The Dangerous Mr. Khan • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#191

Post by hasaneducation » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 9:07 PM UTC

From the article, Khan lectures on things he knows nothing about. Is that the revolution in education everyone is so excited about? Getting teachers that don't know the subject matter? His background is math and engineering, his history knowledge he gets from movies and his biology, he gets from pondering. Charlatan, definition of.

Khan on history of D-Day: "if you’ve ever seen Saving Private Ryan it starts with this and it’s probably, you know, I’ve never been in, never been on . . . never stormed a beach, but I can imagine it is probably the most realistic re-enactment of what it was like to storm the beach at Normandy"

Khan on Entropy: In a recent talk he explained how he prepared for his lecture on entropy: "I took two weeks off and I just pondered it, and I called every professor and everyone I could talk to and I said, Let's go have a glass of wine about entropy.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#192

Post by telemachos » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #184

Duff wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're allowed to possess opinions and positions that are controversial. It's not illegal to have point of view that challenges the mainstream. From my POV, the Khan Academy view of history described here is utter bunk and doesn't really give a good historical perspective. I'm shocked, shocked to hear that K-12 history is garbage! K-12 history curriculum has always been garbage pushing somebody's agenda. Until the 80'…

All attempts to write about history is pushing someone's agenda. I bear no illusions that history writing is agenda free. But the stories of the white where no less relevant or important, they just needed to be mixed with other perspectives. And that is to me what history is. Perspective. There are no right or wrong perspectives. There are simply perspectives trying to describe to the best of their vantage point.

> And that is to me what history is. Perspective. There are no right or wrong perspectives. There are simply perspectives trying to describe to the best of their vantage point.

This sort of claim is vulnerable to a popular philosophical dilemma: the more plausibly you interpret it, the less interesting it is; the more interesting an interpretation you give it, the less plausible it seems. (The tl;dr version of this argument is "vacuous or false".)

Here's a plausible interpretation of what you might mean: everyone puts their own spin on things, and no view of history is completely unbiased. This is very likely to be true, but it's also not very interesting. Everyone is likely to agree with it.

Here's a radical and interesting interpretation of what you might mean: all historical statements are completely perspectival; no perspective is more valid or more likely to be true than another; there is no way to choose among perspectives; all perspectives are equally valid. Now that's a bold, interesting claim. It's also preposterous.

Consider: two people arguing blame about WWI. One person laying all the blame on Germany. The other laying quite a lot of the blame on France. Well and good. Now a third enters. He lays all the blame for WWI (and the Great Depression to boot) on the Alpha Centaurions who (secretly) invaded our planet in 1912. These are all perspectives. Are they really equally valid? Are we unable to choose between them? Be careful how you answer: if you say, "Well facts are facts, but when I say 'history' I mean interpretations of those facts only..." That will only push your problems one step back. Are even all interpretations equally valid? Do you really believe that?

If I had to guess, you're aiming for the radical end (based on how you defended your original post), but I'm not really sure. There's a lot of room between these two poles. Would you care to elaborate your view?

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#193

Post by andos » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 9:17 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #182

andos wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Call of Duty different than a soldiers account of how a battlefield looked like? Between a WWII veteran's personal account of the battles and playing CoD, which one would you pick? If you pick the veteran's account, you know that Call of Duty trivializes war. There is a difference.

That is simply your opinion. I don't think it trivializes war.

Yes, it was my opinion. Did it seem otherwise? If so, I'm sorry.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#194

Post by palguay » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 9:45 PM UTC

I looked up the author of the article. He is a professor , I wanted to see what his great book course was about, I could not access it and Khan academy offers me Instant access , this is something that the people in academics like him do not seem to understand why kids love khan academy. BTW here is the course and I am definitely not interested in it http://www.mpc.edu/academics/Humanities/GreatBooks/Pages/Gre...

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#195

Post by andos » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 10:10 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #189

andos wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What caught my challenged attention was the juxtaposition of this: “ Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia’s standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence. ” And then this: “ In a sense, that’s what Internet personalization filters are already doing, creating an echo chamber where we only hear what we alr…

You're going to have to explain why you think this is incoherent if you want people to argue against your position. Right now, it looks like you're saying that the first quote's adjectives describe a meta-viewpoint that need not be examined as a viewpoint in and of itself.

Sure enough. I think it is incoherent to stand against a viewpoint of multicultural interpretations of historical events while condemning Facebook's tailoring of news because it hampers multicultural interpretations of current events.

I might have read too much and falsely concluded that the author is against Khan’s “historical perspective steeped in academia’s standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence.” The OP might be neutral about that, and simply exposing the necessity of balancing Khan’s against a different narrative¹. If so, either his articulation was obfuscated by the choice of words or I need to practice my English a lot.

¹. Never mind the fact that this rarely occurs in real classrooms.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#196

Post by ThomPete » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 10:13 PM UTC

telemachos wrote: post #192

ThomPete wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All attempts to write about history is pushing someone's agenda. I bear no illusions that history writing is agenda free. But the stories of the white where no less relevant or important, they just needed to be mixed with other perspectives. And that is to me what history is. Perspective. There are no right or wrong perspectives. There are simply perspectives trying to describe to the best of their vantage point.

> And that is to me what history is. Perspective. There are no right or wrong perspectives. There are simply perspectives trying to describe to the best of their vantage point. This sort of claim is vulnerable to a popular philosophical dilemma: the more plausibly you interpret it, the less interesting it is; the more interesting an interpretation you give it, the less plausible it seems. (The tl;dr version of this a…

I think the quote you refer to speaks for itself.

