What would you be surprised to learn that you're wrong about?

I am completely convinced that President Obama was born in the United States. He’s a natural born citizen.

I’m also completely convinced that those who disagree with me do so basically from racist reasoning.

I don’t know about any of that, but I will indeed self proclaim nyself as the undisputed Halloween movie series champion. Bring it.
As for stuff like God or philosophy, well I usually venture those fields with the idea that I know nothing of them, anyways.

I understand your stipulations, but if I try and keep it 100% factual all I will end up doing is either pointing out the obvious, or claiming something that would take a team of a million scientists a decade to prove. Therefore, I will go with opinions and hunches instead. I’ll do 3 of them.

Here goes:

* The 9/11 Pennsylvania aircraft was shot down by the US government.
* Hospital staff will often kill patients that will die soon anyway by upping the morphene.
* A persons sexual desires/tastes/fantasies are formed around about the age of 10.

Clarification: the first two I mention are just hunches, the third is the one that is an opinion.

i believe that saying the moon revolves around the earth, or the earth around the sun is purely a point of view, and insisting upon a certain model and orientation is as dogmatic and irritating as people who insist on the absolute existence of their chosen deity. But i could be wrong.

That life is not too short. ;)

I believe I am right when I claim that there is a difference, at least for now, between “their” and “they’re.” That may have changed while I slept.

@gailcalled – there is still a difference – however, while you slept, it did become the opposite of what it was before. The contraction will now be recognized as the possessive, and vice-versa. ;-)

Your jesting, I hope.

Of course. Just as I hope (and assume) that your “your” confusion above was a clever extra layer of grammatical commentary (and considering it’s a substitution of the possessive for the contraction, I think it highly likely it is – good show).

@iamthemob: And I used only four words. Getting old helps.

I am a male.

I don’t think that my wife or I are going to live more than 120 years each.
I’d love to be wrong about that, but I’d be way surprised if I was.

I also believe that life exists on at least one other planet in this galaxy, and in most other galaxies too.
However, disproving that seems to approach the implausibility of disproving the existence of a deity.

I’ve chosen to omit any empirically veritable certainties, such as the Sun rising tomorrow.

No one disagreeing? I’ll take a stab at a few.

@poisonedantidote -

* Hospital staff will often kill patients that will die soon anyway by upping the morphene.

I think this may have been true at some point, and is probably still true with some hospice care, but if we take hospice out of the equation I think it’s simply too hard to pull off and too big of a risk for most hospital staff. Drugs such as morphine are so controlled within hospitals that it would take a virtually unspoken agreement between several people to pull it off. A doctor to write a prescription for a potentially lethal dose, a nurse to administer it, and then whoever reviews the chart for a person who dies in the hospital would have to overlook the fact that a lethal dose was prescribed and given.

So why not just give more than prescribed? Well, the drugs are highly controlled, they’re counted each day and any discrepancy is followed up.

Just say it was a mistake and the overage wasn’t used – All disposal of narcotic drugs has to be witnessed and signed off by another person

I think there are situations where hospital staff would like to ease someone’s pain and possibly even help them die peacefully rather than suffer, but the current system is set up specifically to keep them from making that decision and offenders are punished as murderers regardless of the patient’s health.

Links for support -
A local nurse that has been charged with three counts of murder for aiding dying patients with morphine
A list of other cases where nurses have been tried for administering lethal doses of morphine
Example of controlled substance management policies for EMTs

@mammal -

i believe that saying the moon revolves around the earth, or the earth around the sun is purely a point of view, and insisting upon a certain model and orientation is as dogmatic and irritating as people who insist on the absolute existence of their chosen deity. But i could be wrong.

I’m not sure if you’re serious or if maybe it’s just a play on words I’m not catching but assuming you actually mean the moon may not revolve around the earth and the earth may not revolve around the sun there are a couple of fairly solid arguments.

We’ve observed all three bodies from Earth, from space, and from the moon. We’ve seen and recorded their movements. Here’s video showing the moon passing in front of the Earth from a satellite.

Just in regards to observations you and I have actually seen with our own eyes, how else would you explain the phases of the moon, the change in tides, lunar eclipses or the sun rising and setting? There are quite a few things that go into supporting the model we currently use.

From a larger point of view, we’ve launched quite a few things in to space, some relying on the fact that we have a good understanding of where everything is and will be in the future and none have failed because of a poor understanding. Some even use a fairly precise flight around the sun to utilize it’s gravity as propulsion.

It seems if our model of the solar system were flawed on points as essentially as the ones you mention someone would have observed that discrepancy directly by now and pointed it out.

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As for a belief of my own I’d love to be proven wrong on… I believe psychologically people need some form of trial or hardship to overcome. If one doesn’t exist in their life, they’ll either find or manufacture one. I think that can be more damaging than the real thing and think directing people to finding their own real and productive trials has a future as therapy for what ails us as things get easier and easier on a basic level.

OK, to give some that might actually be controversial…

• Some form of the iron-sulfur world theory is how life on Earth started.
• Global climate change is anthropogenic.
• Homosexuality has a genetic basis.

Pretty damned certain that Multiple Sclerosis is not an ‘autoimmune’ disease. That the cause lies well before the immune system is mobilised, that the visible evidence which for years has led the diagnostic and prognostic research is only the result of another agent.

Personally, believe the causative process involves minute faults in iron metabolism*. This leads to short-circuits in nerve conduction, causing ‘hot spots’ which in turn attract the natural defences of the immune system. Can provide evidence, much research is going on, just wish sooooooo sincerely that research and treatment was not led by cash, as with most medical intervention. Hey Ho.

*wondering if this is in fact to do with picotesla, or tiny fluctuations in electrical conductivity at a crystalline level

or maybe too much sun cream

I would be shocked to learn that there is an invisible guy in the sky who is controlling shit down here.

@woodcutter – yeah – that’s kind of the exact opposite of what I asked about. ;-)

@iamthemob sorry bout that must have skipped right over that one

I would be surprised to learn that I’m wrong about anything I think I’m right about. And that means everything on which I have knowledge or have formed an opinion, including the opinion that I’m right.

Unfortunately the odds are that some percentage of those things is wrong, but I don’t know what percentage or which things.