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Stay curious‼️ 🤔
Real. Curiosity is such a desirable trait in folks.
But not in cats.
“akshully”
That’s why my friends call me Whiskers
I found by high school the kids who said that (that hadn’t dropped out) moved onto a different argument by that age
Honestly, I know it ruins the joke, but I don’t think there’s as much overlap between the top and bottom groups as one may suspect
If we want children to learn these things, we should teach them these things directly, instead of relying on science classes. I’m not saying we should get rid of science classes, but the people who are saying these stupid things did actually take science classes in school.
We desperately need to teach classes that are specific. I learned a lot about problem solving from math classes, but I was shocked when I tutored other kids, and they only learned the math, but had no idea how to approach problems. And I don’t mean just word problems, but literally even if you just give them multiple equations and variables.
My tutoring often went like this: “I can’t solve this!” “What information to they give you? What answer do they want? What can you do with the stuff that they’ve given you to get the answer?” And then they get the answer. Then repeat. Literally no math involved in the tutoring for math class.
So, we need required classes, early, like in elementary school, that specifically teach problem solving, critical thinking, how to detect misinformation, and what I’ll call empathy. By “empathy”, I mean the ability to imagine yourself in another person’s shoes so that you can predict why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s essential for detecting misinformation because you need to trust somebody at some point, so you need to understand how to tell who is more likely to be trustworthy. I also think we should teach children meditation techniques.
So, we need required classes, early, like in elementary school, that specifically teach problem solving, critical thinking, how to detect misinformation, and what I’ll call empathy.
Good luck. The 2012 Texas GOP platform specifically opposed the teaching of critical thinking skills. Needless to say, the entire GOP feels the same way to this date. Also, empathy is now considered a weakness or moral failing in those circles.
Face it. The federal government and the state governments of a large fraction of the states are diametrically opposed to our desires.
Don’t get me wrong. I think you’re correct about what our goals should be. But calling it an uphill battle to achieve them would be an understatement of epic proportions.
Edit: 2012, not 2021
It is very much intentional in a lot of places to keep the status quo.
“That’s impossible!”
“No. It’s necessary.”
– Interstellar.
Otherwise… doomed.
But how do you teach those skills directly
Science classes
Okay, but what are electrolytes?
What plants crave…
Science classes
And [other1] philosophy, especially epistemology.
… And it’s quite telling and daunting that
But how do you teach those skills directly
was asked.
Like it was missing the question mark because it was rhetorical. Like it’s beyond their conception, and as if in absence of evidence (or experience) it’s presumed to be evidence of absence of possibility or means to do so.
Looking forward to this year, and more people realising more of how much has been stolen from us.
[ 1 Because science is just another branch of philosophy. Natural philosophy. ]
You simply apply your problem solving skills as an adult. You want students to understand how to do these things. Well, how do you do these things? Then teach the students the method that you use. That’s the simplest version. But there’s been a lot of research about how to teach things, so following the best research is the better version.
I think I gave a small example of teaching problem solving in my 3rd paragraph where I described tutoring math. But you can use any problems instead of simply math problems.
Really, I say this as a very introverted person with a strong STEM background, I think the most important skills children learn from school are their interpersonal skills, but we rarely teach them directly. So, you can work through typical problems in class, like for problem solving, say, you want to use the gaming console, but your sibling is using it. What can you do?
Similarly, how do YOU know when something is misinformation? Just teach the children to take the same steps you do. “I doubt this information because based on these previous incidents, I’ve seen that this person has a reason to lie about this.” Or, “If I think about it, there is somebody who is profiting from people acting on this information, and so I that makes me dubious about this.”
How do you know when a conspiracy theory is very unlikely? The more important it is and the more people who must participate in it, the less likely the theory is to be true. That’s why you can write off flat earth theories almost instantly with very little knowledge of science.
You can teach critical thinking via debate class, for example, but I think there are some other methods, too. Critical thinking is probably the hardest to imagine a way to teach.
