I don’t want to turn this into a 4 Yorkshiremen sketch, but when I was growing up we had very few of the accoutrements that are, today, considered central to life.
The problem with stupidity is that it occasionally gets lucky. Intermittent rewards provide the best reinforcement. During Covid, the experts were wrong and a lot of people with little scientific understanding got lucky simply by living by “don’t trust scientists.” But as soon as those people have a loony theory of their own, it’s funny how hard they try to prop up the credentials of the person spouting it. I do love the Internet, though— it is an amazing place of entrepreneurship and is profoundly democratizing. But we would all do wise to live by Feynman’s advice about the easiest person to fool. Just because I mocked the glass partitions and masks doesn’t mean I’m not prone to error about a million other thoughts and assumptions.
It's not always easy to fully appreciate one's own limitations. Just because we got some things right is not a guarantee we'll get everything right. I've had my previous success bubble burst on many embarrassing occasions 😆
“It’s the internet wot dun it. If we were back in the ‘old days’ we could be much more easily manipulated. We’d have a few newspapers and TV news shows to rely on and very little else. Instead, what we got was a whole range of free-thinking people (many of whom possess serious credentials themselves) presenting very different understandings and analyses from the ‘official’ narrative that we were supposed to believe.”
What RR says is true, of course, but the same information technology also made worldwide lockdown even plausible, and provides all-new tools for authoritarian suppression of expression, manipulation of opinion, and economic strangulation.
Who knows which of the countervailing tendencies will prove the stronger.
Yes that's true. TPTB tried desperately to apply the 'old model' to the internet to maintain a uniform narrative during covid. It didn't properly work, but it worked well enough.
What I'm very strongly against is any attempt to make the internet work like the old media model. As we saw during covid, this was a disaster.
And it was owned by the state monopoly. A real, bonafide, public monopoly. Not today's alleged free choice, which in reality is just choosing how to pay to the same 0.0...1% oligarchs who owns everything.
Oligarchs you get to pay thrice: via your taxes by way of subsidies, via your own wallet for using a service, and again via taxes /and/ yout wallet paying fees and taxes on fees for the service existing in the first place.
As for the rest, re: teaching-learning - oh yes by Crikey, that is the way to do it. Be out there. Be wrong - heck, be really wrong up to 11, because out of the wreckage of your hypothesis you will at the very least have learned how to check a hypothesis (and quite possibly you'll have discovered bits and oieces that can be rechecked and reintegrated into a new hypothesis).
Rote learning of ritual is for cults, not science.
I've no problem with rote learning *provided* it's the first step in a wider process. We do need some basics to begin with - but we also need to learn how to properly process what we learn.
Absolutely. If I hadn't been forced at metaphorical gunpoint to learn handwriting, normal and cursive, I'd have been better off with a hammer, chisel and a flat stone.
As a bright little scholarship boy who’d never encountered science apart from some fairly basic arithmetic, I was a bit thrown when I was put in a physics class in my secondary school and on almost day one given a problem by our physics teacher - calculate the volume of air in a bicycle tube. I pretty much refused to bother - I assumed there was some sort of formula (that I hadn’t been taught) to work it out in order to get the “right” answer. So I gave up and left the class, and have regretted it ever since. I suspect that’s what Fr Michael, the physics teacher (he was a Benedictine monk), intended. Weed out the boys (we were all boys then), not who didn’t know the formula, but who couldn’t think for themselves. Years later I realised there were so many ways I could have answered the question, but I was brainwashed into thinking there was only one right answer, and only one way to reach it. I should have given it my best shot. Deeply regret I didn’t.
That's a shame. Fr Michael should have been a bit more encouraging. Maybe he was.
One of the difficulties today, and one of the downsides of the Internet, particularly for education, is that you can easily look up the formula. The process of trying to figure it out for yourself is so very valuable, even if you don't get the right answer in the end.
I enjoy that process, but I can understand why a lot would find it to be a right royal pain in the ass.
I remember, many decades later, one particular professor announcing at the beginning of the term that he would choose one question from one of the weekly homework assignments to appear verbatim on the final exam, which itself only had 3 or 4 questions. I still remember the question and I, sort of, remember how it was solved. (Something about solving for the torque on a crank that turned a conductive cylinder in a magnetic field--a scenario that has never, ever been relevant to me since.)
I did that for a quiz. The students did disastrously on the first couple so I told them that one of the 2 questions would be a worked example they'd already seen on the quiz topic.
Yes, that's a truly wonderful show. Park Eun-Bin gives a magical performance.
She's also in "Castaway Diva" which is another one I loved. What's even more amazing is that she does the singing! Not only a very talented actress but a fabulous singer too.
The problem with stupidity is that it occasionally gets lucky. Intermittent rewards provide the best reinforcement. During Covid, the experts were wrong and a lot of people with little scientific understanding got lucky simply by living by “don’t trust scientists.” But as soon as those people have a loony theory of their own, it’s funny how hard they try to prop up the credentials of the person spouting it. I do love the Internet, though— it is an amazing place of entrepreneurship and is profoundly democratizing. But we would all do wise to live by Feynman’s advice about the easiest person to fool. Just because I mocked the glass partitions and masks doesn’t mean I’m not prone to error about a million other thoughts and assumptions.
