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July 13, 2007
What you need to un-learn from school...
This was a great post. Things you need to unlearn from going to school.
- I suspect the most dangerous habit of thought taught in schools is that even if you don't really understand something, you should parrot it back anyway. One of the most fundamental life skills is realizing when you are confused, and school actively destroys this ability - teaches students that they "understand" when they can successfully answer questions on an exam, which is very very very far from absorbing the knowledge and making it a part of you. Students learn the habit that eating consists of putting food into mouth; the exams can't test for chewing or swallowing, and so they starve.
Much of this problem may come from needing to take three 4-credit courses per quarter, with a textbook chapter plus homework to be done every week - the courses are timed for frantic memorization, it's not possible to deeply chew over and leisurely digest knowledge in the same period. College students aren't allowed to be confused; if they started saying, "Wait, do I really understand this? Maybe I'd better spend a few days looking up related papers, or consult another textbook," they'd fail all the courses they took that quarter. A month later they would understand the material far better and remember it much longer - but one month after finals is too late; it counts for nothing in the lunatic university utility function.
Many students who have gone through this process no longer even realize when something confuses them, or notice gaps in their understanding. They have been trained out of pausing to think.
Then there was this: physicists in some country were more likely to become extreme religious fanatics
- It may be dangerous to present people with a giant mass of authoritative knowledge, especially if it is actually true. It may damage their skepticism.
So what could you do? Teach students the history of physics, how each idea was replaced in turn by a new correct one? "Here's the old idea, here's the new idea, here's the experiment - the new idea wins!" Repeat this lesson ten times and what is the habit of thought learned? "New ideas always win; every new idea in physics turns out to be correct." You still haven't taught any critical thinking, because you only showed them history as seen with perfect hindsight. You've taught them the habit that distinguishing true ideas from false ones is perfectly clear-cut and straightforward, so if a shiny new idea has anything to recommend it, it's probably true.
Maybe it would be possible to teach the history of physics from a historically realistic point of view, without benefit of hindsight: show students the different alternatives that were considered historically plausible, re-enact the historical disagreements and debates.
Maybe you could avoid handing students knowledge on a silver platter: show students different versions of physics equations that looked plausible, and ask them to figure out which was the correct one, or invent experiments that would distinguish between alternatives. This wouldn't be as challenging as needing to notice anomalies without hints and invent alternatives from scratch, but it would be a vast improvement over memorizing a received authority.
Then, perhaps, you could teach the habit of thought: "The ideas of received authority are often imperfect but it takes a great effort to find a new idea that is better. Most possible changes are for the worse, even though every improvement is necessarily a change."
I thought about presenting the history of science in science classes but the author (Eliezer Yudkowsky's) counter point is well taken. Trick, how do you educate people really to take the unfinished nature of science seriously?
Posted by rakhier at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)
Democracy - like the tribe consulting a shaman...
Great thought experiment from Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias
- Before making big decisions, our ancestors would often consult a shaman, sort of a mix of a priest, a tortured artist, and what we now call "mentally ill." Aided by rhythms and drugs, the shaman, and sometimes a larger community, would enter a trance state. These sort of people in this sort of state would do poorly on tests of "rationality"; they would be bad at fishing or knitting, for example. But the point was not to fish or knit, it was to see hidden truths, especially moral truths, not usually accessible to our usual "rational" mind. These mystic practices became common because the tribes who used them prospered, just as those who practice religion today prosper thereby.
Today, by uniting to support the principle of democracy, we give our lives meaning and identify, and affirm that we value each other. Caplan is right to call democracy a modern religion, and to say voters enter a different "irrational" state of mind. The voting state of mind may not be good for cooking or driving, but it is good for helping us to see fundamental truths, especially moral truths, that we need to set good government policy.
Evidence for voters' moral insight is found in a point Caplan emphasizes: voters mostly set aside their personal interests and look to the interests of their larger group. More evidence is that democracy has spread and democracies have prospered. Yes, to get the practical details right, we may want bureaucrats in a "rational" state of mind, but to make the crucial moral choices, we want voters in a trance.
Hmmm. Not sure I buy it but still, thought provoking.
Posted by rakhier at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)
Indian Rupees to Razor Blades...
Funny modern story about how you can convert 1 Rupee coins into razor blades which sell for much more than one rupee.
This happened in the past, the Nguyen Lords bought Chinese and Japanese coins and then melted them down to make their cannons.
Posted by rakhier at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)