Imagine if we learned the spirit of egalitarian pedagogy in school, instead of the many toxic social-domination/social-survival lessons learned.
How do you know when a conspiracy theory is very unlikely? The more important it is and the more people who must participate in it, the less likely the theory is to be true. That’s why you can write off flat earth theories almost instantly with very little knowledge of science.
For a start, probably more sound footing not to start with a presumption presented in a pejorative, to be truly open minded and enquiring, seeking the truth.
The flat earth stuff’s fascinating…
Bear with me. LOL.
There are several allusions being masked by the dumb litteral.
And I don’t mean the under-the-fundament or matrix simulation stuff.
For one,
Maps.
For another, arguably even more intriguing,
Legal fiction. (And all bureaucracy and its reductivism (~ see, not just “flat” because it (once was) on paper)).
“The flat earth”, being a term used to refer to these.
But, if all you ever hear about is the dumb literal stuff, and presume to know, and believe your beliefs, unwittingly being naive realist, then you never get to the deeper stuff.
Non-belief ftw.
It helps you look deeper, beyond the shallows.
“It is the mark of an educated mind, to be able to entertain an idea without necessarily accepting nor rejecting it” – … Who said that?
Far fewer babies get flung out with the bathwater, with this approach.
Then also, it’s easier to see more of the lies within lies, and the lies so vast that not even their inverse are true, and can easier cease identifying with any position on any matter, and watch, unscathed, as strawmen are felled all around you.
Art! Where logic fails to motivate, artistic expression can lead to emotional understanding
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we should teach them these things directly, instead of relying on science classes
Ok, so by “these things” you mean logic, argument analysis, media literacy, critical thinking, etc.
Yes, I had classes like that, and I think they’re much more important than science and math classes. You can learn science and math on your own from YouTube videos, but you need the media literacy to know which YouTube videos you can trust.
I hear children in France are taught philosophy from around age 5 or something.
Imagine that…
Starting education with a firm footing in epistemology. Learning the ability to discern the difference between what’s merely a valid argument, and a sound argument. Learning the ability to discern what’s true and what’s not.
Now contrast that to what’s happening in various other places (especially you-know-where)… Where it’s pure indoctrination, that they do not want you to have the ability to discern truth from lies… Because they’re peddling almost nothing but lies.
The “do your own research” people need to have it explained to them that even experts in their respective fields aren’t automatically capable of parsing scientific literature. A family doctor with 50 years experience who prescribes antidepressants every day will have no deep understanding of what any particular scientific peer reviewed study on SSRIs is telling them. They need a grounding in statistics more than anything else, which most people just don’t have. So the idea that a non-educated, non-scientist can read peer reviewed studies and come away from them with some sort of understanding of the issue is the thing that needs to be highlighted, preferably in high school science class (earlier, frankly). A willingness to slog through scientific papers in pursuit of deeper knowledge is admirable, but is dangerously misguided without proper training. I don’t even mean training in the specific science, but just in how to speak the language of peer reviewed studies more generally. It’s very much its own discipline.
I want someone to ask Joe Rogan what ‘regression to the mean’ means. I want someone to ask him what a ‘standard deviation’ is and how to apply the concept. I don’t want to know what papers he’s read, because you could read 50 true scientific papers a day on one topic and still have no idea what the current scientific consensus is on said topic, absent the requisite training. You’ll almost certainly come away from it with a very wrong but very confident belief. Dunning-Kruger on steroids.
The ‘research’ that the “do your own research” people are referring to isn’t peer reviewed scientific literature.
It’s other fools’ social media rantings.
Seriously if we just hardcore PSA’d even basic media literacy skills into our culture, MAYBE people would stop thinking that random internet anecdotes (which are likely largely bot-driven these days) constitute “scientific evidence.”
