Uncertainty

[avandonk]

Why I quote these fine BBC documentaries is that they do a far better job of explaining problems and some solutions that have needed our best minds to figure out than I ever could.

I have always found that teaching a subject alerts me to my own ignorance.

My mental model of the Universe is that all the complexity we see about us comes from very simple rules.

Finding these 'SIMPLE' rules is the tricky bit.

Watching those documentaries brings to life the men and women who's names you find littered in all the scientific texts and papers.

If all human knowledge was in English say then a fundamental rule would be all knowledge was fully described by twenty six letters and ten numbers.
It is not that simple! You need many more rules for grammar syntax etc and that is just for the language! All the mathematical operators also present a large zoo of things. We all have to agree on all the rules on how to record and read this information. We are not there yet!

You end up with many levels of complexity produced by simple rules. Education is the understanding of these rules.

Strange things also happen. Poetry, song and literature appear out of meaningless symbols that now transmit all human emotions and ideas.

The sum of the parts is far less than the whole structure.

It is like describing a new baby as 3kg of atoms.

Bert

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by Archy

Another explanation might be that you have been unable to make your explanation understandable. No matter how many degrees you have, I don't see that you have the right to put someone down in the way you have unless you are prepared to be seen as arrogant.

We can appear different here... haste pressure in the outside world etc...
but never take it personal... a fella tried to fight me at the pub... it wasnt me he would have tried to fight anyone.... and sadly he is a nice guy just bending under the pressure of a hard day.

I think Carl does a great job here... it can be frustrating trying to make folk understand stuff you know so well...we are all human with the weakness that goes with being human... Given time Carl will expalin things so even a mug like me can understand ... but please lets not get carried away ..we are all friends here I would like to think.

alex

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by avandonk

Why I quote these fine BBC documentaries is that they do a far better job of explaining problems and some solutions that have needed our best minds to figure out than I ever could.

I have always found that teaching a subject alerts me to my own ignorance.

My mental model of the Universe is that all the complexity we see about us comes from very simple rules.

Finding these 'SIMPLE' rules is the tricky bit.

Watching those documentaries brings to life the men and women who's names you find littered in all the scientific texts and papers.

If all human knowledge was in English say then a fundamental rule would be all knowledge was fully described by twenty six letters and ten numbers.
It is not that simple! You need many more rules for grammar syntax etc and that is just for the language! All the mathematical operators also present a large zoo of things. We all have to agree on all the rules on how to record and read this information. We are not there yet!

You end up with many levels of complexity produced by simple rules. Education is the understanding of these rules.

Strange things also happen. Poetry, song and literature appear out of meaningless symbols that now transmit all human emotions and ideas.

The sum of the parts is far less than the whole structure.

It is like describing a new baby as 3kg of atoms.

Bert

You are wise Bert.
You have kept a balance and retained a perspective that must have been hard to do.
If there is one thing I have learnt it is that the more I learn the more I realise I and the rest of the bunch know little... it is hard to be proud of your acxhievements yet balance ones insignificance etc.... the funny thing I have found is that I dont want to tell folk what I know or think I know etc... realising perhaps my relationship to time and space...a blink of insignifficance ..and not to be bothered by that findingt.

alex

[avandonk]

Alex we are all only up to our ankles in the very large sea of knowledge. You should be commended for attempting to go deeper. All teaching is, is to shorten this journey for the student. I know I have done my job with my students when they wade way past me!

Bert

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by Archy

Another explanation might be that you have been unable to make your explanation understandable. No matter how many degrees you have, I don't see that you have the right to put someone down in the way you have unless you are prepared to be seen as arrogant.

I've taught both high school students and undergrads at uni. In both cases I've been commented on very favourably about how I can put across complex issue in terms that people can understand quite readily. If someone doesn't have the capacity to understand a subject then they don't. Telling them as much is only saving them the trouble of trying to wade through something they will just not get. You can only help people so much and explain things to them, but if they don't get it, they just don't.

Putting someone down is being nasty and derogatory towards them....calling them names and deliberately going out of your way to hurt them. Telling them what their limitations might be in order to save them any further confusion or angst with regards to a subject is going out your way to help them.

Put it this way....how often does someone have to explain something in terms a person should understand, only to have that other person show through their responses that they've never understood what was being said, or they've gone off on tangents completely at odds with what was taught because they haven't grasped it to begin with. There are limits to what anyone has the capacity to understand and it's up to them to figure that out, or have it pointed out to them by those that can see their limitations.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by avandonk

Alex we are all only up to our ankles in the very large sea of knowledge. You should be commended for attempting to go deeper. All teaching is, is to shorten this journey for the student. I know I have done my job with my students when they wade way past me!

