One of my earliest jobs involved a 14hr lab procedure. It all had to be done in a single day (biology can be like that), and the grant didn't allow for hiring additional help. I began to find ways to make the process shorter so that I could go home and eat pizza, drink beer, watch TV, and basically be lazy. I worked hard to find various techniques to shorten the procedure to under 10hrs.
The actual results (why we went through the long procedure in the first place) didn't have much influence on the way of things, but the shortened methodology enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame as other labs picked up on it. Of course, as a mere technician, I got no credit, but I did get to drink more beer, so I have no complaints.
Trump is pro-Trump. He has never been pro anything else. No one should expect him to change into someone who suddenly cares about anyone or anything else.
We have red and blue facts, green facts, purple (thanks, Prince, RIP), green, and rainbow facts, black, white, and brown facts, and facts of every hue and shade.
We have hard facts, soft facts, explicit or vague facts.
We have facts carefully crafted from rumors, innuendo, insinuation, and accusation. For an additional fee, we can even turn outright lies inside out and make them into facts.
We have statistics.
Our team of fact experts will work closely with you, together shaping whatever truth you want using the most provocative, eye-catching, and outrageous facts to capture and hold the attention of your audience.
If you are interested in actual factual facts, in learning, listening to other viewpoints, digging out truth, or thinking, then please get off our planet--you're making it uncomfortable for the rest of us.
And who is this "Science" god exactly? Where does it live? What does it look like? Does it agree with me? Does it care about me more than that other guy? Can I use it as an excuse to get what I want? Will it be the answer to all my prayers and grant me my deepest desires? Will I feel good when I'm around it?
Science, at best, will produce probable results. Conclusions based on those results is not science, but opinion. Assumptions form what ideas to test. Limited creativity informs how to test those ideas. Results are open to differing interpretations and applications. In the "hard" sciences, there are constraints on the reasonableness of which ideas we test and of the conclusions we reach. It is a mistake to think that we can systematically apply the same approach to the behavioral sciences. There are too many variables--too many unknowns.
The basic idea is that e.g., a couple with a 80 IQ can have a 200 IQ child, while a 140 IQ couple might only have 120 IQ children for instance.
IQ tests and even the idea of IQ tests are suspect according to some, so using IQ as a basis for understanding something else, like genetics, is problematic.
it all adds up to muddied waters and something some researchers see as a "crisis in physics."
Why is it that when there's disagreement, discussion, critical thinking, debunking, dissension, and other nasty differences of perspectives, approaches, analysis, or understanding that such is considered to be a "crisis in (insert science discipline here)?"
We only think of such disruptions as "crises" if we view science as a collection of proven (or highly probable) conclusions. The conclusions are not science; at best, they are based on probable though still questionable results of scientific work. Absent experimental proof, the ideas remain just ideas, though some ideas are more plausible than others given their ability to explain known data. Debating the plausibility of ideas, the methodology of experiments, the relevance of results, and the validity of conclusions based on those results is integral part of the process. Muddied waters is not a crisis; it is just more science.
Why? The device which you use to make your conclusions (your brain) is good at estimating probabilities.
Really? If that were so, gambling wouldn't be a $460 billion industry. In fact, our brain often gets it wrong. This is why we have experimental science and the mathematics of statistics to help us get it right.
Is the bias in the filtering or in the underlying nature of the stories being filtered?
For example, several polls suggest that the majority of American (85% in January Pew Research report) want expanded background checks for gun purchases. It is reasonable to think that media outlets, who sell clicks by saying what people already believe, would publish stories that reflect this popular bias.
What is unbiased filter? Is it that all views be represented equally? Perhaps it is that all views be represented in proportion to their audience. Is the "values center" (I can't think of a better term just now) clustered around the median of public opinion or the mean of public opinion? If you choose one as your gold standard of "unbiased" then you are inherently biased toward the other. You will make some people happy and others unhappy.
Gallup reported in October, 2015 that 58% of Americans say that marijuana should be legal in the US (several more recent polls show this percentage has increased since then). This is very different than in 1969 when it was just 12% of Americans who said it should be legal. What was once an extreme left wing view, has become a main stream view. Those against legalization were once main stream view but are increasingly becoming a minority view. A similar trend has occurred regarding background checks for gun ownership; according to one poll (http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm) 92% of Americans favor such checks. How then should Facebook filter stories about weed and gun control? Should it try to represent all views equally or should the filtering reflect the changing values of the public. If the American Enterprise Institute wants their views to be heard, should they look to Facebook to tilt the number and types of stories toward the conservative view in order for it be "balanced?"