Hard disagree, if research findings were more accessible, NOT PAYWALLED, and published with some degree of intent for a wide audience then WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY more people would dabble in reading scientific research and the benefit could have potentially saved science from such rapid collapse in my country (the US).
SO true.
It used to be A LOT easier to rummage through research papers online. Abstracts alone just don’t cut it.
The internet of around 2000-2005 was a very different place, back when the internet was more library than TV.
So much more “Well! Looks like we got a reader!” added to the world, by making it even harder to access.
So much more easement of corruption of science too. “Many eyes make all bugs shallow”, Linus’s Law – ESR.
It’s like free thought has become neglected in the set of fundamental freedoms. “Freedoms forgotten are freedoms lost”. Leaving group think, mass formation, and totalitarianised psyches in the wake of this loss. Where every and any atrocity gets seen as a necessary virtue to protect “the one true way” dogma in the minds of the terrorised and totalitarianised.
Cui Bono (who benefits) from the paywalling of knowledge? Not us. Not science. The corrupt.
I think equally important as teaching these things to begin with is letting students know when they’re being taught a simplified model, and that serious academic discourse of the subject is still evolving and/or involves much more nuance (which is pretty much always). some people who do pay attention in science classes nonetheless think that what they learned is gospel and never re-examine it, or stubbornly refuse to acknowledge when said nuance is relevant because it seems to contradict the simplified model they’ve cemented in their brain as the whole truth. the kind of people who say things like “I know there’s two genders because I learned it in high school biology” and apparently never considered why there would be collegiate and post-graduate studies on biology and gender (or why those are two entirely different fields of study) if we all already learned everything there is to know in high school.
I think chemistry is APPALLINGLY bad at this to be honest.
There are something like 10 million students attending Christian school and the like, and another 5 million or so being home schooled.
They don’t really believe in the scientific method and critical thinking, in general. At least in my experience as a student of a Christian school. I had no idea.
Gets me wondering which type of “Christian”.
Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8swSkk9yeV8 .
There are many christians (not of that^ ilk) who very much are into the sciences, and are undogmatic in their approach to either religion or science. … Which was a surprise to me and my teenage militant aitheism that had swallowed the false dichotomy whole.
Here’s the rub… those practical moderates FUEL the fanatics (donations and tithing), and they also provide the fundamentalists with a smoke screen of respectability.
They’re a huge part of the problem. The fundies depend on the moderates.
I’d say the conflation’s the bigger part of the problem.
There’s always a conflation. Fundamentalists are impossible without moderate support.
To be fair, most schools give those classes only out of obligation. Doing dumb calculations of mols and atomic masses in high school is definitely teaching kids to ask “why the fuck am I even doing this?”
Learning some chemistry basics is probably still good though. Not that we’re using it daily but just in the “hey mixing this stuff can kill you” or, in the same vein, seeing how it only requires small amounts to make big changes.
We’re surrounded by chemicals in our everyday lives, learning a healthy fear of them is probably for the best.
Also high school is meant to prepare you for further education, if you want to pursue that, so it really does cover a lot of ground for basic concepts you need to learn to understand and gain further education in whatever field applies.
Kids are wired to ask that, so what, basic chemistry knowledge is extremely useful.
I had a co-worker who decided to clean his bathroom and decided using a mix of chemicals would be better than just using one! Makes sense right?
He figured putting bleach and vinegar together was a smart move because it meant more cleaning all at once.
Don’t worry, he’s fine. He had a sore throat for a few weeks and the fumes singed the hairs off his hands when he was mixing it.
Dang! Good to not be absent minded, and actually check out the chemical equation, and consider the implications.
Good to be reminded, and learn from others mistakes.
Glad he survived mostly unscathed.
Yeah, like an German Comedian said, while the Teacher shows how an Morse communication works, the childrens with their Smartphones already are logged in his Pacemaker.
LOL I wish it were like that. The “kids and their superior grasp of technology.” That’s how it’s supposed to be. They’re supposed to be smarter than us.