Bert

Most of us have barely dipped out toes into the water.

[avandonk]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Most of us have barely dipped out toes into the water.

Carl I try to avoid getting in over my head. But I fail even at this.

Bert

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by avandonk

Carl I try to avoid getting in over my head. But I fail even at this.

Bert

Bert, the sand gives way rather easily under foot. It's quite easy to find yourself in the deep water channel, in a rip

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by avandonk

Alex we are all only up to our ankles in the very large sea of knowledge. You should be commended for attempting to go deeper. All teaching is, is to shorten this journey for the student. I know I have done my job with my students when they wade way past me!

Bert

I find folk think we now have all the answers so time to go home...
Is it not wonderful to have lived in this era to have outrageous ideas and yet see them evolve without your own input...you know I worked for a man (a great man ) who was born before humans flew..my point is what a section of history we have enjoyed and witnessed...the gravity trip you have witnessed me upon showed me so much.... science has taught me more about religion than I could have expected I once thught the two were seperate but all fight for recognition... the direction ideas progress pulled by logic and politics and yet an outcome survives... to think for no gain or reason has been a luxury I never thought I would enjoy few can think with no regard for production or recognition.

I had some time with my daughter, showed her omega cent... etc... she has it ..such a mind and only starting out... and in 15 minutes all I can tell her is everything I know... if you cant explain it to a kid what is the point... it is not easy looking down the barrel of life from this end etc...so she has already more than I could give her ..past the insignificant to understand trivial is trivial but can interest you nevertheless.

alex

[bojan]

Originally Posted by renormalised

....If someone doesn't have the capacity to understand a subject then they don't.

I disagree.
OK, I was never a teacher in a formal sense.. but during my high school days and as a student on Uni I was helping my school mates to understand what our math and physics teachers are trying to tell us.. I was lucky because I "got it " faster than others in many cases..
Sometimes just a different use of words or another analogy triggers the process of understanding in others.. and I was good at that.
The role of the teacher is never to give up on pupils and definitely not to try and discourage others, no matter what. Otherwise you are not a (good) teacher.. it is easy to teach when your audience already understands what you are talking about.
Then again, maybe I am handicapped here - my background is not the same as yours and I simply can't understand this English (?) attitude ("be happy where you are and don't bother big boys").
Anyway... this is a matter of personal approach to teaching... and quite OT in fact.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Originally Posted by Ernest Wilson

. . "How can anyone be so stupid as not to know about the "Uncertainty Principle";
Ernie.

OK, so that makes me stupid, coz I've never heard of it.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by bojan

I disagree.
OK, I was never a teacher in a formal sense.. but during my high school days and as a student on Uni I was helping my school mates to understand what our math and physics teachers are trying to tell us.. I was lucky because I "got it " faster than others in many cases..
Sometimes just a different use of words or another analogy triggers the process of understanding in others.. and I was good at that.
The role of the teacher is never to give up on pupils and definitely not to try and discourage others, no matter what. Otherwise you are not a (good) teacher.. it is easy to teach when your audience already understands what you are talking about.
Then again, maybe I am handicapped here - my background is not the same as yours and I simply can't understand this English (?) attitude ("be happy where you are and don't bother big boys").
Anyway... this is a matter of personal approach to teaching... and quite OT in fact.

True, sometimes different words or turns of phrase will help some people to "turn on the light bulb" so to speak. However, when you can see that someone will have trouble no matter what you try, then it's upto the teacher to realise this and make the appropriate decisions as to how to go about informing that student they'd be better off doing something else. There's no point in allowing someone to bash their heads, metaphorically, up against a brick wall. It's true a good teacher never gives up on their students, but it's also equally as true that a good teacher recognises the potential of their students and sees that if one of them can't handle the subject at hand, then they move that student onto something else.

You can't force a person to learn a subject if they don't want to or just can't seem to grasp it. You also can't make an A grade student out of a D grade student if they don't have the capacity to increase their understanding beyond what they already know or don't know as the case may be. Trying to wring something out of someone or keeping them at doing something they don't like and/or don't understand only hurts that person. They end up hating the subject at hand, and that in turn affects all the other learning that they do. That is no uncertainty. I've seen it first hand.

