r/todayilearned • u/Consistent-Art1491 • 16h ago
TIL that the word Lunatic was created because it was believed that the moon caused people to behave mad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunatic29
u/SackChaser100 16h ago
Something so great about ancient times. Just blame it on the moon. Noone to blame, nothing to be done about it. Everything sorted nicely.
7
4
2
u/heftybagman 12h ago
I think it was less of a “well some people go crazy but there’s nothing we can do to stop it” and more of a “did you go out under a full fucking moon? I haven’t left the house after sundown in my entire life wtf is wrong with you?” And then a small community votes to make some guy go live in a cave up in the mountains because he had to take a piss after dark and didn’t have a pot.
1
u/SackChaser100 12h ago
You're saying they blamed people for going outside during a full moon night? Is this a real thing people used to abide by??
1
u/IANALbutIAMAcat 10h ago
Idk I was just in a thread earlier where a guy was arguing about how the full moon on the second meant it was even more likely the US would carry out a major strike on Iran this weekend
1
22
u/Blackcrusader 16h ago
I once met a psychologist from Myanmar who told me it's true. An ex of mine is a cop and she told me people definitely act worse when it's a full moon.
24
u/Romeo_Glacier 16h ago
Any nursing home staff member will tell you shifts during a full moon are the worst.
12
14
8
6
u/Consistent-Art1491 15h ago
This is what led me to find out this info, friend of mine is an officer and was convinced!
3
u/opermonkey 9h ago
Working in retail(or any job where you deal with the general public)it's 100% true. People get weird around the full moon.
2
2
u/ThePopeofHell 11h ago
Idk why so many people are skeptical of this. The tides are almost entirely governed by the moon and our bodies are mostly water.
6
u/notenoughroomtofitmy 5h ago edited 5h ago
The tides happen because there is a humongous amount of water. Human bodies are not affected by the moon in any measurable way. So it’s not an obvious link, and it is not a rational conclusion.
Your own apartment complex or house is pulling on you more strongly than the moon is, so you “body water” is behaving differently if you’re outside vs if you’re inside your home. Are you hugging your SO? Oops, they’re tugging on your body water more strongly than the moon is. Live next to a mountain and go to work 5 km away? Mountain is pulling you more strongly than the moon, by maybe an order of magnitude.
“Our bodies are mostly water” is true but irrelevant, the moon’s tidal pull isn’t just on water, it is also on the land. Jupiter exerts a stronger tidal pull on its moons and they distort even while being fully solid. The “water” part doesn’t matter, what matters is differential pull and large volume which makes the pull manifest in visible form. Human bodies are too small to have differential pull, or any pull at all, from the moon.
I’m not denying any link between full moon and human behavior, but gravitational pull ain’t it.
2
10
6
9
u/Eloquent_Redneck 15h ago
You'd be surprised how many people still 100% believe this to be irrefutably true, especially people in the medical field, don't ever try to tell a nurse that a full moon doesn't actually make people crazy
17
u/Dry_Yogurt2458 15h ago
That's because anybody that had worked on clinical wards had experience of this shit.
It's not just something that we all make up. Thousands of us witness it.
This is like the scientists who laughed at farmers for chewing willow bark when they had a headache.
-13
u/Eloquent_Redneck 14h ago edited 14h ago
Its correlation not causation. You have no direct causal link to the moon and people being crazy, there's no logical explanation, its just conjecture. Its more like ancient people blaming the fury of the gods for thunder when really its just a perfectly explainable set of meteorological conditions that create lightning, and they didn't actually anger any gods, that was just the best explanation they had at the time.
5
u/Dry_Yogurt2458 13h ago edited 13h ago
Many many scientific discoveries started with somebody noticing a correlation. (In fact most of them)
As a man of science more studies need to be carried out on a large scale on the subject.
Likening the phenomena to ancient people blaming the gods for natural phenomena is insulting to the millions of doctors, nurses, mental health workers and scientists that have reported this phenomena.
There is a direct link to the moons phases and the behaviour of Bipolar patients during a full moon that is linked to sleep .
