Why do you feel it is appropriate to call me a hypocrite for that statement? I am not angry, but you might consider tempering your jive there, buddy.
There are different types of âknowingâ, and they permit different varieties of activities. You can know how to do the math for QM, but you canât necessarily translate that type of knowledge into an ability to judge other paradigms which strive to explain the same observations. That would also require a conceptual comprehension.
If you knew the concepts of QM as well as the concepts of that competing paradigm â and the various arguments which make the case in both directions â you can develop a qualitative assessment which can guide you towards good questions and experiments which can differentiate between the two.
There is a huge amount of research which supports the use of concept maps within science education. Joseph Novak, the inventor of concept maps, has consulted for some very prestigious institutions, including the NSA. When an intelligence analyst is trying to decode a very complex situation, they graphically map the problem out in various ways. Business modelers do the same thing with systems thinking diagrams.
Bob Gowan invented the vee diagram to help students to understand the structure of science. Research demonstrates that students generally donât even know how to extract scientific structures like concepts, propositions, assumptions (and so forth) from a scientific paper.
Itâs a very simple idea: Why not simply draw these complex models out? Graphs and lattices are used in many other similar endeavors. Learning would be faster if the students could see the conceptual structure of the theories under examination. Comments could simply attach to this structure.
[quote=âHannesAlfven, post:42, topic:10659â]
There are different types of âknowingâ, and they permit different varieties of activities. You can know how to do the math for QM, but you canât necessarily translate that type of knowledge into an ability to judge other paradigms which strive to explain the same observations. That would also require a conceptual comprehension.[/quote]
Well, that depends. On a site linked earlier is a competing paradigm for a particular quantum effect. The point of this experiment is to demonstrate that a single photon cannot always be considered strictly as a point-like particle, because it would have to interfere with itself. QM gives a description of how this works, but this author sidesteps the issue by drawing waves in some diagrams, and particles in others. He does not explain how light can decide which form to take, or, worse, even seem to understand thatâs the very crux of the issue. So, in this case, knowing QM makes it easy to see that this competing concept isnât useful.
Itâs a very simple idea: Why not simply draw these complex models out?
Graphs and lattices are used in many other similar endeavors.
Learning would be faster if the students could see the conceptual
structure of the theories under examination. Comments could simply
attach to this structure.
These ideas about new ways of doing comments on the web are interesting, and definitely worthy of experiment. I expect if the people who are familiar with these concepts make a web tool that uses them, and itâs successful, then others will begin to adopt it as well. It seems a bit excessive to hold it against the scientists who have not been researching these topics that they havenât already developed this system.
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What Iâm seeing is that this happens in both directions. There is a philosophy of science problem called unconceived alternatives that we can use the Internet to eat away at. But, if somebodyâs take is that science is just fine as it is, then systems which permit people to compare and contrast concepts, models and worldviews will never even get built.
It used to be that free expression originated on our university campuses. Itâs not clear to me that this remains a value which is held by scientists and science professors today. The problem is the pattern â not the individual instances.
We see many of the same type of complaints being lodged against this system over many years, and very little being done about it. This went viral just a few weeks ago âŚ
The current system of cartography in science is scientometrics. Itâs based upon the notion that we should graph citations. The citations are apparently used as a metric to gauge worth of research. The biggest problem is that a great number of now-accepted ideas were originally rejected by peer reviewers as absurd. If your goal is innovation, citations would seem to not necessarily be the best metric to use (at least not by itself).
This is important: if you carry a cell phone in your pocket, then everyday you are using a device with integrated circuits, which were designed using QFT, and GPS, which requires general relativity. These arenât weird esoteric theories in need of alternatives, they are part of everyday human experience.
This is less important. I once gave a talk at a math conference on a subject of purely personal interest, that was half speculation, and no one complained. This morning one prof compared string theory to epicycles, and he hasnât been fired yet. Yesterday in Physics lab we were told to explore solutions to a quantum system, with no grading or guidance, just see what we could find if we change this or that. Again this morning, a prof describing an upcoming quiz: âitâs going to be to make sure you understand the concepts, there arenât going to be any lengthy calculations.â
When I was in engineering, almost every class had a sheet of equations in tests because you werenât expected to memorize them, only how to use them. This is less the case in grad school, but look, by then youâve learned the math language and are filling in the concepts.