It's not about bothering the big boys and such....it's about not seeing someone get in over their head and making a fool of themselves or becoming a person who hates a subject just because they don't have the capacity to understand it. That's where and why a lot of people are turned off science. There are many reasons why, but that is just one of them.

[CraigS]

Folks;

The fundamental issue I see here is that the observational evidence shows that no-one has specifically requested anyone here, to be their 'teacher' or their 'coach'.

The absence of such a request and acceptance of such by the requestor, can easily lead to extreme resentment when someone assumes the posture of 'teacher' or 'coach'.

Our respective roles in this place, whilst assumed, are not necessarily automatically accepted. The reality is that we are simply disembodied brains with fingers and keyboards .. nothing more.

Cheers

[renormalised (Carl)]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Folks;

The fundamental issue I see here is that the observational evidence shows that no-one has specifically requested anyone here, to be their 'teacher' or their 'coach'.

The absence of such a request and acceptance of such by the requestor, can easily lead to extreme resentment when someone assumes the posture of 'teacher' or 'coach'.

Our respective roles in this place, whilst assumed, are not necessarily automatically accepted. The reality is that we are simply disembodied brains with fingers and keyboards .. nothing more.

Cheers

Better still, how do we even know the other person really exists??!!!

Now then....all we can say is that we can be uncertain about uncertainty

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by CraigS

Y'know Alex, I think this ranks as one of the best conversations I've ever had with you.
Lay back and have a few more drinks .. (if that's what's brought this on )

Cheers

PS: Then again .. you did say you've been studying .. Physics .. and Maths ?

Sorry I missed this last night Craig.
I have had the pleasure of quiet a few days in the bush without humans contact, news, bills etc I like to think about stuff and need a couple of uninteruppted hours but that sometimes leaves me strange when I drop back into the world. I dont like drinking only do it at the pub in an effort to seem normal..I do need to go out and socialize and to do so you have to drink I guess... but I dont go to the pub anymore. Busy doing real stuff in the real world.
Yes studying... I know so much of it but it does not hurt to read more. Interestingly I had been going over Heisenberg,s uncertainty principle.. and I still dont know how to multiply one triangle by another...thats a joke based on the way the equation is written and we know what the triangle is... anyways ..that the cat in the box material the science not the metaphore, photoelectric effect, Planck,s law,the Copenhagen thing, Paulis excusion principle,the EPR paradox, Feynman diagrams...and finally but ever so briefly ..string theory...just because I am suspicious of it does not mean I cant learn about it... I cant remember what maths I have covered but its all pretty ordinary stuff it is just a language really so you just need to know the terms and symbols etc.... happily all I read confirms I am not being too outrageous ...got to check this out but apparently the conmological constant still is in one of the field equations...hope so as that will save writting a lot of new stuff....

AND those movies Bert suggested I looked at them today ... extrememe thinking should not send you crazy but wow look at the numbers...infinity is past where they have it..but that is something else.

alex

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by renormalised

Better still, how do we even know the other person really exists??!!!

Now then....all we can say is that we can be uncertain about uncertainty

I often wonder Carl ..the other day I rang a "phone company" with a small problem. The "person" on the other end of the line was too dam helpful to have been human...when I tried to go they wanted to help me more..add to that the voice had a sort of metalic tone.... and when I thought back the voice just kept helping until I decided to hang up....

I was uncertain but pretty certain that it could have been computer generated.

I have learnt Heisenberg invented probably the first form of quantum mechanics ,,matrix mechanics in 1925 and received the Nobel Prize in 1932... so he was real it seems of that we can be certain....or can we...

alex

[xelasnave]

Well I am happy to nominate for the role of student...I know what I know I want to know what others know...
It is surprising how feathers get ruffled ... there is no need ... things just are ...but if you have a bad day I guess it is easy to take it out on a passer by maybe...I hate conflict.
alex

[KenGee (Kenith Gee)]

There is nothing wrong with being ignorant, It just means there's lots to learn, and that's exciting. It's when people don't want to learn and don't respect the people that cut the path so far.

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by KenGee

There is nothing wrong with being ignorant, It just means there's lots to learn, and that's exciting. It's when people don't want to learn and don't respect the people that cut the path so far.

I love finding out new stuff ..new to me.. and if there is one thing I learnt on my gravity trip was the enormity of the accumulated knowledge and how hard won each step was for them...and the breakthroughs ...anyways all good.
alex

[Ernest Wilson]

When you look at the night sky, and knowing where to look you set up your instrument and take a look, and there it is. Could it be that in the act of looking you initiate a wave from your end so the photon has a path?
Ernie.