Should stories confirming climate change science get equal billing with the debunkers?
Should minority views be represented in proportion to their frequency and audience? There are some crazy views out there that really don't deserve equal billing. Then there are some minority stories and opinions (such as this one) that get little attention, but absolutely everyone should read them. Time after time, the minority view (e.g. heliocentrism, theory of relativity, evolution, &etc) has turned out to be worth considering. That what I think, but perhaps I'm biased.
Teaching the mechanics of reading, writing, and arithmetic is not an end in and of itself. These are foundational skills required in order to learn and explore our world. Along with these skills should by taught logic, critical thinking, and how to evaluate, compare, contrast, and debate. It seems as if society focuses on the mechanical skills of academics without the intellectual skills that give those mechanics context and meaning. It is no wonder that people have trouble with climate science, follow all sorts of unproved nutritional fads, and don't even understand the nature of bias when it slaps them in the behind.
There should be no reasonable expectation that the government will censor Facebook anymore than that Drumpf will be able to censor the media. The 1st amendment rights of free speech are well established. Facebook is being pressured by some public opinion to censor itself, which comes down to censoring its own customers. It has nothing to do with government censorship. This is a very different question with a very different set of dynamics and ethical concerns.
It is easier for the companies to say it is impossible than to face the real question: should there be these limits on free speech, and, if so, how do they go about deciding those limits. There is no way these companies are going to keep everyone happy no matter what they do, and unhappy people hurts business. The solution that best preserves the bottom line is to claim inability to act.
It did become the norm. That's my point. There are community web sites, real world music spaces, public gardens, &etc--places where people can come and interact with each other without government or commercial interference. Creating and protecting these nodes of community based interaction is possible, but it takes more and more effort to achieve.
Yes, I remember the pain and the horror of watching access to the sites grind to a halt. I upgraded time and time again: more and faster servers, relocation to server farm, upgrade hardware, upgrade OS, upgrade software, upgrade bandwidth, rinse, and repeat. Then there was the optimization for search engine position, the trackers, the ad delivery. I was spending so much time with all of this nonsense that I had no more time to actually develop content. I finally gave it all up.
Same thing happened to music. We had great jazz, blues, country, western, and pockets of all sorts of wonderful stuff. Nobody made much money from it, but the best could earn a living and that was enough for them. Then we figured out how to record it, distribute it, and (most importantly) make money from it. A lot of great music got made from all that exposure and cross-pollination that would never have happened otherwise. We got whole new forms. We also got a lot of crap and, for a while, it was difficult to find any outlet that wasn't playing something that wasn't hyped and uninspiring though lots of people seemed to like it anyway. Then people began to develop new ways to find and listen to music for those interested enough to exert a little effort.
Thoughtful creativity and effort can bring about worthwhile expressions that are better than what went before. We can learn.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that systems can't be built that amplify some behaviors and attenuate others. That is the nature of governance whether that governance be the rules/mores structuring the dynamics of a book club, Slashdot, a nation, or the web.
The "libertarian pipe-dream of benevolent crypto-anarchy" isn't as unrealistic as you've made it out to be. It did exist, briefly, for some time in 1994-95. I was there with servers in my basement and a T1 line to my house. I am still surprised at how well it worked and that it basically did so for so long. It was far from perfect, and it could not last once various government agencies realized what was going on and investors began to understand the potential for making outrageous fortunes from the technology.
New forms of government do become possible with new technologies, cultural/religious shifts, and much thought. William Penn, Roger Williams, and others began to write about and implement, on a limited scale, new, more just and fair forms of government more than century before the Declaration of Independence. Everyone thought they were nuts. Their ideas were not perfection, and we are still working out how to compromise their ideas with the real world in a way that works best for everyone, but their ideas were not a complete pipe-dream. They only seemed that way at the time.
I don't think it hurts to envision and discuss these ideas, trying to solve what may seem insolvable problems, in order to get closer to a systems of governance (for that is exactly what this is) that allows for greater freedom while continuing to provide needed protections and safety.
They are obviously not terrorists, but the altruism is just marketing.
They are simply a superpower that does what it can to stay a superpower and makes decisions in their own interest rather than anyone elses.
Who is this they? Who is this superpower?
