But he made a point of going to a church which is pretty out there... Just no one believes he really follows whatever his pastor says.
So he did pose, if not as an extremist, as a fairly devout christian. Which in all likelihood he is not ()at least he is certainly not devout). Romney is not an extremist (he seems way too cynical for that) but the magical underpants thing sort of brings into question his actual sanity. Does he believe? Who knows. But he makes a point that he is devout, and were he to get elected, everyone would _hope_ that he really isn't.
So the point is that people vying for the highest elected office in America lie about their faith (probably) and pose as much more religious than they, in all likelihood, are. How do you know they are not the extremists they pretend to be?
All of the practise of medicine is not science. The topic itself has some scientific roots, but ironically, "scientific medicine" is really not a science. Compiling correlations does not a science make;)
This is my personal, unauthorised opinion. I am not a biologist, though I know a lot of them and even occasionally collaborated. Biology is transforming itself into an exact science: molecular simulation, protein folding, DNA sequencing and heavier use of mathematical models are fundamentally changing how science is practised in this field.
So memorising stuff will go away like it went away in physics. Incidentally, though, if your biology classes were only about memorising stuff, you had pretty bad courses in any case...
I am not completely sure what it is you are trying to say. To clarify my point: medicine is not a science.
Sciences are constructed around the formulation of theories, themselves bases for models and predictions. Doctors do pattern-matching and deal with human interactions. It is a useful and important job, but not science. So-called "scientific medicine" really is just large scale application of statistics, which is a huge progress compared to listening to voices in your head, but does nothing to advance systematic knowledge.
First point: doctors are not scientists. Not remotely. Some doctors happen to be scientists. But this is a separate career, and they frequently are unprepared for it. This is the subject of a separate debate.
Second point: this is of course unrelated to the fact that scientists are mostly atheists. Even in the US. It is irrelevant that there are theists doctors and theists scientists: there is variation in any population. It just happens that when you say that, you obscure the greater truth that overwhelming odds are they don't believe in gods. source: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.pdf
In America, being an atheist is about the same thing as being a child molester. Yet, the members of congress and the president are, for their social status, inordinately religious.
Or at least they say so. Now in America, there is a large minority of people who are, in fact atheists, and a much larger minority of people who find the intrusion of religion in the public discourse worrying. These people will not outright say: "I will vote for an atheist" in the same way that fundamentalist christians will vote for a born-again because he is born-again. It may, however be a very important issue for them.
Officially, no candidate represents them.
So these people really hope that their officials are lying about their true beliefs. Sad, but true.
But sometimes, you should vote for people because they are good liars! For example, I expect many atheists in America will vote for Obama, because they hope he lies about his faith. I expect many Republicans voted for Bush because they hoped that the pandering was just lies.
It is part of a politician's job to tell a convincing lie. I think we can never have enough transparency, but even then, it is illusory to hope for people to never lie. And there are cases that lies are necessary: I would not expect leadership to say anything about, say, military preparations...
But why do you think that you are better at distinguishing "kind hearted" from "cruel" people than you are at spotting which one is the idiot? And why do you think that the cruel option is necessarily better? It may well be that the dictator and his nation's interests are somewhat aligned, thus making the kind idiot a worse disaster that the cruel genius...
This aside, people are in fact pretty good at spotting leaders -- much, much better than at spotting intelligence. This makes sense, after all, we have evolved in environment where intelligence was no doubt a plus, but leadership meant life or death.
Those Russian textbooks? They are the best. They really are. They were written by people mesmerised by the intrinsic beauty of the theory and the maths. A teacher who can take these books and have the students see the beauty in them is a great teacher. Fun should come from all those amazing things that make sense and can be understood through the stuff in the book.
The idea that kids like playing and so teaching should be like play is backwards. Kids love learning. They are knowledge sponges. As long as you can throw information at them, they'll keep asking "why?". You should only need give structure to their questions.
No, I'm sorry, but disagree. Textbooks and exercise books should be separated. Exercises are where the teacher can really add value, by calibrating them to the needs of the class. The textbook should:
- lay out the material
- provide source materials/quotes/examples
- provide a systematic organisation of the topic.
