this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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One of my favorite examples of the difficulty in idiot-proofing things comes from a national park ranger talking about the difficulty of designing a bear-proof garbage can. He said "There is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest humans."
A bear has time and motivation to keep trying over and over again to get into the garbage. People are generally much less determined to figure it out.
I used to see people charitably, much like you do, until very recently. After witnessing for myself people staring into the sun and injuring themselves after being repeatedly warned, I now realize there are a substantial number of people who simply have rocks clattering around inside their skulls instead of brains
Holy shit this. And not even "educated" people. Where I work is about half degree holding engineers... many of these engineers were seen outside staring at the partial eclipse Monday.
"Pfff I have a master's degree I know what I'm doing"
Sounds like your typical engineer. I passed fluid dynamics, I deserve to look at the big ball of plasma.
My eyes haven't hurt this bad since studying for differential equations theory..... Have I told you I'm an engineer?
I genuinely had someone stop and ask me why you can't see the moon during an eclipse because "it's got light in it right".
They're soon to replace our HR manager.
A solar or lunar eclipse?
The solar eclipse from Monday.
Answer: Light travels in straight lines* and the moon is roughly an opaque sphere. Maybe you could see it with earthshine, but I get the impression the corona is still much brighter.
I've heard dumber.
There was a solar eclipse when I was in grade six. One of my classmates was riding his bike home, and was stupidly looking at the eclipse, and got hit by a car. The irony.
So you're somewhere between 18 and 58 than
Omg that’s so messed up but so incredible haha, was he okay after?
I'm curious if he was okay before.
It was pretty bad. He missed a lot of school. I think he ended up repeating grade six. I never saw him much after that, but I did hear that he got married to another person I went to school with eventually, so presumably his life wasn't ruined or anything.
What do you mean? Sun is blocked = no sun rays = not blinded when staring directly. The logic is sound! Just like in programming.
Congratulations! You've leveled up in the game of life.
Nobody lives forever. Seeing the eclipse with your own naked eyes, even for one second, is something you'll never be able to do again before you're dead and there's no chances left. Think of it as a spiritual experience. People run across hot coals for spirituality and you aren't here scolding them. Nobody posting screenshots of google trends for "why do my feet hurt?"*
Warn people not to look directly at an eclipse, yes. But when they do it anyway, at least give them credit for having a reason why.
[*] I will admit, if you look directly at an eclipse and then don't know why your eyes hurt, you're pretty dumb.
There’s a pretty big difference between temporary pain and permanent damage though.
Unless you royally fuck up walking on coals you get some pain, fuck up a little and you just get some blisters.
Glancing at the eclipse while it’s in totality is not going to give you permanent damage. Now if you stare at it until totality is over and the sun is on full blast again…
playing russian roulette is not going to give you permanent damage every 5/6 times
Or if you’re not in the path of totality…. The risk just isn’t worth it.
Let’s just not look up at the bright thing in the sky that can cause permanent damage at any given time.
...and ignore one of the coolest things there is to see on the sky
Being able to see properly is also something they’ll never be able to do again, so, I hope that one second was “spiritual” enough for them lol
You know that you can look directly at an eclipse and not immediately go blind, right? That's also true of the naked sun in the sky, btw. I'd hate to think you were here to scold people without even understanding what the danger actually is.
You're immediately taking the argument to the extreme. You won't immediately go blind, but it will damage your retina in ways you sometimes don't notice because the brain compensates for it. It happened to my uncle when he was a welder, he had a second blind spot where he couldn't see sharply, but it didn't really affect his quality of life.
This reminds me of that poster in my highschool chem lab:
Same with shooting without eye/ear pro. I dunno about other folks but I use my eyes and ears a lot, and I'd hate to miss out on music and color the rest of my life because I thought I would have a transcendent experience blowing them out for a minute. 😬
Eclipses happen every year like clockwork (it basically is clockwork, but on a huge scale). Eclipse seasons are spring and fall, around the equinoxes. You could very easily fly to see a total eclipse every few years if you want to, because we know when they are going to happen and where will have totality - it’s very routine stuff. There’s literally nothing special at all about the one that just happened, except that a lot of people haven’t seen one before because it hasn’t happened -at that location- in a time.
So no, absolutely not something you’ll never get a chance to see again, tho you won’t be able if you go blind like a fucking moron.
Total eclipses aren’t rare, but them being in an accessible location and not just over some random place in the ocean is. I looked this up the other day, and any one particular location on Earth will see a total eclipse once every 350 years or so.
If I had someone run through hot coals I would scold them, sure. Much like for being angry about others not believing in zombie carpenters or letting quacks give their kids overpriced sugar pills. But that's jot the context right now, is it?