Illusory Superiority on P&B

[Guest TheJTS98]

A lot of posts in this thread where the reality is:

'if my employer trained its staff properly...'

[scottsdad]

3 hours ago, GordonS said:

I've noticed that's not uncommon among scientists when they stray outside their area of expertise. Robert Winston is a veritable eejit on a whole range of issues. Richard Dawkins has form for this too, and a surprising amount of climate idiocy comes from people with unrelated science qualifications.

I think it's partly because they don't spend time learning things from scratch, so they don't appreciate how more complex almost everything is than it first appears. They also struggle to see the wood for the trees.

This is me 100%. Want to know about X-ray diffraction and neutron scattering of biopolymers? I'm your man. Want a plug changed, or a debate about Brexit? Utterly fucking hopeless. 

[Jambomo]

4 hours ago, GordonS said:

I've noticed that's not uncommon among scientists when they stray outside their area of expertise. Robert Winston is a veritable eejit on a whole range of issues. Richard Dawkins has form for this too, and a surprising amount of climate idiocy comes from people with unrelated science qualifications.

I think it's partly because they don't spend time learning things from scratch, so they don't appreciate how more complex almost everything is than it first appears. They also struggle to see the wood for the trees.

I think knowing where the boundaries of your knowledge are and acknowledging there will be a lot of things that you don’t know in any situation, are probably fairly important parts of being (or at least, seen to be) intelligent.  

It’s what made the Covid thread on here so unbearable, so many people demanding X,Y,Z actions without understanding that we only know about half the relevant information or that there might be really good reasons for doing things differently.

[Melanius Mullarkey]

On 17/07/2021 at 06:52, Fullerene said:

Combining your two comments, I know Pi to ten decimal points because it was something I learnt at school and I doubt I will ever unlearn it.  Some people use a nmemonic such as "How I wish I could recollect Pi easily today".

(I wish I could always remember how to spell "nmemonic").

However I find 3.14 is usually close enough on most occasions.  Like you, I see little point knowing more decimals for Pi.

I can name the 50 states of America because I once made an effort to do this and again I am not likely to unlearn them.  Not much use unless you also know where they are, how big they are, rivers, cities and so on.

Occasionally I try to learn the elements of the periodic table.  Not so good.  Not much use unless you learn something about them.  For example in one part of the table the sequence is not toxic, very toxic, very very toxic, extremely toxic, not toxic, toxic, and toxic.  

My daughter has learned pi to 100 digits. And reels off the 50 states in some stupid song she learned off youtube. 

Full of absolutely useless information. 

I blame her mother.

[Fullerene]

1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

When I went through the process of learning enough double entry book-keeping so that I could do my own business accounting, the single biggest issue was getting my head around the use of the words "credit" and "debit" because it all depends on who you are referring to. It's highly possible to be inconsistent.

I had to stop thinking about customers and my own accounts and consider them as simple buckets.

I banned anyone in the family from using the words credit and debit as well.

It's money in and money out.

It makes things verbally a bit more cumbersome but it removes a big area of confusion.

I wouldn't be able to cope in the financial industry at all.

It's to your money in that you devised this straightforward approach.  I guess we owe you a money out of thanks for that.

[welshbairn]

I find quite a lot of highly qualified people find it impossible to explain their subjects to a layman because they haven't really learnt the basics themselves. They learn what they need to get to the next step without asking why. I doubt there's anything a truly intelligent person couldn't explain in words that the average 14 year old would understand.

[Hedgecutter]

34 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

This is me 100%. Want to know about X-ray diffraction and neutron scattering of biopolymers? I'm your man. Want a plug changed, or a debate about Brexit? Utterly fucking hopeless. 

I've just survived a mini-crisis in which I though my laptop had broken, but it turned out that the house fuse had tripped (courtesy of an extension cable spark when there was f*** all plugged into it).

This was pretty much me trying to get the mains supply back on:

Eta: using the laptop to finish off PhD thesis corrections (to emphasise your point!)

Edited July 19, 2021 by Hedgecutter

[Fullerene]

23 hours ago, Funky Nosejob said:

I’ve never been convinced by tests that ask questions like, “Mary is 5 years older than Jane who in 2 years time will be twice as old as Sally, blah, blah, blah... How old is Mary?”. Surely, rather than trying to do some complex mathematical calculation, the simplest solution is to ask Mary how old she is.