Exercises and examples can (and should) be provided separately. Cynical me thinks this would allow for gradual improvement of textbooks and steady revenue for the editors. Instead of accumulating crap on crap. This is because the subjects do not change that fast. Thus, preparing an updated edition of a textbook will usually not destroy it -- unless it is structured around examples and exercises, in which case, you are fucked.
That was precisely my point. Some religious schools are good. But some just use the amazing leeway they have as religious organisation to lay waste to the minds of kids.
No, the catholic schools indeed tend to be good schools. But the general advice was about "religious" schools. And in the US these have no one to answer to, no standards, nothing. So it is terrible advice to put your kid in a "religious" school.
And yes, the generic concept of religion mixing with education tends to make me emotional. Not that it is always bad (it is not, and many religious schools are good) but I think these are good school which happen to be religious, and not the reverse. Also, there is no legal standard for the curriculum these schools teach, so in the US, sending you kid to one is a risky proposition. If there were national standard curriculum, I would not care one wit.
This actually make me angry. Textbooks should have the minimum number of exercises, and only to illustrate the subject matter, if necessary. It is the teacher's job to design the problem sets accordingly to their class, what they understand -- or don't.
I have said that a couple times in the threads here, but this is a deep cultural problem in America: despite what you guys think, the problem sets in a textbook should never constitute a significant part of the book. Teaching through examples is terrible. It leads to kids arriving at university expecting that and incapable of grasping this fundamental and essential truth: knowledge is organised in one global structure, held together by theories. You cannot pick and choose what you "believe". You cannot reach understanding by doing problems. You gain understanding by doing problems in different subject where what you learned elsewhere applies.
You mean where "intelligent design" is taught? There are no standards for religious institutions.
Hell, the Supreme Court decided that the rights of Amish to remain ignorant due to their religious beliefs trumped the rights of their kids to get an education. Yes, it's that bad. American parents, if you love your children, keep them away from Religious schools: you could turn out to be lucky, but if you aren't, this is not the school's problem.
No, the problem with American textbooks has nothing to do with capitalism or bureaucracy. It is due to the lack of a national standard, for one. And more deeply to the lack of respect for theory and structure. Books should be written with the objective of laying out what is known and give it a structure. TFA complains about the problem sets.
Fuck the problem sets. They have no place in a book. Booklets of problem sets could be written and charged for every year. But the book which contains the base material itself should be written to last forever -- and replaced when actually found lacking. Let me repeat that again, examples and problem sets should not be in the course books. They are for the teacher to devise in their lesson.
At university level, the shittiest books I had were all American (thankfully, a minority). Huge, bloated monstrosities, crammed full with examples because the author could apparently not bring itself to write about the actual subject in an efficient, structured and formal way. I never open them except to illustrate the point that they are crap. Whereas I (rarely) open my (French system) schoolbooks sometimes, just because they are full of interesting source material on various topics. Well, I used to. Before wikipedia;).
Good books are full of structured facts and equations (if appropriate). They are as dense as possible. They are designed as reference material.
As a schoolchild, I went through the French system, and people complained that the textbooks changed too often. Which was a legitimate concern, but since the programme and standard were set system-wide, each iteration was, I thought, OK. Basically, it laid out the structure of the year, and gave supplementary material. Oh, and the maths books also had some exercise sets.
But that was an exception. And the proportion of exercises was small.
Likewise at university, I got textbooks, which were in the vast majority European in origin. And they were thin, densely packed with equations (or not so thin in the case of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics). And they contained almost no examples or exercises. They were designed as reference books.
But I also got a couple American textbook. Which were not badly written or wrong. But which were pieces of shit. Because the were huge, and contained stupid amounts of examples and exercises, instead of well-structured matter. On my shelf, I still have -- and consult -- the European ones, the American textbooks: dunno where I put them.
The author of TFA complains that the books are terribly written an badly copyedited. Sure, they might be. But even if they weren't, they would still be crap. This is because on this continent, people seem not to have understood the most important aspect of knowledge: its structure. The goal should never be that the student can do lots of exercises quickly. It should be that they understand the structure and logic of the subject -- and that, they can do the exercises, sure, but also understand how this subject relates to all the others. And each subject well understood helps in all the others.