Indeed, with desktops and internet forums it really did seem to be going that way…and then with smartphones becoming specialized as content consumption and attention-capture devices, the kids started going backwards.
Yeah, they can swipe their lil’ fingers and use instagram now, but so can a chimp. It’s designed that way.
Using files and folders or printing their homework? Relegated back to the esoteric and arcane arts. It’s tragic.
But this kids who do make a point to learn and teach themselves are doing incredible things.
So I guess, the average has dropped, and now we’re seeing more dramatic extremes on either end of the spectrum. 🤔
…/TED_talk lol
We learnt to titrate in later high school, played with acids and bases and crystallizing crystals in earlier high school
Sure we learnt to calculate mols of chemicals but we also learnt why — so you can balance an equation, so you have no more acid (for example) than you need.
I bailed out of chemistry though. I had a bad teacher in year 10 and moved to botany in yr 11 and 12 (working with scientists testing salt tolerance of eucalypts to address dryland salinity) (I went to a school that covered high school and college (years 7 to 12))
IMO: GMOs are sus. Fuck the rest though.
GM is just a technology, which can be put to many uses, and there are many methods. All pasta wheats, for example, are derived from radiation mutants.
The risk isn’t derived from the technology but how it is used. The proprietary technology is used to prevent farmers from creating their own seed (including using copy right laws) while increasing their dependency on matching pesticides. Industrial agriculture is not sustainable - insect populations are dwindling because every square foot of landscape is sprayed with poison. GMO is used to further industrialize agriculture, e.g. by making crops resistant to poison, which in turn can (and will) be used more liberally.
Nature does evolve quickly when posed with harsh conditions. Roundup and other poisons used agriculture make the targeted pests resistant quickly.
Some GM features can be fine, but there are no cheats in real life. Constructing an environment that makes resistance and strength the viable strategy for pests will not work. Harmony is the only sustainable choice.
are you seriously defending Roundup?
No, they implied that insects build resistance to it.
Indeed, glanced over the comment
Most of the foods you eat are GMOs and have been for centuries because that’s another term for selective breeding. Modern GMO tech simply speeds up the process.
selective breeding is not not the same as GMO
By a variety of definitions around the world, yes it is. At least until farmers lobbied to redefine it because they didn’t want to be associated with GMO’s: (emphasis mine)
The definition of a genetically modified organism (GMO) is not clear and varies widely between countries, international bodies, and other communities. At its broadest, the definition of a GMO can include anything that has had its genes altered, including by nature. Taking a less broad view, it can encompass every organism that has had its genes altered by humans, which would include all crops and livestock. In 1993, the Encyclopedia Britannica defined genetic engineering as “any of a wide range of techniques … among them artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization (e.g., ‘test-tube’ babies), sperm banks, cloning, and gene manipulation.” The European Union (EU) included a similarly broad definition in early reviews, specifically mentioning GMOs being produced by “selective breeding and other means of artificial selection” These definitions were promptly adjusted with a number of exceptions added as the result of pressure from scientific and farming communities, as well as developments in science. The EU definition later excluded traditional breeding, in vitro fertilization, induction of polyploidy, mutation breeding, and cell fusion techniques that do not use recombinant nucleic acids or a genetically modified organism in the process.
There is no doubt in my mind that we are genetically modifying a plant when we are selective breeding it for specific genes. The fact that the mutation occurred naturally doesn’t change the the fact that there was human intervention.
technically you are right, but we all know that’s not what we mean by GMO.
It is about much more invasive agrotech creating things that would never occur in nature.
It isn’t really equivalent. GM by gene editing is precise and quick; GM by selective breeding and deliberate mutation is slow and random
I wonder if anyone will ever work out what genes make good apples. It would save so much random breeding
The problem with GMOs isn’t the GMOs themselves, it’s why they’ve been GM’d. If they’ve been modified to be “roundup resistant” so they can dump a truckload of glyphosate on them, or something similar to that, that might be a problem.
