>Yes, regardless of education the burden of judgement is on us. Good thing
>the experts compete in a "scientific free market". If they discover
>cold-fusion, others have to confirm it. This is a good test for those who
>do not understand those experiments. And there is also technology: will it
>be practical -- and capitalism: can we make money using it?
Agreed.
>True. That's why competition is important. Besides, great theories are
>simple. The DNA alphabet is now known to an average high school student and
>it used to be a mystery for ages. E=mc^2 is a *very* simple formula. It is
>difficult to find it though. I believe relationships between information,
>energy and matter will appear to be as simple one day. Stephen Hawking puts
>it more poetically when he claims that when we know it, everybody will be
>able to understand it and to know God's thoughts. I believe this world
>*must* be simple in order to be so wonderful.
I'm not sure. I think the DNA alphabet, E=mc^2 and the Periodic Table are
simple symbolic systems. But the underlying structure is very complicated
Perhaps if we raise the next generation to "speak" DNA, Reletivity and
Periodicity it will become "intuitive" to them. This isn't always successful
though. Human brain development seems to limit children's ability to grap
some simple relationships (such as how volume can remain constant while
shape varies). Perhaps this is lack of experience--a cultural and not inborn
phenomena? Certianly I agree with the spirt of what you just said. It
is the practice that I'm not sure of. I'm sure you know that teaching any
complex subject is remarkably difficult. Even the most practiced instructor
wielding a host of well-tuned analogies cannot make the counterintuitive
obvious.
One of the problems is the inconsistencies. Any real theory or practice has
them. One of the parts of self-direction is the acknowledgement that
knowledge is always incomplete and at least partially incorrect.
That doesn't have to lead to authority-worship or a crisis of
confidence, but blindly worshiping your own personal ideology isn't
significantly different than blindly worshiping someone elses.
>Exactly. It's the "authority worhip" which is the main component of MAIDS.
>It's not the same as simply rebelling against authority (as in some
>movements). It's the lack of trust in one's own mind. The MAIDS virus
>seems to prosper in abandoned minds.
I think I understand what you're getting at. You are holding up memetics as
an example of this? Or only certian expressions of it? It seems to me the
problem you are pointing out is equally applicable to any sort of ideology
or institution. I think it's refered to as "meme-bot" in the memetics
dictionary.
Reed
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Reed Konsler konsler@ascat.harvard.edu
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