And how knowledge, in general, forms a great overarching structure. Now of course, if you did that, you would never get engineer-creationists: because they would deeply understand that you cannot, in fact, compartmentalise knowledge.
This is not a "American education is crap" post. it is rather a "American education would in fact be very good" if you guys simply made the effort of respecting theory and structure more.
Actually, people need to understand what are models. And yes, this includes understandings statistics, and errors.
It is essentially the same skill that makes you understand that "this move will cut x$ from the budget" contains no information and what order of magnitude your change is supposed to be. You create models all the time: a car approaches: should you cross the road? It depends on the speed of the cars and yours. You could calculate the results, but the important thing is that you can identify which are the factors, why they matter and that you could bash them together to get a numerical answer. Then, you can decide whether you really want to do that.
The point is that people bemoan innumeracy in terms of "people can't add numbers in their heads very well". Well duh. This is why before calculators, we had abacuses, and why computers used to be people. But it is irrelevant: the basic skill is making models of reality, realising that you can get numbers out of them if needed, and that what matters is the _model_ of the guy selling you this insurance/car/political programme. His numbers may be crap, but you may fix that. If his model is based on the interpretation of the multiply mistranslated myths of bronze-aged shepherds, then beware.
Oh, but the young people grow up to be old people who want to solve the problems from their youth (which in many cases have become irrelevant). And they have kids who want to solve new problems.
In societies, say America, there is a point where disparate sets of conservatives which are a a minority but still a plurality can get the power. At which point, they will try to prevent progress, thus causing a backslash which guarantees that the next generation will not believe like them. The current GOP is this. How anyone under 35 is not disgusted by some of the things they try to do in the name of morality is a wonder.
They can, of course, do much harm in the process. If they manage to kill education, they may even actually bring the clock back, although that is very difficult -- the so-called Arab Spring is proof that people want freedom and liberal societies, even in very backwards countries. It is also proof that starting a revolution which will hand the power to the above-mentioned plurality is daft. But hey, live and learn (or in that case live and get horribly tortured for your opinions).
Of course, there will always be crazy, vocal people. Yes, even young ones. but this is no indication that they have any chance of winning, just that their ideas are not dead, yet.
I don't agree. Most people are nice. Honest. Moral.
But what is moral is defined by their surrounding. So if you are surrounded by sycophants who will bow to your every whim, you might redefine moral as "whatever I want, now". And then, it is still very much up to your education.
But do _you_ give respect to someone because he is rich? I should hope not.
Do you hold you fellow humans in such low esteem that you think they are inherently different from you? No. Rich people get respect because marks of respect beget further marks of respect. Likewise, ignoring the financial status of someone to only care about his moral qualities.
There is this fascinating experiment. It occurred in Israel. The setting is this: there is a day-care centre at which people come to pick their kids at a fixed hour. Now some people are late, and there are no other consequences than the reprobation of the staff.
Comes in the economists. And they say "incentives matter!". And lo, a small fine is introduced for being late.
And now many more people are late, for the fine was too low: social pressure had kept people in line, but the small fine told them being late was no big deal. And so the fine is removed.
And people are still late, because now, the value of being late has been set, and it is low.
Moral of the story: if someone is a dick, don't let them get away with it. Politely voice your disapproval. Social pressure keeps people in line. And I would bet, even bankers: whatever they think, they cannot buy the respect of people around them. No-one can. An nice person is a nice person, and a dick a dick. Treat people accordingly to their behaviour, and ignore their social status.
At the end of the day, we are all dead. When you die, having been fair with the people you met means you leave a slightly better Earth.
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But he made a point of going to a church which is pretty out there... Just no one believes he really follows whatever his pastor says.
So he did pose, if not as an extremist, as a fairly devout christian. Which in all likelihood he is not ()at least he is certainly not devout). Romney is not an extremist (he seems way too cynical for that) but the magical underpants thing sort of brings into question his actual sanity. Does he believe? Who knows. But he makes a point that he is devout, and were he to get elected, everyone would _hope_ that he really isn't.
