I realized this morning that we’re almost at the time when shops will be gearing up for Christmas. And it will soon be panto season again (Oh yes it will. Oh no it won’t).
And we’re headed for another kind of pantomime - the pantomime of our Lords and Masters telling us how to beat a respiratory virus by following one-way systems in those shops we’re allowed into for our allotted hour outside of our homes1.
Yes, covid is making a comeback. The new BS 24/7 variant is here and is even scarier than before.
And just to make sure nobody gets the wrong message, we’ve made it even harder for the truth misinformation to be spread by introducing new laws that can fine media platforms for posts that disagree with us spread dangerous misinformation.
If you want to see how censorship can be achieved without all the fuss and angst, then Twitter’s new policy of “Freedom of Speech, but not Freedom of Reach” is a nice shiny new way of being an authoritarian twat.
We’re going to make it even harder for you to “do your own research” by only allowing the research output we control to be visible to you.
We all saw how, during the fever dream that was covid, the Experts™ and others told us not to “do your own research”.
This, it was said, was a BAD thing. How dare you look things up for yourself!
What they were really saying was something like:
Bow before my Mighty and Shiny Domed Forehead of Knowledge and Wisdom ye insufferable plebs, for I, the Lord God your Expert™ hath spoken
Or : there’s no need for you to think, buttercup - let us do that for you.
It was only a partial success, because too many people ignored this instruction from on high and managed to figure out that their government and its Experts™ were gibbering talkish.
So for a little bit of light relief from the anticipated new CoronaDoom™ let’s have a look at a mini ‘research’ project.
Look at the Length of That!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out the length of the longest side of a (right-angled) triangle when the other 2 sides are of the same length.
We’re going to assume you’ve never heard of some dude called Pythagoras.
The answer, these days, is to fire up Google. After scrolling through the first 127 results, which tell you how racist maths is and that theorems are colonialist constructs invented to suppress the noble people of alternative hue, you finally spot some weird Greek sounding name and click on that link because it seems more interesting than feeling guilty about how your ancestors misused their Weapons of Maths Instruction.
But what if you’re out and about in the wilds somewhere (wearing a mask, obviously - we need to protect the trees from the VirusOfDoom™) and the urge to solve this problem suddenly overtakes you? And wouldn’t you just know it, there’s no cell reception?
After a bit of head scratching and drawing shapes you realize that if you have 2 of these triangles you can make a square. You don’t know why this has just popped into your head, but you know that the area of this square is just a times a.
Aha, you think, I can make an even bigger square with 4 of them! And the area of this bigger square is L times L.
But if the area of the smaller square is a x a, and the area of the bigger square is L x L, then I can relate the two - because my 2 triangles have half the area of the 4 triangles.
And what you end up with is proving a limited form of Pythagoras’ theorem which applies when the two shorter sides are of equal length.
What you’ve done here is to ask a question (what is L for this kind of triangle?) and answered it.
And that’s research. It’s the process of finding out answers to the questions you have.
You can do this by reading about the work of others or, as in this case, you can spend a bit of time figuring it out for yourself.
There’s a couple of things to point out about this process of figuring stuff out for yourself.
(a) you were initially confused and didn’t quite know how to proceed
(b) you had some inspiration
(c) you applied some pre-existing knowledge (the area of a square) and used it to give you something new (the length of the longest side of this kind of triangle)
This is a very typical scenario when doing the pointy-head white-coat sciency stuff. There’s no essential difference. The only real difference is that the credentialed expert has more knowledge (more theorems like the area of a square) at his or her disposal.
Feynman described this in one of his books. You start off asking questions and answering them. You read a bit more and find that some dude back in ancient Greece had already come up with the answer. You read a bit more and ask more questions. You answer them, only to find some 17th century dandy in a weird wig had got there before you. You read some more. Eventually, you ask a question that no one has answered - and if you can figure out the answer, you can publish it2.
If you’re interested (and why would you be?) you can use this technique of sliding triangles around to prove the full Pythagoras theorem. The bits of prior knowledge you need are the areas of a square and a triangle. Here’s how it looks
What to say when an Expert™ tells you not to do your own research?
This is another research question.
What’s the answer?
We take our inspiration from re-arranging triangles into different shapes.
Here we re-arrange the letters O F U F K C F into a well-known two-word phrase.
This only works if you restrict yourself only to essential purchases. For a definition of “essential” see The Communist Manifesto your local government commissar advisor.
Except when the answer disagrees with the Officially Approved™ narrative. Then your paper will be instantaneously rejected.
You never fail to make me laugh ( and think). Your work is much appreciated
Ditto Barbara’s comment. So glad we haven’t embraced the “tin-man hypothesis”
(she said with a chuckle…)