You can then choose to make it absurd by including Alpha Centaurions. And then sure it's vulnerable.

But then shouldn't you first find someone who would actually claim that and then perhaps even more importantly have people believe it to be true?

In my world facts are provincial and most things we can agree on. There could be someone who claimed like the third person but they would have very little to back that claim up.

That doesn't mean that they couldn't be right, just like claims of gods existence could be true. I am just not very likely to take them serious (but others might for whatever reason they have)

I would rather live in a world where some people believe in the third story than live in a world where everyone only believes in the first.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#197

Post by crux_ » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 10:18 PM UTC

pjscott wrote: post #178

crux_ wrote: post #91

Completely and totally off topic, but I find the popularity of the "filter bubble" concept fascinating. It's not as if the vast majority of us didn't already manually create deeply effective filter bubbles, after all; but now that we can blame it on algorithms rather than our own nature, it's much easier to talk about. (( Once upon a time I thought the internet would be a cultural/ideological melting pot, but it was…

Is it a bad thing that people are diverging into a greater multitude of more varied filter bubbles than ever before? It should be fine, as long as you can easily travel among bubbles. Back when filter bubbles were more geographic and cultural, it wasn't so easy to poke your head out and see really different worldviews. With the internet, it's easy. People use the phrase "melting pot" like it's a good thing, but I don…

> it wasn't so easy to poke your head out and see really different worldviews. With the internet, it's easy.

That doesn't really matter if nobody does it -- and it turns out to be even easier to find (& stay in) communities that simply echo & reinforce your worldview.

As for the rest, I think you're just being contrary for the sake of being contrary. It seems fairly obvious that one of the least intellectually healthy things out there, from individuals all the way up to societies, is to be surrounded solely by people who agree with you. Isolation breeds ignorance and extremism.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#198

Post by rooshdi » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 10:47 PM UTC

salmankhan wrote: post #69

Hi Everyone, This is Sal here. I wanted to respond directly on the author's page, but they seem to be having a problem taking comments. The reason why I make history videos is that many people I know (many of whom are quite educated) don't even have a basic scaffold of world events in their minds (or the potential causality between events). Most American high school and college students would find it difficult to giv…

If the author really watched my videos, he would see that I start most of them telling the listener to be skeptical of anything I tell them or anyone tells them; that no matter how footnoted something is, in the end it is dependent on people's accounts--the people who weren't killed--which are subject to bias (no matter how well-intentioned). Very few history books or professors do this. If anything, they create a false sense of certainty.

Thank you for emphasizing this. It seems that some have forgotten that history is written by the victors.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#199

Post by telemachos » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 11:41 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #196

telemachos wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that is to me what history is. Perspective. There are no right or wrong perspectives. There are simply perspectives trying to describe to the best of their vantage point. This sort of claim is vulnerable to a popular philosophical dilemma: the more plausibly you interpret it, the less interesting it is; the more interesting an interpretation you give it, the less plausible it seems. (The tl;dr version of this a…

I think the quote you refer to speaks for itself. You can then choose to make it absurd by including Alpha Centaurions. And then sure it's vulnerable. But then shouldn't you first find someone who would actually claim that and then perhaps even more importantly have people believe it to be true? In my world facts are provincial and most things we can agree on. There could be someone who claimed like the third person…

> I think the quote you refer to speaks for itself.

With all due respect, you're missing my point. My point is that the quote doesn't speak for itself. It leaves all the really hard questions unanswered.

Here are some of the hard questions that I have in mind:

1) Are any statements concerning history not perspectival? (If so, why and what kind or kinds? If not, wow: not even (putatively) factual statements like 'World War I broke out in the year 1914'?)

2) If historical statements are so deeply perspectival, how do we rank or otherwise evaluate competing statements about history? If we don't rank or evaluate them at all, how do we form coherent sets of beliefs about the past (which many people appear to do)? How do people manage to choose between conflicting claims? How should they choose?

3) Are all statements about history equally valid? If so, does this run the risk of meaning that all statements about history are equally 'invalid'? If not, why not?

4) Are historical statements especially perspectival or are all statements of belief (period) perspectival? If historical statements are especially perspectival, why? If not - if everything anyone states is completely perspectival - wow. Again, that's a big claim.

Yes, my argument used a reductio ad absurdum, but I wan't trying to make your claim absurd. That is, I truly meant to take it seriously: seriously enough to dispute, to ask questions about and to discuss. Saying that all historical claims are perspectival is a big claim. I was genuinely asking you to clarify what you meant.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#200

Post by Duff » Thu, Jun 09, 2011, 12:01 AM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #184

Duff wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're allowed to possess opinions and positions that are controversial. It's not illegal to have point of view that challenges the mainstream. From my POV, the Khan Academy view of history described here is utter bunk and doesn't really give a good historical perspective. I'm shocked, shocked to hear that K-12 history is garbage! K-12 history curriculum has always been garbage pushing somebody's agenda. Until the 80'…

All attempts to write about history is pushing someone's agenda. I bear no illusions that history writing is agenda free. But the stories of the white where no less relevant or important, they just needed to be mixed with other perspectives. And that is to me what history is. Perspective. There are no right or wrong perspectives. There are simply perspectives trying to describe to the best of their vantage point.

There's a line between perspective and propaganda. The pablum we feed high schoolers is the latter.