So the point is that people vying for the highest elected office in America lie about their faith (probably) and pose as much more religious than they, in all likelihood, are. How do you know they are not the extremists they pretend to be?
All of the practise of medicine is not science. The topic itself has some scientific roots, but ironically, "scientific medicine" is really not a science. Compiling correlations does not a science make ;)
This is my personal, unauthorised opinion. I am not a biologist, though I know a lot of them and even occasionally collaborated. Biology is transforming itself into an exact science: molecular simulation, protein folding, DNA sequencing and heavier use of mathematical models are fundamentally changing how science is practised in this field.
So memorising stuff will go away like it went away in physics. Incidentally, though, if your biology classes were only about memorising stuff, you had pretty bad courses in any case...
I am not completely sure what it is you are trying to say. To clarify my point: medicine is not a science.
Sciences are constructed around the formulation of theories, themselves bases for models and predictions. Doctors do pattern-matching and deal with human interactions. It is a useful and important job, but not science. So-called "scientific medicine" really is just large scale application of statistics, which is a huge progress compared to listening to voices in your head, but does nothing to advance systematic knowledge.
But the fact is that the scientists themselves overwhelmingly do not believe in gods. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.pdf
So in a sense, science and technology are the gift of non-theists to theists.
First point: doctors are not scientists. Not remotely. Some doctors happen to be scientists. But this is a separate career, and they frequently are unprepared for it. This is the subject of a separate debate.
Second point: this is of course unrelated to the fact that scientists are mostly atheists. Even in the US. It is irrelevant that there are theists doctors and theists scientists: there is variation in any population. It just happens that when you say that, you obscure the greater truth that overwhelming odds are they don't believe in gods. source: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.pdf
In America, being an atheist is about the same thing as being a child molester. Yet, the members of congress and the president are, for their social status, inordinately religious.
Or at least they say so. Now in America, there is a large minority of people who are, in fact atheists, and a much larger minority of people who find the intrusion of religion in the public discourse worrying. These people will not outright say: "I will vote for an atheist" in the same way that fundamentalist christians will vote for a born-again because he is born-again. It may, however be a very important issue for them.
Officially, no candidate represents them.
So these people really hope that their officials are lying about their true beliefs. Sad, but true.
But sometimes, you should vote for people because they are good liars! For example, I expect many atheists in America will vote for Obama, because they hope he lies about his faith. I expect many Republicans voted for Bush because they hoped that the pandering was just lies.
It is part of a politician's job to tell a convincing lie. I think we can never have enough transparency, but even then, it is illusory to hope for people to never lie. And there are cases that lies are necessary: I would not expect leadership to say anything about, say, military preparations...
But why do you think that you are better at distinguishing "kind hearted" from "cruel" people than you are at spotting which one is the idiot? And why do you think that the cruel option is necessarily better? It may well be that the dictator and his nation's interests are somewhat aligned, thus making the kind idiot a worse disaster that the cruel genius...
This aside, people are in fact pretty good at spotting leaders -- much, much better than at spotting intelligence. This makes sense, after all, we have evolved in environment where intelligence was no doubt a plus, but leadership meant life or death.
Those Russian textbooks? They are the best. They really are. They were written by people mesmerised by the intrinsic beauty of the theory and the maths. A teacher who can take these books and have the students see the beauty in them is a great teacher. Fun should come from all those amazing things that make sense and can be understood through the stuff in the book.
The idea that kids like playing and so teaching should be like play is backwards. Kids love learning. They are knowledge sponges. As long as you can throw information at them, they'll keep asking "why?". You should only need give structure to their questions.
No, I'm sorry, but disagree. Textbooks and exercise books should be separated. Exercises are where the teacher can really add value, by calibrating them to the needs of the class. The textbook should:
- lay out the material
- provide source materials/quotes/examples
- provide a systematic organisation of the topic.
Exercises and examples can (and should) be provided separately. Cynical me thinks this would allow for gradual improvement of textbooks and steady revenue for the editors. Instead of accumulating crap on crap. This is because the subjects do not change that fast. Thus, preparing an updated edition of a textbook will usually not destroy it -- unless it is structured around examples and exercises, in which case, you are fucked.
