Physics doesn't care about your fifis

Stefan Molyneux had a conversation a few years ago with a professor who teaches postmodernism. I will admit that most of what the postmodern teacher said was stupid, I also need to point out that Stefan made an error of physics.

I get it that Stefan was looking to debate the dumbest guy he could find in order to feel like understands anything about STEM. However, I believe that being correct is infinitely preferable than being wrong. So I will generously donate some time out of my day to rectify Stefan’s mistake.

At 53:50, Stefan says: ‘’I cannot find a law of physics that make leaves fall upwards’’. This is because Stefan doesn’t understand Newtonian Physics:

An object will be dawned to the center of mass. This means that a leaf in Australia is falling upwards in relation to Stefan who is in Canada.

However, this concept goes much deeper. Let’s create a scenario where I’m driving at 100 Km/hrs and Stefan is sitting in the passenger seat. Because Stefan is old, bored and he did not bring a book to read, he falls asleep. Stefan wakes up 4 hrs later and looks to his left. I am still next to him. Relatively to Stefan, I did not move an inch however, we are 400 Km away from the position where Stefan fell asleep.

We live on a blue rock that rotates around the Sun at 67 000 mph. This Sun is located in a solar system that spins around a black hole at the middle of a milky way; the Milky Way move at 300 000 mph inside a universe that expends faster than the speed of light.

You could spend your lifetime trying to pin point exact distance and trajectory of an object in relation to another object, because where you were when you started reading this post is thousands of miles away from where you are now.

However, physicists understand that you do not have to be so precise. You only need to be as precise as the physic problem demands. This means that you don’t have to determine the exact position of the center of mass of the Earth to determine the dynamic of an object. You can chose an arbitrary point of reference in space that will serve as a reference.

For example, let’s say you don’t like it when your neighbor mows his lawn at 5 am on a Sunday morning. So you decide to make a canon to obliterate his lawnmower. While you are making your targeting calculation it is far easier to pick the ground as your point of reference than the center of mass of the Earth. Besides, when you round up your calculations according to the significant figures, you won’t see a difference.

So yeah, depending on the point of reference you have chosen, leafs can fall up. So Stefan, you can practice what you preach and call up that postmodernist to apologize for your incorrect statement.

Gato Villano