A terrorist organization tends to be a top-down structure, or close to it. If there's a strong enough disagreement, they split. Where there were one, now there are two. Cutting off the head doesn't kill the organization, but can usually disrupt it greatly.
A republic nation, such as the USA, has many parts with competing interests which usually, though not always, provides checks. Sometimes those checks fail (and we invade countries justified by falsified intelligence). Sometimes those checks are too rigid (and we get a deadlocked congress). In this case the "superpower" doesn't decide anything. Elements within the republic push an agenda, and others within the republic fail, often through disengagement and inaction, to stop that agenda.
What if it were T-shirts that might disintegrate under certain conditions? We would know that the fabric wasn't well tested and it could break down, but we would not know exactly how, so we follow some of the steps suggested in the comments here. (1) We would find experts on disintegrating T-shirts and learn that fire would most certainly destroy them, but water might dissolve them as well. UV light might break down some of the fibers, so stay out of sunlight and don't spend too much time in certain kinds of fluorescent light. (2) Then we educate our people. (3) Then some teenage boys would aim a hose at some of the people wearing our T-shirts. (4) Our T-shirts would fall apart to the delight of some and horror of others. (5) We would scream, "Get those naughty boys!"--though some might be secretly applaud them. (6) When it kept happening, we would say, "We've got to round up teenage boys with hoses, water balloons, and super soakers."
Perhaps we might insist on better T-shirts but it is doubtful since the new T-shirts are just way cooler. It is easier to blame the boys.
None of us, even the most scientifically sophisticated, is capable of developing sufficient expertise in every field in order to personally judge the scientific merits of technical arguments in highly specialized fields. Maybe one or two such fields, if we work very hard on it. This is why we rely on the opinions of experts. Putting every random crackpot who advances an argument on the same footing as established scientists in the field is false equivalence. Yes, every once in a great while, an outsider can point out an error being made by subject experts. But, 99.999% of the time, they're full of shit. The burden of proof here is on Myhrvold.
Did you really make the Leave-it-to-the-Experts-Because-We're-too-Dumb-Anyway-and-We'll-all-be-Fine argument?
If someone has not developed "sufficient expertise" to "personally judge the scientific merits of technical arguments in highly specialized fields," then why are they commenting on it? Does mentioning that Myhrvold is a patent troll (nasty behavior that, I agree) advance the science or help us get past his very public objections so that we can all get back to work? I doubt it. Such comments are counterproductive.
And where did that 99.999% figure come from? I think outsiders can, do, and should positively contribute more than 0.001% to good scientific data collection, methodology, and analysis.
Myhrovold is not some "random crackpot." Some may consider him a crackpot, but he's not a random one. We have seen sub-cultures which, due to funding sources and a need to publish, produce less than great scientific results. It doesn't hurt for an occasional outsider to put focus on studies and, in this case, cultures--whether he is right or wrong in his analysis, Myhrvold's public platform does this.
There are some basics regarding methodology and statistics that can and should be evaluated, or at least questioned, by non-experts. Instead of character bashing, deserved or not, we should be learning to think for ourselves. I'm sure we can still do that to some extent. We can learn the basics of scientific methodology, learn to be skeptical, learn to ask good questions. We need do this and teach this because there is a lot bad science out there and most of the public doesn't know the difference.
BTW, I noticed that this threadlet devolved in character bashing again--bye-bye critical thinking.
Do we find the science too complicated? Too busy to actually read the papers? Too lazy to do a little digging? Never learned how to do the math? Never mind. We can always pick a side and run down the character of any and all opponents. It's quick. It's easy. It's fun. Science be damned.
My father taught 5th grade. In the late 60s, in this school, that was when they worked mainly on word problems. My father decided to teach them all (not just gifted students) basic algebra having to do with subtraction, addition, multiplication and division in order to solve these word problems. He presented it as playing games with the numbers. There were several interesting results with his experiment. First, most of the 5th graders quickly grasped the concepts when presented this way. Second, the students began solving these word problems more quickly and more accurately as compared with classes of previous years. Third, the students enjoyed the insights. Fourth, the concepts seem to help the "slowest" students the most. Fifth, creative teaching, regardless of its success, was frowned upon by the school administrators and he was forced to stop the program.
Slashdot Mirror
One of my earliest jobs involved a 14hr lab procedure. It all had to be done in a single day (biology can be like that), and the grant didn't allow for hiring additional help. I began to find ways to make the process shorter so that I could go home and eat pizza, drink beer, watch TV, and basically be lazy. I worked hard to find various techniques to shorten the procedure to under 10hrs.
