i saw a video once that basically said "don't confuse patterns in how things behave with causes of those behaviours"

the example that was given was the classic "why does a figure skater's spin speed up when they bring their arms in?"

if you ask that you'll often hear "because the angular momentum of the system has to be conserved" but the video argued that that's not why. it's true but it's not a cause of anything, it's an observation we made about behaviours. and he gave an explanation of an actual mechanism by which bringing their arms in speeds them up, showing afterwards that it conserves angular momentum

i think about it a lot

wait holy fuck i just realized

you know that thing where you make cakes that are extremely realistic replicas of other stuff

and like, you deceive people into thinking it's not cake, and then they're surprised when it's cake

does that mean that the cake...

i mean, the cake is... it's...

the cake is a...

i mean

the cake...

@SuricrasiaOnline cc: @DrSagan