I am not very keen to have arguments with random strangers online, and anyway most of my posts on social media are about Physics. But somehow a post I made on Xwitter attracted a lot of very angry people (not sure why people should get angry about general relativity, especially if they are not Physicists, but they did).
The worst part is that post also got a ton of likes. A lot more than my Physics posts usually attract.
Rage and polarized discussions sell all too well, irrespectively from the topic 😞
@j_bertolotti This just makes me think of the article in Conservapedia that (once upon a time) criticized the theory of relativity under the apparent presumption that it had something to do with moral relativism, which was depressingly stupid but also kind of funny. (It looks like the current version still rails against it but for different reasons.)
@internic @j_bertolotti speaking of moral relativism, I find it hilarious that conservatives love it when talking about state rights.
@internic @j_bertolotti
Yeah, I went through the Talk section of the article once and it was filled with comments from conservative physicists and engineers (including Andrew Schlafly's brother) asking him to let them fix the article into something less embarrassing.
But Andrew Schlafly was certain that Relativity was a scheme.
The entire article got nuked and re-created, so the comments explaining Relativity to him got destroyed too (which I'm sure was the reason for deleting it).