I hate people who try to show their intellectual superiority by asking people to answer esoteric questions. It only reveals them to be annoying pedants. Knowing random facts is not a sign of intelligence. Smarmy Piers Morgan tried to embarrass a person on a reality show by asking her “Do you know what Pythagoras’s theorem is to the nearest five decimal places?” and embarrassed himself instead, as this clip shows.
There are so many things wrong with that one question and answer. One is shown in the video in that when his co-host challenged him to answer his own question, he said “3.147”, revealing that he had confused the famous theorem with the number pi. Maybe he thought that the person credited with the discovery of the theorem was called Pi Thagoras and had also decided to name the number after himself.
But there are other errors that reveal deeper idiocies lurking in what we can laughingly refer to as his brain.
One is that a theorem is a statement about propositions and will never be just a single number. The second is that it makes no sense to ask for the nearest five decimal places of a number. The third is that he himself gave only three decimal places after asking for five, suggesting that he does not know what ‘decimal places’ means. The fourth is that even that was wrong since the value of pi to five decimal places is 3.14159. And finally if he was rounding to just three decimal places, it would be 3.142.
His number of errors per word rating is simply off the charts. But this is Smarmy Piers in classic Dunning-Kruger mode, too ignorant to know that he is ignorant.
And to think that he once advocated for the “gun control movement” on CNN!
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Oh well, at least now those who favor gun control can know what sort of intellectual company they keep..
Quirky, #1
Irrespective of how smug and awful Piers Morgan is, the fact remains that sensible and civilised countries prevent their citizens from owning unnecessary instruments of death, don’t have a rampant and deadly culture of mass-murder and reap the benefits of much lower crime rates.
I rate the intellectual abilities of anyone who is not in favour of a complete ban on the ownership of deadly weaponry far lower than those of Piers Morgan.
Thank you cartomancer, I might accept your compliment if you could adequately define “deadly weaponry” and explain in a cogent manner just who will control the controllers.
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The US, with deadly weapons of mass proportion, has murdered more people in the 20th century and the 21st than any other nation. Do you suggest they be called upon to control “deadly weapons”?
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Or do you suggest we be controlled by some other nation?
How many parsecs can you do the Kessel run in? I can do it in underpants!
That reminds me of Sir Humphrey’s translation --” If you had kept your mouth shut we might have thought that you were clever”.
Speaking of random facts, some authors, in the Olden Days before the Net, had the annoying habit of inserting foreign phrases into the text. Doesn’t matter these days of course.
LMFTFY: … he himself gave only three decimal places after asking for five, suggesting that he does not know what ‘
decimal placesfive’ means.#1
You’re denigrating a large movement by highlighting one ignorant member, and implying that he/she is representative of the entire movement. Replace Piers Morgan with an ignorant pro-gun supporter, and repeat your argument. Let’s go with… Ted Nugent.
And to think that Ted Nugent is a gun ownership advocate!
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Oh well, at least now those who favor gun ownership can know what sort of intellectual company they keep..
Obviously, this tactic is quite bad.
Not to mention that Quirk’s formulation “favor gun control” is pretty stupid, unless he/she advocates a totally free gun market, so that everyone can freely buy any single gun thinkable. For instance excluding ten years old requires “gun control”.
Quirk’s formulation is hence ironically very comparable with the five decimals of Pythagoras’ Theorem.
Considering his other nattering, I suspect he means precisely that. Zero government controls on anything, lasseiz faire everything, and he seems to think it will all work out via the magic of positive thinking.
Holms you know how to jump into the fray but you are as clueless as cartomancer when it comes to addressing the questions I posed @ #3.
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That seems to be your modus operandi. You always ignore my questions. In the past you claim it is because you are disinterested in arguing. I suppose once again you’ll claim that excuse. But you always show up just long enough to reveal your failure. Get a sign saying FAIL, big red letters, and hang it around your neck. Maybe it will remind you what you are best at.
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Then again, I’m not even sure you would understand. But at least others would be adequately warned.