I have three cats.  Mary is 5 years older than Jane who in 2 years time will be twice as old as Sally.

Okay, Doctor Dolittle.  How old is Mary?

[SANTAN]

12 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

I find quite a lot of highly qualified people find it impossible to explain their subjects to a layman because they haven't really learnt the basics themselves. They learn what they need to get to the next step without asking why. I doubt there's anything a truly intelligent person couldn't explain in words that the average 14 year old would understand.

Is there not a nice wee quote about how if you cant explain something in a few sentences you don't understand it? That's how I know I'm stupid, I can't explain things succinctly at all. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

46 minutes ago, scottsdad said:

This is me 100%. Want to know about X-ray diffraction and neutron scattering of biopolymers? I'm your man. Want a plug changed, or a debate about Brexit? Utterly fucking hopeless. 

If you've got any spare XRD kit going, I'll take it off your hands. Put it in the Sell Your Shite thread plz.

[GordonS]

2 hours ago, welshbairn said:

I find quite a lot of highly qualified people find it impossible to explain their subjects to a layman because they haven't really learnt the basics themselves. They learn what they need to get to the next step without asking why. I doubt there's anything a truly intelligent person couldn't explain in words that the average 14 year old would understand.

My employer was recruiting statisticians a few years ago and were looking for one non-statistician to sit on each interview panel, so I volunteered. One of the questions they asked was if candidates could explain linear regression to me. Most were good, some were very good but all of those who were poor at it were highly qualified, with doctorates at least.

I once watched an economist explain the Barnett squeeze to someone who really, really, really should have already known what it was and who should have easily understood the explanation. It was like watching someone try to explain quantum mechanics to a sandwich. I agree that you should be able to explain anything to an average 14 year old, but unfortunately there are people in senior positions who can only aspire to that level.

Edited July 19, 2021 by GordonS

[scottsdad]

15 minutes ago, Hedgecutter said:

Eta: using the laptop to finish off PhD thesis corrections (to emphasise your point!)

Hope they were painless. Twice I have asked for major corrections to a thesis, otherwise a list of typos and the like. 

[scottsdad]

3 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

If you've got any spare XRD kit going, I'll take it off your hands. Put it in the Sell Your Shite thread plz.

I was hoping to get a used one last year from my old boss. His old, dusty one was sitting unused in a box in Cardiff. We could have had it shipped up and installed.  Apparently it just vanished one day. I always imagine someone trying to flog it down a pub. 

[Hedgecutter]

Just now, scottsdad said:

Hope they were painless. Twice I have asked for major corrections to a thesis, otherwise a list of typos and the like. 

Just a very long list of "less words, more diagrams"  

Would probably have been quicker to rewrite it from scratch, I tell ye.

[Granny Danger]

8 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

I have three cats.  Mary is 5 years older than Jane who in 2 years time will be twice as old as Sally.

Okay, Doctor Dolittle.  How old is Mary?

You don’t say if Mary, Jane and Sally are the three cats.  Personally I doubt it as no one would give their cats names like that.

[Funky Nosejob]

11 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

I have three cats.  Mary is 5 years older than Jane who in 2 years time will be twice as old as Sally.

Okay, Doctor Dolittle.  How old is Mary?

What’s her date of birth?

[scottsdad]

1 minute ago, Hedgecutter said:

Just a very long list of "less words, more diagrams"  

Would probably have been quicker to rewrite it from scratch, I tell ye.

Sounds like the kind of thing I would say. A mate of mine at Stirling uni was meeting with his PhD student one day about 4 years ago and called me. He said simply that his student and him were disagreeing about a poster they were making for a conference and, even though I had no idea what the poster said or was about, would I care to weigh in?

He obviously knew what I would say. Too many words, not enough pictures. Every student always does the same. Theses are similar in that way. That, and students showing a diagram and following it with a paragraph describing the exact same thing as the diagram. 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

2 minutes ago, Funky Nosejob said:

What’s her date of birth?

Pervert.

[Fullerene]

16 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

You don’t say if Mary, Jane and Sally are the three cats.  Personally I doubt it as no one would give their cats names like that.

Okay.  I have three cats called Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  Mars is 5 years older than Jupiter who in 2 years time will be twice as old as Saturn.

How old is Mars?

HTH

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Okay.  I have three cats called Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  Mars is 5 years older than Jupiter who in 2 years time will be twice as old as Saturn.

How old is Mars?

HTH

Multiple possible answers shirley..