I don’t care what my eyes see, you’re wrong
When I was in college I worked at a science museum on the other side of the city from my engineering school. I’d ride my bike back and forth between the two several times a day.
One of the things I did at the museum was give planetarium shows.
There were all sorts of projectors and effects that had to be triggered at certain times in certain ways. Very little was automated, so you were constantly flipping switches and twiddling knobs to get the show to run in time with the recorded audio. (I much preferred the “what you can see tonight in the sky” show as it was live and I could just point at things with my laser pointer as I talked…)
There was one show that was sort of a general space science show. One effect of the show was it brought together a red, green and blue light to show how they combined into while light.
After the show, a man came up to my control booth.
“My girlfriend is an artist and she says you are wrong,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
“Red, green and blue don’t make white,” he said.
“They do for light,” I said.
Ironically, the man was standing next to the three colored projector as he said this. So, I turned it on and the three overlapping circles with the white in the center appeared on the planetarium dome.
“That’s not right,” he said.
“This isn’t a slide. I’m projecting three colors and they are combining into white.”
To prove it, I moved them apart so each circle could be seen independently and then brought them back together.
“You’re wrong!” the woman behind him shouted at me. “That’s not how colors work!”
“Paints are different from light,” I told her. “Beams of light don’t work the same way pigments do.”
“Color is color and what you’re telling people here is wrong!” she yelled.
“You can see it right there on the dome,” I said, pointing up at it. “It’s working that way right in front of you.”
“We’re not falling for your tricks!” the man said and they both stomped away.
I guess they must have complained about me as the head of education asked me later “did you have to deal with a couple of morons at the 2PM show?”
I’ve always had trouble with that incident in my mine, even though it was something like 35 years ago.
I understand that sometimes things don’t work like you think the should and you think that is wrong.
But, when someone can demonstrate their point, it confuses me that such clear evidence could just be rejected out of hand.
I bring this up as over the last 35 years there seem to be more of this kind of person about; on both the political left and political right, conservative and liberal.
I understand the things not working as you expect.
Just not the “we don’t believe what you are showing us in front of our own eyes” part.
To me, it is very strange.