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Lie-to-children

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Re: Lie-to-children

#51

Post by me_me_me »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #30
smokel wrote: post #12

This does not make sense. These are not lies, but simplifications. The only lie seems to be the title itself. I would have expected Santa Claus, storks delivering babies, and perhaps even God, to show up under this heading. Count me disappointed.

The title is correct. Teaching kids that electrons orbit around a nucleus like a planet around the sun is a lie. It’s not even a rough simplification. We’ve known this for around a century. Yet that was the model I learned in high school, let alone grade school. I hated school precisely because there was no mystery. Everything was known. It wasn’t till later that I found out many of the models taught on the blackboar…

> Teaching kids that electrons orbit around a nucleus like a planet around the sun is a lie.

Of course its a simplification. You are talking to a kid! Not a graduate with high-school physics.

How else will you even attempt to simplify it to 10 years old?

It seems that you are also blaming a school teacher for not being a domain expert with PhD and up to date knowledge.

Most of teachers with decade or more are just that - teachers. Its their 9-5 job.

Re: Lie-to-children

#52

Post by hnben »

me_me_me wrote: post #51
sillysaurusx wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title is correct. Teaching kids that electrons orbit around a nucleus like a planet around the sun is a lie. It’s not even a rough simplification. We’ve known this for around a century. Yet that was the model I learned in high school, let alone grade school. I hated school precisely because there was no mystery. Everything was known. It wasn’t till later that I found out many of the models taught on the blackboar…

> Teaching kids that electrons orbit around a nucleus like a planet around the sun is a lie. Of course its a simplification. You are talking to a kid! Not a graduate with high-school physics. How else will you even attempt to simplify it to 10 years old? It seems that you are also blaming a school teacher for not being a domain expert with PhD and up to date knowledge. Most of teachers with decade or more are just th…

> How else will you even attempt to simplify it to 10 years old?

> The electron cloud model says that we cannot know exactly where an electron is at any given time, but the electrons are more likely to be in specific areas.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_cloud

Re: Lie-to-children

#53

Post by netcan »

Some lovely ideas.

"Lies" is nice and provocative, but I think it's potentially limiting as you develop these ideas out. A recursive lie to children, perhaps.

I feel that it's quite relevant for anyone who wants to learn philosophy these days. Western philosophy has, for hundreds of years now, mostly taken the form of dialectic or polemic. A philosophical position is polemical response to a previous philosophical mode, one that the new school defines and characterizes. Often one that they even names.

Marx defines and characterizes capitalism. Academic feminism eventually characterizes patriarchy. Postmodernism responds to.modernism. The enlightenment counters medievalism.

As the era progresses, we know about the earlier modes of thought primarily from the polemical retorts. It's much easier to gain a rudimentary understanding of "what non-trinitarian gnostics believed" from inquisitors and heresiologists than it is from reading gnostic sources.

Even when the Pendulum swings, the inquisitor's definition tends to persist.

Ayn Rand and other late modern, libertarians/objectivists adopt Marx's use of capitalism, and what capitalists believe. Revivalist religious movements rely on heresiologists for their theology.

These "lies" are necessary scaffolding for modern ideas.

Re: Lie-to-children

#54

Post by me_me_me »

hnben wrote: post #52
me_me_me wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teaching kids that electrons orbit around a nucleus like a planet around the sun is a lie. Of course its a simplification. You are talking to a kid! Not a graduate with high-school physics. How else will you even attempt to simplify it to 10 years old? It seems that you are also blaming a school teacher for not being a domain expert with PhD and up to date knowledge. Most of teachers with decade or more are just th…

> How else will you even attempt to simplify it to 10 years old? > The electron cloud model says that we cannot know exactly where an electron is at any given time, but the electrons are more likely to be in specific areas. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_cloud

say that you never talked to a child or young teen without saying it

How is that a simplification? and do you really think their eyes would not glaze over as they start daydreaming about icecream as you talk.

Re: Lie-to-children

#55

Post by hnben »

I believe, that the "lies to children"-approach is one of the driving forces behind the general science-skepticism, and maybe even behind some consipiracy theories and some climate-science-denial.

It basically goes like this:

  1. Teachers are authorities and present facts to children

  2. people later learn that some of these facts are in-fact not factual

  3. people learn that:

    a) authorities can not be trusted

    b) it is ok to make up facts, as long as they sound good

  4. people apply a) and b) to other situations

Re: Lie-to-children

#56

Post by jareklupinski »

javawizard wrote: post #31

Leave it to HN to spend checks 57% of the toplevel comments debating whether the word "lie" in the term "lie to children" is in fact literally correct. My bleeding linguistic descriptivist heart dies a little every time I walk into a debate like this. Does it really matter what we call it, as long as we can all agree on what it is we're talking about? At which point we can have insightful debate about whether the con…

> 57% of the toplevel comments debating whether the word "lie" in the term "lie to children" is in fact literally correct.

> "all models are wrong; some are useful"

i was going to say perhaps language is a model of our mind-state, but my brain decided to run off somewhere with Large Language Models...

Re: Lie-to-children

#57

Post by sillysaurusx »

me_me_me wrote: post #54
hnben wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How else will you even attempt to simplify it to 10 years old? > The electron cloud model says that we cannot know exactly where an electron is at any given time, but the electrons are more likely to be in specific areas. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_cloud

say that you never talked to a child or young teen without saying it How is that a simplification? and do you really think their eyes would not glaze over as they start daydreaming about icecream as you talk.

Mine wouldn’t’ve. And you could say the same about math, which thankfully can’t be simplified to the point of lies.

Re: Lie-to-children

#58

Post by rjsw »

moomin wrote: post #25

It's fascinating how much of this there is about. It gets worse when people don't realize there's other ways of looking at things. You'll note there's a whole social movement based around what its proponents refer to as "primary school biology". The idea that primary schools might be teaching a simplified version just doesn't come up. I once had the honour of talking to Chris Zeeman down a pub. He asked me what I was…

His Royal Institution Christmas lectures inspired me to study maths, I was quite proud of getting red ink all through one school homework answer where I used his main area of work instead of whatever method the teacher was expecting to see.

Re: Lie-to-children

#59

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #57
me_me_me wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

say that you never talked to a child or young teen without saying it How is that a simplification? and do you really think their eyes would not glaze over as they start daydreaming about icecream as you talk.

Mine wouldn’t’ve. And you could say the same about math, which thankfully can’t be simplified to the point of lies.

> math, which thankfully can’t be simplified to the point of lies.

Er, at least by the standards being thrown around in this thread it absolutely can be and regularly is. You can't have less than zero of something, it only makes sense to take the root of a positive number, any time we avoid generalizing the area under a curve or rates of change because calculus won't come up for a few years...

Re: Lie-to-children

#60

Post by me_me_me »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #57
me_me_me wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

say that you never talked to a child or young teen without saying it How is that a simplification? and do you really think their eyes would not glaze over as they start daydreaming about icecream as you talk.

Mine wouldn’t’ve. And you could say the same about math, which thankfully can’t be simplified to the point of lies.

how about actually trying it instead of supposing it would work.

How old are yours kids?

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