Iâve also dropped out of a PhD program before when I decided it wasnât everything I wanted, but much of what youâve claimed about scientific culture and pedagogy is strawman caricature.
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I think probably the community of ordinary people are not used to be able to speak to the authorities â and science has been presented to them as an authority â and have not yet developed a culture that works to suppress trolls, spammers, hobby-horse riders, and phonies. One solution is to make them shut up again.
The conflict goes back to the early radical Protestant notion of the priesthood of all believers, the belief that every man could interpret the Scriptures for himself. When Asimov parodies this view as âmy ignorance is just as good as your knowledgeâ, or when PopSci shuts off the prolesâ commentary, they are simply giving the authoritarian view, which is that true knowledge proceeds from and is guided by authority, and all else should be set aside if not suppressed. In politics, that view rejects actual democracy, or at least calls for it to be denatured by representation and âleadershipâ. For the last few centuries, capitalist control of the workplace and especially the media was strongly filtered in favor of established authority. The Internet broke that filter, and we are now struggling to adapt to the new situation and its difficulties.
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This frustrates me to no end on Science Friday on NPR (which I assume is what you were referring to⌠not much science elsewhere on talk radio). They have fascinating, brilliant scientists on⌠answering the dumbest off-topic questions the public can get past the screeners.
The people who work on the show arenât stupid, and do their homework ahead of time to understand at least what to ask. The show should be Ira Flatow, or perhaps guest interviewers who know more about certain fields, interviewing the scientists they have on Terry Gross style. Perhaps Ira Flatowâs role would be to cover the basic questions quickly at the beginning, instead of leaving those to the audience.
Since Science Friday arose as part of Talk of the Nation, perhaps nowâs a good time to change the format since they ended production of Talk of the Nation but Science Friday continues.
To bring this to the main topic - as a scientist myself, Iâd get little value from attempting to directly ask questions about a topic outside of my field without doing significant homework ahead of time. I honestly donât understand why anybody would attempt this, either by calling in to Science Friday or by making a comment on a Popular Science article.
I would - and do - get a lot of value out of other people directly asking questions, whether they are someone also in that field, or are e.g. journalists (like Maggie here at BB) who have done the homework.
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I realize that this is an incredibly popular argument to make today, but Iâve also looked into this and found that the debate is far more nuanced than the summary youâve made here. A review of all of the texts and websites involved reveals that there are in fact experts on both sides of the argument, arguing at each other. And it is this complexity which is the root cause for much of the confusion here. We need a public knowledge mapping system where the evidence and arguments on both sides start out simple, and become more complex the further one digs in.
What youâre doing here is deciding to focus upon those particular arguments which support your worldview. But, if skepticism is to be a philosophy rather than just an argumentative tactic, then it should be applied in both directions. The Sagan Standard seems to have created a culture of pseudo-skeptics, insofar as many people have stopped questioning the conventional theories. But, there are in fact good critics out there, and many reasons to be skeptical of many conventional theories. This, of course, is the âcriticalâ part of âcritical thinkingâ.
What Iâm arguing for is that a person cannot make a reasonable assessment of a worldview in science without seeing all of the arguments laid out, in all directions. We use depth of knowledge to create things, but we should also be using breadth of knowledge to assess our beliefs in light of argument. This is basically impossible to do in comments; hence, all arguments against conventional theory fail in comments threads. I donât know how to be more clear on this. It seems straightforward to me that a system which cannot support paradigm change will never be the source of any profound wisdom. We should be recreating the comments attached to scientific articles such that they can support actual paradigm change if the public is to have a voice which can respectably challenge a scientific article. Of course, the problem is that many of those involved are not actually interested in making that happen.