That was precisely my point. Some religious schools are good. But some just use the amazing leeway they have as religious organisation to lay waste to the minds of kids.
No, the catholic schools indeed tend to be good schools. But the general advice was about "religious" schools. And in the US these have no one to answer to, no standards, nothing. So it is terrible advice to put your kid in a "religious" school.
And yes, the generic concept of religion mixing with education tends to make me emotional. Not that it is always bad (it is not, and many religious schools are good) but I think these are good school which happen to be religious, and not the reverse. Also, there is no legal standard for the curriculum these schools teach, so in the US, sending you kid to one is a risky proposition. If there were national standard curriculum, I would not care one wit.
This actually make me angry. Textbooks should have the minimum number of exercises, and only to illustrate the subject matter, if necessary. It is the teacher's job to design the problem sets accordingly to their class, what they understand -- or don't.
I have said that a couple times in the threads here, but this is a deep cultural problem in America: despite what you guys think, the problem sets in a textbook should never constitute a significant part of the book. Teaching through examples is terrible. It leads to kids arriving at university expecting that and incapable of grasping this fundamental and essential truth: knowledge is organised in one global structure, held together by theories. You cannot pick and choose what you "believe". You cannot reach understanding by doing problems. You gain understanding by doing problems in different subject where what you learned elsewhere applies.
You mean where "intelligent design" is taught? There are no standards for religious institutions.
Hell, the Supreme Court decided that the rights of Amish to remain ignorant due to their religious beliefs trumped the rights of their kids to get an education. Yes, it's that bad. American parents, if you love your children, keep them away from Religious schools: you could turn out to be lucky, but if you aren't, this is not the school's problem.
No, the problem with American textbooks has nothing to do with capitalism or bureaucracy. It is due to the lack of a national standard, for one. And more deeply to the lack of respect for theory and structure. Books should be written with the objective of laying out what is known and give it a structure. TFA complains about the problem sets.
Fuck the problem sets. They have no place in a book. Booklets of problem sets could be written and charged for every year. But the book which contains the base material itself should be written to last forever -- and replaced when actually found lacking. Let me repeat that again, examples and problem sets should not be in the course books. They are for the teacher to devise in their lesson.
At university level, the shittiest books I had were all American (thankfully, a minority). Huge, bloated monstrosities, crammed full with examples because the author could apparently not bring itself to write about the actual subject in an efficient, structured and formal way. I never open them except to illustrate the point that they are crap. Whereas I (rarely) open my (French system) schoolbooks sometimes, just because they are full of interesting source material on various topics. Well, I used to. Before wikipedia ;).
Good books are full of structured facts and equations (if appropriate). They are as dense as possible. They are designed as reference material.
As a schoolchild, I went through the French system, and people complained that the textbooks changed too often. Which was a legitimate concern, but since the programme and standard were set system-wide, each iteration was, I thought, OK. Basically, it laid out the structure of the year, and gave supplementary material. Oh, and the maths books also had some exercise sets.
But that was an exception. And the proportion of exercises was small.
Likewise at university, I got textbooks, which were in the vast majority European in origin. And they were thin, densely packed with equations (or not so thin in the case of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics). And they contained almost no examples or exercises. They were designed as reference books.
But I also got a couple American textbook. Which were not badly written or wrong. But which were pieces of shit. Because the were huge, and contained stupid amounts of examples and exercises, instead of well-structured matter. On my shelf, I still have -- and consult -- the European ones, the American textbooks: dunno where I put them.
The author of TFA complains that the books are terribly written an badly copyedited. Sure, they might be. But even if they weren't, they would still be crap. This is because on this continent, people seem not to have understood the most important aspect of knowledge: its structure. The goal should never be that the student can do lots of exercises quickly. It should be that they understand the structure and logic of the subject -- and that, they can do the exercises, sure, but also understand how this subject relates to all the others. And each subject well understood helps in all the others.