The actual results (why we went through the long procedure in the first place) didn't have much influence on the way of things, but the shortened methodology enjoyed its 15 minutes of fame as other labs picked up on it. Of course, as a mere technician, I got no credit, but I did get to drink more beer, so I have no complaints.
The minimalist design featured black text with blue links on a white background.
Those are white, black and blue in many browsers but by no means all.
Many browsers?? I only remember the one. The many came later. Notice the tense: featured.
Trump at the least is pro-America.
Trump is pro-Trump. He has never been pro anything else. No one should expect him to change into someone who suddenly cares about anyone or anything else.
We have red and blue facts, green facts, purple (thanks, Prince, RIP), green, and rainbow facts, black, white, and brown facts, and facts of every hue and shade.
We have hard facts, soft facts, explicit or vague facts.
We have facts carefully crafted from rumors, innuendo, insinuation, and accusation. For an additional fee, we can even turn outright lies inside out and make them into facts.
We have statistics.
Our team of fact experts will work closely with you, together shaping whatever truth you want using the most provocative, eye-catching, and outrageous facts to capture and hold the attention of your audience.
If you are interested in actual factual facts, in learning, listening to other viewpoints, digging out truth, or thinking, then please get off our planet--you're making it uncomfortable for the rest of us.
I agree as long as you remember that my Science is better than your Science, and my Rationality is better than your Rationality.
And who is this "Science" god exactly? Where does it live? What does it look like? Does it agree with me? Does it care about me more than that other guy? Can I use it as an excuse to get what I want? Will it be the answer to all my prayers and grant me my deepest desires? Will I feel good when I'm around it?
Science, at best, will produce probable results. Conclusions based on those results is not science, but opinion. Assumptions form what ideas to test. Limited creativity informs how to test those ideas. Results are open to differing interpretations and applications. In the "hard" sciences, there are constraints on the reasonableness of which ideas we test and of the conclusions we reach. It is a mistake to think that we can systematically apply the same approach to the behavioral sciences. There are too many variables--too many unknowns.
The basic idea is that e.g., a couple with a 80 IQ can have a 200 IQ child, while a 140 IQ couple might only have 120 IQ children for instance.
IQ tests and even the idea of IQ tests are suspect according to some, so using IQ as a basis for understanding something else, like genetics, is problematic.
it all adds up to muddied waters and something some researchers see as a "crisis in physics."
Why is it that when there's disagreement, discussion, critical thinking, debunking, dissension, and other nasty differences of perspectives, approaches, analysis, or understanding that such is considered to be a "crisis in (insert science discipline here)?"
We only think of such disruptions as "crises" if we view science as a collection of proven (or highly probable) conclusions. The conclusions are not science; at best, they are based on probable though still questionable results of scientific work. Absent experimental proof, the ideas remain just ideas, though some ideas are more plausible than others given their ability to explain known data. Debating the plausibility of ideas, the methodology of experiments, the relevance of results, and the validity of conclusions based on those results is integral part of the process. Muddied waters is not a crisis; it is just more science.
Why? The device which you use to make your conclusions (your brain) is good at estimating probabilities.
Really? If that were so, gambling wouldn't be a $460 billion industry. In fact, our brain often gets it wrong. This is why we have experimental science and the mathematics of statistics to help us get it right.
Is the bias in the filtering or in the underlying nature of the stories being filtered?
For example, several polls suggest that the majority of American (85% in January Pew Research report) want expanded background checks for gun purchases. It is reasonable to think that media outlets, who sell clicks by saying what people already believe, would publish stories that reflect this popular bias.
What is unbiased filter? Is it that all views be represented equally? Perhaps it is that all views be represented in proportion to their audience. Is the "values center" (I can't think of a better term just now) clustered around the median of public opinion or the mean of public opinion? If you choose one as your gold standard of "unbiased" then you are inherently biased toward the other. You will make some people happy and others unhappy.