The educational system is (finally) progressing beyond equations. But, the mindset of those who have already gone through that system will not change overnight with that system. It will take generations before this mindset fades. Also, for those of us who are closely watching, itâs clear that many professors would prefer to avoid any change at all. Keep in mind that we now have the ability with the force concept inventory to measure conceptual comprehension in certain disciplines like physics both before and after a course is given to a student. Itâs not new technology at this point. But, also notice that the FCI has yet to be applied as a system for helping students to figure out which college to go to.
If the point is to pretend that professional scientists are routinely critical of their own theories, Iâm going to have to disagree. Wikipedia has been wiped clean on numerous important controversies, as if there is nothing at all to discuss. Various discussions of the Velikovsky debate were just a couple of weeks ago being purged from Wiki. What purpose does it serve to try to wipe clean our collective memories of that debate? Itâs a bit ironic to watch these things transpire, even as global catastrophe becomes a more mainstream topic.
Those of us who used to observe the old Bad Astronomy and Universe Today forum know that we still have a long ways to go to fix this culture. Phil Plait is still out there convincing people to not pay any attention to various controversies.
Most astrophysics students today have no idea that Hannes Alfven distanced himself from the way in which astrophysicists are applying MHD in his 1970 Nobel lecture (the Nobel was awarded to him for his invention of those same models). These highly idealized models are still used today to model cosmic plasmas, and they greatly differ from our laboratory observations of plasmas in very significant (and arguably political) ways. Itâs hardly a minor point, as most astrophysics textbooks introduce the subject by mentioning that 99% of what we see with our telescopes is matter in the plasma state. Cosmology basically hinges on how we model it. Nevertheless, even though there are still papers being written to this day about how the cosmic plasma models are highly idealized, and fundamentally designed to suit the gravitational worldview, students are not taught anything about this half-century controversy. And the astrophysical community continues to take advantage of the fact that the public still does not even know what a plasma is â which is very convenient for the existing theories.
You might try checking out the reviews for Jeff Schmidtâs Disciplined Minds on Amazon before you just dismiss this. We are talking about the meaning of consensus here, so one hopes that you will treat it as seriously as the decision to purchase a book by checking out the positive reviews posted, some of them by actual grad students who confirm Schmidtâs analysis âŚ
Yes, youâve completely nailed it. The stakes are in fact very high here. There exists a tradition of positivism in our science education, based upon very simplistic theories for how people learn that weâve known have been wrong since Paulo Freire. Much of the activity in education reform today is centered around constructivism, which positions all human learning as the byproduct of some form of human engagement. We seem to have a bit of a dichotomy here between this culture of scientism and the education reformers. The scientismists appear to not even be aware that they are obstructing education reform. They imagine that the biggest threat to science is that of laypeople and pseudoscientists debating âbedrock scienceâ. But in staking out that position, they have implicitly accepted that learning is the byproduct of one-way communication (âfilling an empty vesselâ). The problem here is that there is no way to get to critical thinking that does not involve two-way communication. You have to invite people to debate issues in science in order to create critical thinking in those people.
Since we cannot get to unification in physics without armies of people fluent in critical thinking, the only rational way forward is to encourage debate and focus upon giving people tools that make them better critical thinkers. Outsiders have always played an important role in scientific revolutions. The big questions in science will not be resolved by rejecting history; the real âwinnersâ in science, in the long run, will be those people who can build systems which facilitate the most complex discourse between competing worldviews.
and yet it moves.
This thread pretty nicely sums up why I kind of feel a sort of âsurvivorâs guiltâ about having such good commenters when so many other blogs have nothing but trolls.
I canât tell you all how many conversations Iâve been a part of where other writers are complaining about the awfulness of internet comment sections and my contribution is something like, âOh, yeah. Commenters. Phhhhbt. Boy.â [starts staring awkwardly at the ceiling]
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Assuming they spoke and could read Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, the interpretation and learning of which was dependent upon some form of authority.
Thereâs no real issue with authority in and of itself. Being able to leave comments on a popular blog gives you no more real access to that authority than not being able to leave comments. In order to approach that, you pretty much need to invest the time and effort into your own study. Thatâs what is ultimately meant by the Asimov quote, not that folk should be excluded merely because theyâre not authorities.
If you want to challenge authority, become one. But if itâs a difficult subject, becoming one will also be difficult.
