have a tendency to be self-critical; You have many unused abilities that may work to your advantage, and you also have some weaknesses, although you are usually able to overcome them; You have some difficulties in getting along with the opposite sex, although you are calm on the outside, but you are very anxious and insecure inside; You sometimes wonder if the decisions you made or did were the right thing; You like some changes in your life and hate being limited; You pride yourself on being an independent thinker and will not accept the advice of others without hard evidence; You think it's unwise to present yourself to others too frankly; Sometimes you are outgoing, approachable, and sociable, while sometimes you are introverted, cautious, and restrained.
Actually, this is a hat that fits anyone's head. After completing the Minnesota Multiple Personality Questionnaire (MMPI) for a group of people, a psychologist came up with two results and asked participants to judge which was their own. In fact, one of them was the participants' own results, while the other was an average that reflected the reactions of most people. Participants actually believed that the latter more accurately reflected their own personality traits. According to this effect, we can see that in real life, people usually think that they have a clear understanding of their true identity and believe that they can correctly judge their situation, but the actual situation is not the case, people are easily influenced or implied by external factors, and often judge and measure themselves by external standards, resulting in inaccurate self-cognition.
Schrödinger's cat
The famous Schrödinger's Cat is derived from the thought experiment of Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger. In the experiment, a cat was placed in an airtight container containing a small amount of radioactive radium and cyanide, in which the decay of radium was probable. If radium decays, it triggers a mechanism to smash the bottle containing cyanide and the cat dies; If radium does not decay, the cat will survive. According to the theory of quantum mechanics, since radioactive radium is in a superposition state of decay and non-decay, the cat should be in a superposition state of dead cat and live cat, and this dead and alive cat is the so-called "Schrödinger's cat". However, the result will not be known until the container is opened.
This experiment aims to subtly link cats at the macroscopic scale with quantum superposition states at the microscopic scale to verify the participation of quantum forms of existence at the time of observation. With the development of quantum physics, Schrödinger's cat was also used to explain physical problems such as parallel universes and philosophical debates.
Although "Schrödinger's cat" was originally a quantum mechanical experiment, it has now become a phenomenon that we metaphorically see as a metaphor for the unpredictability that occurs in modern society. In fact, this means that if we do not take some kind of action, there will be two outcomes, but once we do, there will be only one result.
The easiest example to understand is the process of applying for a job. For example, when you browse a job board and you find a company that you are happy with, but you are hesitant to submit your resume. This may be because the company will consider the candidate's education, age, gender, work experience, work ability, etc. in the recruitment process, and if only the work ability is valued, other conditions are only ancillary. Therefore, if you go to the interview, you may or may not be hired, depending on your ability to work; But if you don't go to the interview, it's impossible to know if your job ability is up to the mark. Such probabilistic events are everywhere in our daily lives, and this uncertain and certain outcome only needs to be decided by ourselves.
In order to avoid the "Schrödinger's cat" phenomenon affecting us, we cannot hesitate too long when it comes to doing something important. Because only by doing it, can you know the result, and the quality of the result will have an important impact on yourself.
This effect is easy to understand, for example, when we decide to submit a resume and participate in an interview, if the interview is successful, it proves that our work ability has been recognized, and we can continue to accumulate work experience in subsequent work.
But if we fail the interview, it means that our ability to do our job may not be good enough, and in order not to repeat the same mistake next time, we will motivate ourselves to keep learning and improve our ability to work so that we can face the next job opportunity more calmly.
The popular explanation of "Schrödinger's cat" is roughly all of this, and in the field of quantum mechanics, it also plays a role, because scientists have not yet drawn accurate conclusions about this phenomenon.
The bystander effect
The bystander effect, also known as the "responsibility diffusion effect", refers to the inhibition of rescue behavior in an emergency due to the presence of others.
The classic case in New York, USA, in 1964: the case of Miss Ginovese being stabbed to death is a classic representative case of the bystander effect. In the process of shouting for help, 38 people witnessed the scene, but no one called the police, which is the most obvious embodiment.
Social psychologists Ratani and Rodin once conducted a psychological experiment: How did the people involved in the experiment feel when a woman in the next lab made a painful request? The results of the experiment found that when only the participants were alone, 70% of the participants would help the victim; When two strangers are present, the proportion drops to 40%; When a passive assistant was present telling the subject not to help the victim, only 7% of the subjects would try to help the victim. This all reflects that they knew what was going on, saw that person calling for help, but thought that there were others who would help, so they did not take any action.
The emergence of this psychology is a feature of group psychology in social psychology, as social animals, we seek "social proof", when in a public group environment, we make judgments and actions based on the behavioral reactions of other people on the scene, in order to be consistent with others and avoid negative feedback such as making mistakes or being punished, we often choose not to act.
The principle of uncertainty
Eisenberg's uncertainty principle is one of the most famous, profound, and counterintuitive results in physics, showing that we cannot know precisely the energy and time of particles at the same time.
If we take an example that we can understand in the macroscopic world, we can give this example: when a car is moving, if its position can be accurately known, then it is impossible to accurately obtain its speed, because the more accurate the position, the less able to grasp the speed. I don't know if you can understand this.
So the uncertainty principle, is it a law of nature or a defect in our measurements? At this point, we must emphasize a few important things: the uncertainty principle has long been seen as a disturbing measurement effect, even by Heisenberg himself. When physicists try to make measurements in the atomic and subatomic world, one problem they often encounter is that what they want to measure is too small, smaller than anything they can use to measure them. For example, suppose we want to measure protons in light (photons), and the size of protons is about 10^(-15), and the wavelength of light waves is about 10^(-7), which means that protons are about 100 million times smaller than the wavelength of light waves, so they are basically undetectable.
Therefore, in order to logically say, we must use another form of wave that has a higher frequency (and therefore a smaller wavelength) and is comparable in size to a proton. However, the problem with using such waves is that as the frequency increases, so does the energy and momentum. When a high-energy wave hits a particle, a collision occurs, giving the particle a certain velocity in one direction, both of which are difficult to predict accurately.
So, for a long time, it was thought that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle stemmed from the imperfection of the way we measured. We can never know exactly where a particle is and how fast it is because we have to perturb it to measure it; This perturbation makes one of these two properties inaccurate.
However, recent research suggests that this may not be the case. Researchers have been able to perform measurements that don't interfere enough with quantum systems, so Heisenberg's uncertainty principle still holds. This makes people think that this principle is the basic law of nature, much more profound than the defects in our measurement, and the answer to this question also needs to be left to future generations to make further breakthroughs in scientific theories before they can give a perfect answer.