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"Everything You Know Is Wrong!"

At most, I understood 20% of this article. I did understand that the very core of modern physics - Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity - is threatened by certain implications of quantum mechanics. And I grasped that a generation of physicists is confronting the possibility that much of what they believed to be true is up for grabs.

It brought to mind a story about a professor beginning the first day of class by scrawling an apocryphal warning across the chalkboard: "Everything you know is wrong." Of course if that statement's true, it's also false. Messing with freshmen is child's play.

But what if the statement reflects more of reality than we'd like to admit?

We tend to make decisions about life and organizations through a certain lens, a framework that brings stability to our world. Unfortunately, the lens can turn out to be fogged with casual ignorance and selective, self-justifying history. We may have quiet, nagging doubts along the way. We may suspect we don't know what we don't know, yet we make a decision and move on.

Sometimes it pays to listen to those nagging doubts. Just ask a physicist.


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