gwern comments on Belief in Belief vs. Internalization - Less Wrong

33 Post author: Desrtopa 29 November 2010 03:12AM

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Comment author: gwern 29 November 2010 11:29:11PM 2 points [-]

Fortunately, there are easy experiments to impress people with. As a kid, my favorite one was laying a ruler on a table so half of it was sticking out perpendicularly, put a few layers of newspaper over the other half, and then quickly hit the exposed half downwards - and fail to knock it off the table because atmospheric pressure helped hold it down.

(At least, I think this is how it went. It was a long time ago. I'm sure there are other nifty experiments.)