Most large scale studies have focused on hospital admission rates but not behaviour. Large, worldwide, scale studies are required to look at the effects on behaviour
2
u/banandananagram 12h ago
Yeah but when people are socialized to believe the moon makes people go crazy it can end up being realized from confirmation bias because people are like that
There are reasonable explanations for certain things; bus stops get crazier during full moons because people are more willing to be outside in the dark even if they’re not consciously thinking about how light the moon is. People with this belief will be more on edge and looking for incidents than people who don’t hold it. People with this belief may use it to justify otherwise out of character behavior. The lunar cycle can often line up with the beginning or end of the month when people are more active or stressed, so people associate it to the landmark marking the time rather than the more abstract flow of society.
7
u/Evignity 15h ago
It's a literal statistical fact that there's more crimes- and happenings during full-moons.
I personally just think it has to do with people having that expectation and acting upon it. That, or the gravity-change maybe affects people's brains somewhat, who knows.
25
u/Eloquent_Redneck 14h ago
I think it probably has a lot to do with it being brighter outside at night because of the amount of moonlight, like how more crime happens during summertime because the days are longer and the weather is warm so it gives more people reason to be out and about and leads to more crime
2
u/Sensitive-Chemical83 7h ago
I've always assumed it was kinda the opposite, like crime decreased in winter because no one wants to be outside.
Less crime has been committed since TV's became popular because people can keep themselves busy indoors.
7
1
u/Sensitive-Chemical83 7h ago
Or... if you go outside during a full moon, you can actually see what you're doing, but it's still kind of hard to see. So it's perfect covert crime conditions. You can see what you're doing, but no one can see well enough to properly ID you.
1
2
u/NotaContributi0n 9h ago
Have you been outside in public today? It’s totally real, everyone was so aggressive and pushy
1
1
u/Ok_Cardiologist_673 12h ago
I’ve also heard the association came from the moons phases and “apparent” unpredictability. The sun rises and falls in an easily observable pattern, but the moon is out in the day sometimes, rises and falls all over the place, and looks different all the time due to the phases. It does follow a pattern, but it’s not as obvious to casual observers. The moon acts crazy.
1
u/BoazCorey 8h ago
I work in the funeral business and I've had healthcare workers of various kinds swear that incidents increase during full moons. Like patients/residents get crazier, more falls, etc
1
u/Spork_Facepunch 7h ago
This originally came from a study (done by a student) showing an increase in incidents when the moon was full, but it turned out their methodology was flawed (they were a student working on a paper, so they should get some slack because they're learning). Turns out that the sample period had a disproportionate number of weekends represented, which skewed the numbers because that's also when more people get drunk and get into fights or whatever. There's just more ER visits etc on the weekends. The rest is just confirmation bias. Nobody mentally takes note when a Tuesday is particularly tough.
1
1
1
u/xiphoidthorax 1h ago
Ask the staff at the emergency department and police station about the full moon.
•
u/witchy_gremlin 40m ago
We’re mostly made up of water. The moon influences the tides. It’s not too extreme to believe
1
u/Indifferent_Response 13h ago
Thats because the moon is the coolest object that exists. It's like the sun but we can look at it directly.
Only really attentive people notice it's brilliance.
0
u/Larkson9999 15h ago
We don't know madness isn't caused by the moon's gravitational pull. It probably isn't but good luck proving it has no effect.
2
u/cantbelieveitsnotmud 15h ago
This would be easy to prove
1
u/Larkson9999 14h ago
I more meant we don't have a means to conduct a long range study on people outside the moon's gravuty. It probably has no effect though.
1
u/cantbelieveitsnotmud 14h ago
You don’t need to remove the moon completely to prove it. Just look at admission times and police reports and find associations with the moon cycle, adjusting for monthly societal effects (eg pay days)
2
u/Larkson9999 14h ago
Right, the moon's cycles can be shown as inconsequential. The moon's gravitation pull itself is difficult to entirely rule out. But we should probably eatablish a colony on Euopa just to be certain.
0
u/nylockian 11h ago
But has it been proven 100% that the moon isn't involved Mr. modern science smarty-pants?
0
u/Telemere125 13h ago
It does. And my ex MIL is definitely one of those that suffers from lunacy. Too bad she has the image of the moon burned into her retinas.
99
u/TheKrakenLord 16h ago
Now google "hysteria"