If I’m buying fresh produce it’s not a problem, I can can make double sure to wash it properly. But if it’s processed food, I definitely do not trust food manufacturers to get all that shit off the vegetables.
Looking for GMO free canned fruit/vegetables, frozen fruit/vegetables, or anything with fruit/vegetables in it is, in my opinion, a good idea. But a fresh cucumber? Just wash it.
And billionaires love people like that because it keeps the most obsessive of us focused away from the greed.
LOL, school curriculums are part of the “billionaire conspiracy” too?
FFS.
As someone aware of decades of legal battles to prevent the gutting of education systems, usually noticeable around local levels, you almost always end up at corpo think tanks like the heritage foundation.
If you’re familiar with the heritage foundation, they’ve been trying to run a project2025 style playbook for decades, and it is only through their success that current administration is a billionaire playground. Reminder that elon musk could directly choose for hundreds of thousands of children to die this year by taking aware their food and medicine, because he wanted to. Also billionaires got an unimaginably generous treatment at the same time, worth much more than all of the food and medicine.
It’s more an amalgam of cooperatively evil assholes, most of which have an absurd amount of money for some reason, but yeah, billionaires are a good chunk of why there are whole groups being funded to spend all day every day trying to kneecap educational efforts, or painting academics as evil satanists who are corrupting your children with science.
They are saying people who don’t understand high school basics are useful idiots for billionaires because they’re easily manipulated
Nothing about a school curriculum conspiracy was mentioned, so it’s especially weird that you put billionaire conspiracy in quotes
Internet contains the whole knowledge of humanity… the other 98% are influencers, ChatGPT posts, memes, cat photos, fake news, bots and flat earthers.
I thought Interned contained mostly porn :D
And cat pics.
Similar to memes
Very wise
There is so incredibly much knowledge that isn’t on the internet.
I often share the story how (as the story concludes)
after I renounced formal education, I learned more in my first year alone with an internet connection and a library card, than I learned in the entire 14 years of formal education prior.
… I would not have so successfully done so had I not had the library card.
… And that was back when the internet was more like a library than like TV. And long before the big corporate search engines censored about 99% of the results, like they increasingly did over the past decade.
Do not over estimate the wealth of knowledge the internet has (even with LLMs now). Blind biases lurk. We do not know what we do not know, nor how much more there is to know. Easy to fall into arrogance. And what is arrogance really, but ignorance of our ignorance.
We are all ignorant, no one knows everything about everything, but ignorance becomes a problem when we do not know the difference between what needs to be contrasted and what does not.
The sad thing is those people did take those classes.
Real talk: those “boring” science classes aren’t about memorizing facts — they teach you how to spot bad claims and check sources. That skill pays off forever.
Do they also teach how to spot fallacies? Or do we have to get that from elsewhere? Evidence suggests elsewhere.
On a related note having 6 different classes a day 8 hours total times 5 days a week made it impossible to learn properly.
My highschool chemistry teacher almost got kicked out of her university for trying to pipette hydrochloric acid with her mouth. That’s who I want teaching chemistry, the crazy woman who knows what it means to fuck up, bad. Not some honor roll, life plan having baby bitch.
One of my high school’s two chemistry teachers was missing a hand… due to an (undisclosed) chemistry incident.
We made some ether in my HS chemistry lab for a lab exercise, and I was goofing around pretending to inhale it but accidentally did get some in, and I got a loopy dizzy feeling for a minute or two.
I have a friend I believe who stank out a part of their school with overdone banana scent
(I have a friend I don’t believe who says he blew out the windows of a school lab by turning on gas taps and lighting a lighter)
I always found science and history interesting even though i hated school.
Maths though, i always resented “you wont always have a calculator” … but now as im older i imagine kids today having a similar idea about “AI” and i can see that not ending well for anyone.