Gallup reported in October, 2015 that 58% of Americans say that marijuana should be legal in the US (several more recent polls show this percentage has increased since then). This is very different than in 1969 when it was just 12% of Americans who said it should be legal. What was once an extreme left wing view, has become a main stream view. Those against legalization were once main stream view but are increasingly becoming a minority view. A similar trend has occurred regarding background checks for gun ownership; according to one poll (http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm) 92% of Americans favor such checks. How then should Facebook filter stories about weed and gun control? Should it try to represent all views equally or should the filtering reflect the changing values of the public. If the American Enterprise Institute wants their views to be heard, should they look to Facebook to tilt the number and types of stories toward the conservative view in order for it be "balanced?"
Should stories confirming climate change science get equal billing with the debunkers?
Should minority views be represented in proportion to their frequency and audience? There are some crazy views out there that really don't deserve equal billing. Then there are some minority stories and opinions (such as this one) that get little attention, but absolutely everyone should read them. Time after time, the minority view (e.g. heliocentrism, theory of relativity, evolution, &etc) has turned out to be worth considering. That what I think, but perhaps I'm biased.
Teaching the mechanics of reading, writing, and arithmetic is not an end in and of itself. These are foundational skills required in order to learn and explore our world. Along with these skills should by taught logic, critical thinking, and how to evaluate, compare, contrast, and debate. It seems as if society focuses on the mechanical skills of academics without the intellectual skills that give those mechanics context and meaning. It is no wonder that people have trouble with climate science, follow all sorts of unproved nutritional fads, and don't even understand the nature of bias when it slaps them in the behind.
There should be no reasonable expectation that the government will censor Facebook anymore than that Drumpf will be able to censor the media. The 1st amendment rights of free speech are well established. Facebook is being pressured by some public opinion to censor itself, which comes down to censoring its own customers. It has nothing to do with government censorship. This is a very different question with a very different set of dynamics and ethical concerns.
It is easier for the companies to say it is impossible than to face the real question: should there be these limits on free speech, and, if so, how do they go about deciding those limits. There is no way these companies are going to keep everyone happy no matter what they do, and unhappy people hurts business. The solution that best preserves the bottom line is to claim inability to act.
It did become the norm. That's my point. There are community web sites, real world music spaces, public gardens, &etc--places where people can come and interact with each other without government or commercial interference. Creating and protecting these nodes of community based interaction is possible, but it takes more and more effort to achieve.
Yes, I remember the pain and the horror of watching access to the sites grind to a halt. I upgraded time and time again: more and faster servers, relocation to server farm, upgrade hardware, upgrade OS, upgrade software, upgrade bandwidth, rinse, and repeat. Then there was the optimization for search engine position, the trackers, the ad delivery. I was spending so much time with all of this nonsense that I had no more time to actually develop content. I finally gave it all up.
Same thing happened to music. We had great jazz, blues, country, western, and pockets of all sorts of wonderful stuff. Nobody made much money from it, but the best could earn a living and that was enough for them. Then we figured out how to record it, distribute it, and (most importantly) make money from it. A lot of great music got made from all that exposure and cross-pollination that would never have happened otherwise. We got whole new forms. We also got a lot of crap and, for a while, it was difficult to find any outlet that wasn't playing something that wasn't hyped and uninspiring though lots of people seemed to like it anyway. Then people began to develop new ways to find and listen to music for those interested enough to exert a little effort.
Thoughtful creativity and effort can bring about worthwhile expressions that are better than what went before. We can learn.
The problem is people.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that systems can't be built that amplify some behaviors and attenuate others. That is the nature of governance whether that governance be the rules/mores structuring the dynamics of a book club, Slashdot, a nation, or the web.
The "libertarian pipe-dream of benevolent crypto-anarchy" isn't as unrealistic as you've made it out to be. It did exist, briefly, for some time in 1994-95. I was there with servers in my basement and a T1 line to my house. I am still surprised at how well it worked and that it basically did so for so long. It was far from perfect, and it could not last once various government agencies realized what was going on and investors began to understand the potential for making outrageous fortunes from the technology.
New forms of government do become possible with new technologies, cultural/religious shifts, and much thought. William Penn, Roger Williams, and others began to write about and implement, on a limited scale, new, more just and fair forms of government more than century before the Declaration of Independence. Everyone thought they were nuts. Their ideas were not perfection, and we are still working out how to compromise their ideas with the real world in a way that works best for everyone, but their ideas were not a complete pipe-dream. They only seemed that way at the time.
I don't think it hurts to envision and discuss these ideas, trying to solve what may seem insolvable problems, in order to get closer to a systems of governance (for that is exactly what this is) that allows for greater freedom while continuing to provide needed protections and safety.