Though some might feel that this is somehow âbrokenâ or âneeds reformâ, this sort of rhetoric is also used to justify intellectual laziness (or even dishonesty) in a number of other ways.
Take evolution; advocates of Intelligent Design present themselves as honest critics of established scientific dogma, but they canât help but reveal they either understand very little about the science they attempt to critique, or are not capable of the honesty real science demands. Yet they present themselves as legitimate authorities.
Or take climate change: denialists as a whole wield far more influence over the topic and dialogue than theyâve earned. Why should those who advocate for the unrestrained squandering of natural resources be regarded as authoritative?
Or take an example of the simply mistaken: an artist and very prolific blogger who has undue influence over how some extinct reptiles might be perceived to nonspecialistsâŚheâs not an expert, but his knowledge of anatomy is fairly extensive, but the process by which he comes by his observations is so flawed that his conclusions are useless. Why should his results rank far higher in a popular search engine when Iâm looking for information on a specific taxon?
The fact is, not everything in science is universally accessible. How can it be? Not everyone has a computer capable of doing large scale climate modeling. Not everyone has direct access to pterosaur fossils (which are obviously rare). Not everyone has access to knowledge without time, study, and effort.
But combined with authorship, those are the things that make authority.
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Having worked in Eric Mazurâs lab briefly (on physics research, not education research), I can confirm that he is genuinely interested in helping students understand science in a way most professors - let alone high school or elementary school teachers, who often barely know the material to that level themselves - do not. I have also noticed that such ideas are far more common at the very top schools - and in more theoretical disciplines - than even in other high-ranking-but-still-not-very-top schools. Because, see, understanding concepts is hard. We didnât evolve to visualize wavefunctions in Hilbert space. Practicing solving the equations is far easier to learn and to teach - and most research in the physical sciences - for good reason - consists of working out what the theories we already have actually mean in practice. Revolutions are rare because the existing theories are pretty good, and it takes a large balance of evidence to overrule them.
Is politics a problem? Yes, absolutely. As you and others pointed out, string theory is a particularly good example (and one of the reasons I chose not to go into theoretical physics). Do funding agencies have a status quo bias? Usually, because those projects naturally succeed more often. Personally, I left grad school (not at Harvard) because I didnât like the environment of conformity - but that was an engineering program. Physics programs other than string theory donât have that problem to the same degree, based on my firendsâ experiences at other schools. I did notice that many of the smartest students left my program because they didnât want to deal with the politics.
But although the institutions of science could work much better, they do work, in that they always move forward, even if not as fast as they could. But making such a change would also have costs. Today only high-ranking individuals are likely to get support for speculative projects, because they are more known and trusted. The wider you open those gates, the more âwastedâ money on failed projects (not even counting cranks). What youâre suggesting seems to be that people who donât even know what the current state of research is - what evidence it is based on, what other ideas were considered and rejected, why the discipline is pursuing a particular research direction - can swoop in and make insightful observations. This is occasionally true, but the signal to noise ration is enormous, and only worth researchersâ attention if carefully filtered.
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Trolls have a huge sense of entitlement that not only they should be allowed to have their own opinions but that anyone who doesnât actively enable every single bozo to rub their buttholes on their carpet is a monstrous Orwellian censor.
Unmoderated comment threads are not a healthy environment for discourse or proper debate. If you canât keep your pool sanitary, you shouldnât open it to the public. Popular Science didnât need a study to back this decision up; itâs just common sense.
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That doesnât solve the fundamental problem. The problem with an established authority is that its primary concern is to maintain itself as an authority â otherwise, it will soon cease to be one. Thus, it will judge candidates for inclusion in the authoritarian body based on their conformity to its settled principles, and it will tend to judge their work in the same way. The result will tend to become closed and static. That may work in religion, but it is dubious in commerce, politics, and military affairs, and it is strongly detrimental to what we usually think of as art and science. Authoritarian art becomes mere decor, authoritarian science becomes mere engineering. In a sense, they cease to exist. But thereâs nothing wrong with decor or engineering, if thatâs all you want.