And how knowledge, in general, forms a great overarching structure. Now of course, if you did that, you would never get engineer-creationists: because they would deeply understand that you cannot, in fact, compartmentalise knowledge.
This is not a "American education is crap" post. it is rather a "American education would in fact be very good" if you guys simply made the effort of respecting theory and structure more.
Actually, people need to understand what are models. And yes, this includes understandings statistics, and errors.
It is essentially the same skill that makes you understand that "this move will cut x$ from the budget" contains no information and what order of magnitude your change is supposed to be. You create models all the time: a car approaches: should you cross the road? It depends on the speed of the cars and yours. You could calculate the results, but the important thing is that you can identify which are the factors, why they matter and that you could bash them together to get a numerical answer. Then, you can decide whether you really want to do that.
The point is that people bemoan innumeracy in terms of "people can't add numbers in their heads very well". Well duh. This is why before calculators, we had abacuses, and why computers used to be people. But it is irrelevant: the basic skill is making models of reality, realising that you can get numbers out of them if needed, and that what matters is the _model_ of the guy selling you this insurance/car/political programme. His numbers may be crap, but you may fix that. If his model is based on the interpretation of the multiply mistranslated myths of bronze-aged shepherds, then beware.
True, let me qualify that. "under normal circumstances, people are honest and moral, but circumstances can make them go either way".
Oh, but the young people grow up to be old people who want to solve the problems from their youth (which in many cases have become irrelevant). And they have kids who want to solve new problems.
In societies, say America, there is a point where disparate sets of conservatives which are a a minority but still a plurality can get the power. At which point, they will try to prevent progress, thus causing a backslash which guarantees that the next generation will not believe like them. The current GOP is this. How anyone under 35 is not disgusted by some of the things they try to do in the name of morality is a wonder.
They can, of course, do much harm in the process. If they manage to kill education, they may even actually bring the clock back, although that is very difficult -- the so-called Arab Spring is proof that people want freedom and liberal societies, even in very backwards countries. It is also proof that starting a revolution which will hand the power to the above-mentioned plurality is daft. But hey, live and learn (or in that case live and get horribly tortured for your opinions).
Of course, there will always be crazy, vocal people. Yes, even young ones. but this is no indication that they have any chance of winning, just that their ideas are not dead, yet.
France only ever goes on strike to prevent change. Really. And yes, they are successful at it. And indeed, changes only happen when the old die out.
I don't agree. Most people are nice. Honest. Moral.
But what is moral is defined by their surrounding. So if you are surrounded by sycophants who will bow to your every whim, you might redefine moral as "whatever I want, now". And then, it is still very much up to your education.
You find it referenced here and there. It is notably reported in the freakonomics book.
reported on page 6 of the following PDF:
http://www.tinbergen.nl/ti-events/tilectures2007/gneezy.pdf
But do _you_ give respect to someone because he is rich? I should hope not.
Do you hold you fellow humans in such low esteem that you think they are inherently different from you? No. Rich people get respect because marks of respect beget further marks of respect. Likewise, ignoring the financial status of someone to only care about his moral qualities.
Change starts with all our attitudes.
There is this fascinating experiment. It occurred in Israel. The setting is this: there is a day-care centre at which people come to pick their kids at a fixed hour. Now some people are late, and there are no other consequences than the reprobation of the staff.
Comes in the economists. And they say "incentives matter!". And lo, a small fine is introduced for being late.
And now many more people are late, for the fine was too low: social pressure had kept people in line, but the small fine told them being late was no big deal. And so the fine is removed.
And people are still late, because now, the value of being late has been set, and it is low.
Moral of the story: if someone is a dick, don't let them get away with it. Politely voice your disapproval. Social pressure keeps people in line. And I would bet, even bankers: whatever they think, they cannot buy the respect of people around them. No-one can. An nice person is a nice person, and a dick a dick. Treat people accordingly to their behaviour, and ignore their social status.
At the end of the day, we are all dead. When you die, having been fair with the people you met means you leave a slightly better Earth.
Counter-example: the Koch bros., Murdoch.
When money stops meaning something, either you decide to do good, or the hunger is still here, and you need to fill it with power.