They are obviously not terrorists, but the altruism is just marketing.
They are simply a superpower that does what it can to stay a superpower and makes decisions in their own interest rather than anyone elses.
Who is this they? Who is this superpower?
A terrorist organization tends to be a top-down structure, or close to it. If there's a strong enough disagreement, they split. Where there were one, now there are two. Cutting off the head doesn't kill the organization, but can usually disrupt it greatly.
A republic nation, such as the USA, has many parts with competing interests which usually, though not always, provides checks. Sometimes those checks fail (and we invade countries justified by falsified intelligence). Sometimes those checks are too rigid (and we get a deadlocked congress). In this case the "superpower" doesn't decide anything. Elements within the republic push an agenda, and others within the republic fail, often through disengagement and inaction, to stop that agenda.
What if it were T-shirts that might disintegrate under certain conditions? We would know that the fabric wasn't well tested and it could break down, but we would not know exactly how, so we follow some of the steps suggested in the comments here. (1) We would find experts on disintegrating T-shirts and learn that fire would most certainly destroy them, but water might dissolve them as well. UV light might break down some of the fibers, so stay out of sunlight and don't spend too much time in certain kinds of fluorescent light. (2) Then we educate our people. (3) Then some teenage boys would aim a hose at some of the people wearing our T-shirts. (4) Our T-shirts would fall apart to the delight of some and horror of others. (5) We would scream, "Get those naughty boys!"--though some might be secretly applaud them. (6) When it kept happening, we would say, "We've got to round up teenage boys with hoses, water balloons, and super soakers."
Perhaps we might insist on better T-shirts but it is doubtful since the new T-shirts are just way cooler. It is easier to blame the boys.
None of us, even the most scientifically sophisticated, is capable of developing sufficient expertise in every field in order to personally judge the scientific merits of technical arguments in highly specialized fields. Maybe one or two such fields, if we work very hard on it. This is why we rely on the opinions of experts. Putting every random crackpot who advances an argument on the same footing as established scientists in the field is false equivalence. Yes, every once in a great while, an outsider can point out an error being made by subject experts. But, 99.999% of the time, they're full of shit. The burden of proof here is on Myhrvold.
Did you really make the Leave-it-to-the-Experts-Because-We're-too-Dumb-Anyway-and-We'll-all-be-Fine argument?
If someone has not developed "sufficient expertise" to "personally judge the scientific merits of technical arguments in highly specialized fields," then why are they commenting on it? Does mentioning that Myhrvold is a patent troll (nasty behavior that, I agree) advance the science or help us get past his very public objections so that we can all get back to work? I doubt it. Such comments are counterproductive.
And where did that 99.999% figure come from? I think outsiders can, do, and should positively contribute more than 0.001% to good scientific data collection, methodology, and analysis.
Myhrovold is not some "random crackpot." Some may consider him a crackpot, but he's not a random one. We have seen sub-cultures which, due to funding sources and a need to publish, produce less than great scientific results. It doesn't hurt for an occasional outsider to put focus on studies and, in this case, cultures--whether he is right or wrong in his analysis, Myhrvold's public platform does this.
There are some basics regarding methodology and statistics that can and should be evaluated, or at least questioned, by non-experts. Instead of character bashing, deserved or not, we should be learning to think for ourselves. I'm sure we can still do that to some extent. We can learn the basics of scientific methodology, learn to be skeptical, learn to ask good questions. We need do this and teach this because there is a lot bad science out there and most of the public doesn't know the difference.
BTW, I noticed that this threadlet devolved in character bashing again--bye-bye critical thinking.
Do we find the science too complicated? Too busy to actually read the papers? Too lazy to do a little digging? Never learned how to do the math? Never mind. We can always pick a side and run down the character of any and all opponents. It's quick. It's easy. It's fun. Science be damned.
My father taught 5th grade. In the late 60s, in this school, that was when they worked mainly on word problems. My father decided to teach them all (not just gifted students) basic algebra having to do with subtraction, addition, multiplication and division in order to solve these word problems. He presented it as playing games with the numbers. There were several interesting results with his experiment. First, most of the 5th graders quickly grasped the concepts when presented this way. Second, the students began solving these word problems more quickly and more accurately as compared with classes of previous years. Third, the students enjoyed the insights. Fourth, the concepts seem to help the "slowest" students the most. Fifth, creative teaching, regardless of its success, was frowned upon by the school administrators and he was forced to stop the program.