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Iâm not seeing how accepting evolutionary biology or climate change leads
it to become âmere engineering.â
Syntheses in science also arenât derived from a single body of authority
(or university/school), but by many working in collaboration. It may be
convenient to refer to âscientistsâ as monolithic sensu a church
authority, but I doubt anyone who is familiar with how science is done (and
reads any primary literature) is going to agree that âclosed and staticâ is
really descriptive of science.
So the arugment of Established Authority Is Problematic appears based on
fear of what might happen, not what is happening. Without reasons more
substantial than fear, uncertainty, or doubt, thereâs not much there there.
Now, about art derived from authority: i.e., art with utility, accuracy,
and representative of current science, as in, say, good paleoart.
I suppose some (who might have a superfical regard) could see that as âmere
decor.â But could it be possible that artists arenât speaking to those
people, but to folk who might like to imagine what life was like in the
Paleo/Meso/Cenozoic?
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I donât think the effects of authoritarianism in science are complete â far from it. However, since there is not a scintilla of evidence against Evolution, itâs going to be hard to progress further down that track other than by filling in the details â the big jumps occur when you have contradiction, paradox, mystery. I guess there is still a bit of work to do in genetics, but at this point it does not seem like the overall paradigm is going to be overthrown. So thatâs pretty static. In the case of climate change, I havenât seen much change in peopleâs positions over the years. I still see things like â93% of scientists believe in climate changeâ, which reminds me of the time when hundreds of scientists signed a statement that Einstein was wrong (about Relativity). That kind of argument is purely authoritarian. (As Uncle Albert said, âWhy did they get hundreds, when all they needed was one?â) There have also been a lot of apocalyptic predictions and charges of dishonesty, conspiracy, and special interest, which are signs of authoritarian politicization and faith, not science. Curiously, I have believed that global warming would occur since I was a child sixty-odd years ago, because I heard about smudge pots in orange groves, used to ward off freezing; the extrapolation seems obvious.
I can think of some other cases. I attended a prestigious university in the late 1950s, where one could not teach psychology unless one was a Freudian. Enough said?
But see, in most cases, itâs not the public at large that undoes problematic consensus. Folk with actual authority, not people with little to no experience in the specialization-- that does include scientists and engineers who have little experience in something that isnât their specialty who appear on these lists disputing consensus science.
If anything, this is the opposite of argument from authority. âIâm a scientist, and this is science, and I must therefore be rightâ should be rejected as an argument. But itâs very different if a majority of folk who have extensive expertise are saying the earth is warming due to CO2 output by humans, or chemical X causes cancer. Nonspecialists canât argue from authority not because authority isnât a good argument by itself, but because compared to specialists, they have none.
The fact that weâve moved on from older views in science demonstrates this.
Amateurs can certainly contribute, at least in natural history, but in supporting roles which often seem unexciting to cranks. After all, if youâre not overturning an accepted paradigm, you canât be doing real science, right?
Personally, I just think thatâs sad. Imagine finding or helping describe a fossil which incrementally increases our understanding of paleontology and evolution. That would be amazing. Small contribution? Sure. But thatâs still pretty keen to me.
But if you think thereâs no controversy in evolution, or that everything is settled, I submit that you should look into it. The broad strokes are pretty well settled, but bioinformatics and evo-devo offer new tools to explore the unknown.
Cranks instead waste everyoneâs time and energy with Paleyâs long-refuted arguments.
Imagine how useful they could be if they stopped being involved in losing court cases or circulating lists of scientists (non-biologists) who dispute the modern synthesis and did some real work.
(I donât mean to pick on them, but Iâm more familiar with their efforts than the physics crankery.)
And that is absolutely no different than the corporations, non-profits, other academic institutions, or government agencies which will employ those students later on. I wouldnât dream of trying to make a case in favor such practices. But it could be argued that the kind acquiescent attitude mentioned does just as much to predict success in any of those other organizations. You might even be able to make a case that, if they are choosing students they believe are bound for future success, theyâre probably doing it right.
AlthoughâŚthat only leads me to think about the innovators who quit school or got kicked out and went on to change the world. âŚ