Good points Diana.
It's not always easy to fully appreciate one's own limitations. Just because we got some things right is not a guarantee we'll get everything right. I've had my previous success bubble burst on many embarrassing occasions 😆
“It’s the internet wot dun it. If we were back in the ‘old days’ we could be much more easily manipulated. We’d have a few newspapers and TV news shows to rely on and very little else. Instead, what we got was a whole range of free-thinking people (many of whom possess serious credentials themselves) presenting very different understandings and analyses from the ‘official’ narrative that we were supposed to believe.”
What RR says is true, of course, but the same information technology also made worldwide lockdown even plausible, and provides all-new tools for authoritarian suppression of expression, manipulation of opinion, and economic strangulation.
Who knows which of the countervailing tendencies will prove the stronger.
Yes that's true. TPTB tried desperately to apply the 'old model' to the internet to maintain a uniform narrative during covid. It didn't properly work, but it worked well enough.
What I'm very strongly against is any attempt to make the internet work like the old media model. As we saw during covid, this was a disaster.
"Our phone was ‘chained’ to the wall."
And it was owned by the state monopoly. A real, bonafide, public monopoly. Not today's alleged free choice, which in reality is just choosing how to pay to the same 0.0...1% oligarchs who owns everything.
Oligarchs you get to pay thrice: via your taxes by way of subsidies, via your own wallet for using a service, and again via taxes /and/ yout wallet paying fees and taxes on fees for the service existing in the first place.
As for the rest, re: teaching-learning - oh yes by Crikey, that is the way to do it. Be out there. Be wrong - heck, be really wrong up to 11, because out of the wreckage of your hypothesis you will at the very least have learned how to check a hypothesis (and quite possibly you'll have discovered bits and oieces that can be rechecked and reintegrated into a new hypothesis).
Rote learning of ritual is for cults, not science.
I've no problem with rote learning *provided* it's the first step in a wider process. We do need some basics to begin with - but we also need to learn how to properly process what we learn.
Absolutely. If I hadn't been forced at metaphorical gunpoint to learn handwriting, normal and cursive, I'd have been better off with a hammer, chisel and a flat stone.
As a bright little scholarship boy who’d never encountered science apart from some fairly basic arithmetic, I was a bit thrown when I was put in a physics class in my secondary school and on almost day one given a problem by our physics teacher - calculate the volume of air in a bicycle tube. I pretty much refused to bother - I assumed there was some sort of formula (that I hadn’t been taught) to work it out in order to get the “right” answer. So I gave up and left the class, and have regretted it ever since. I suspect that’s what Fr Michael, the physics teacher (he was a Benedictine monk), intended. Weed out the boys (we were all boys then), not who didn’t know the formula, but who couldn’t think for themselves. Years later I realised there were so many ways I could have answered the question, but I was brainwashed into thinking there was only one right answer, and only one way to reach it. I should have given it my best shot. Deeply regret I didn’t.
That's a shame. Fr Michael should have been a bit more encouraging. Maybe he was.
One of the difficulties today, and one of the downsides of the Internet, particularly for education, is that you can easily look up the formula. The process of trying to figure it out for yourself is so very valuable, even if you don't get the right answer in the end.
I enjoy that process, but I can understand why a lot would find it to be a right royal pain in the ass.
I remember, many decades later, one particular professor announcing at the beginning of the term that he would choose one question from one of the weekly homework assignments to appear verbatim on the final exam, which itself only had 3 or 4 questions. I still remember the question and I, sort of, remember how it was solved. (Something about solving for the torque on a crank that turned a conductive cylinder in a magnetic field--a scenario that has never, ever been relevant to me since.)
I did that for a quiz. The students did disastrously on the first couple so I told them that one of the 2 questions would be a worked example they'd already seen on the quiz topic.
The students still did badly 🤣
Many a mother has chosen the bowl haircut, I know my Mom did....(freehand tho)
‘Extraordinary Attorney Woo’ was so delightful I did something I almost never do…binge watched. Don’t miss it.
Yes, that's a truly wonderful show. Park Eun-Bin gives a magical performance.
She's also in "Castaway Diva" which is another one I loved. What's even more amazing is that she does the singing! Not only a very talented actress but a fabulous singer too.
Oh, I will have to look for Castaway Diva. Thanks.
I was wondering about doing a post giving my kdrama recommendations 😁
That’s a fine idea. I’m sure we’ve probably missed a few that other folks have discovered and enjoyed.
Thanks for this. A real gift. I found episode 1 on YouTube and am hooked. Just a shame I needed to restart my Netflix subscription 😂
I had to do that, also. As much as I hated to do it. But if you binge it you only have to keep it for one month!
Outstanding. You wrote my inner thoughts in a much more succinct and clear manner.