Why do they make us do all that extra multiplying for (a+b)^2? FOIL? it's just a bunch of extra work. "show your work" ? I can do it in my head! (a+b)^2 is a^2 + b^2 And that's how it will be with me in charge.
FOIL is a deep state plot to add extra steps to homework!
(This is what Trump sounds like to me when he talks about countries paying us. And climate change... and everything. )
"Look, (a+b)^2 - and the thing is, here in America, we have the greatest mathematicians in the world - but they tell me a^2, they tell me b^2, they tell me some mathematicians say 2ab, maybe Chinese mathematicians, I don't know, but they tell me - and did you know there's a thing called the Chinese Remainder Theorem? Not many people know that, but under Obama, under Biden, you have children going into schools and being told... and they said to me FOIL. Did you know that? There's a thing called FOIL, and it's, it's... but so they were telling me there's this thing called FOIL, and I said 'We're going to FOIL the Chinese". That's what we're gonna do folks, we're gonna FOIL the Chinese, and Sleepy Joe Biden just lets them walk all over us - you know, when I was President, American schools and universities taught the greatest math in the world. They really did. Every category. We were killing it. They said to me they couldn't believe it. But under Sleepy Joe it's been - so anyway (a+b)^2 there's a lot of things you can say but I don't think science knows actually.
@futurebird@robinadams have you heard the people on FOX talking? this is what reactionaries sound like. sometimes they speak coherently, but a lot of them aren't capable because the way they know how to communicate is by interrupting, talking over, gaslighting, and sowing confusion. if there's no one to do that with, they start doing it to themselves.
Glenn Beck did it, Sean Hannity does it, Tucker Carlson probably does it. i've witnessed many other reactionary assholes doing it too.
Needs more "And this mathematician he came to me, real smart guy, numbers guy, he comes to me tears in his eyes and he says 'sir, they have taken these numbers too far, but you have made it so we can multiply again', we can mul TEE ply again multiplication. We don't like that we don't like that, but he liked it this smart guy, but not smart like me. I'm not a numbers guy. But I'm a smart guy..."
I'm never writing like that again... it's ... catchy... it ... it gets inside your head and I can still hear that voice rambling and meandering and dissembling... it's horrible... like a memetic plague!
I've tried to raise the point before about how the way he talks has this odd soothing quality. Not to me or you probably... but I can see how it might be soothing. Part of that is he never lets a thought land. Never gives you the chance to pause and think about what he's just said. He just keeps filling the air in a mildly interesting way. It's like ... hypnotism.
@futurebird@angelastella@robinadams Am I just weird? It doesn't work on me. I hear him gibbering and it just actively builds up annoyance as I listen. I can only tolerate a few moments of his bull before it starts to make me almost sick.
@futurebird
A lot of the folks who’ve started weird-ass religions over the years, Madame Blavatsky is a famous one, there are scads of them, generally based on their stuff on texts they’ve created using a technique called automatic writing. Most of them say shit like it was dictated to them by God, or aliens, or Zeus. Pure stream of conscious stuff. That’s what he sounds like. Reminds me of Robin Williams riffing at his most manic, cocaine-fueled period.
@futurebird@robinadams My fervent wish is that many decades from now, after we've staved off fascism, DJT-style incoherent riffing on random topics loses its power to horrify and becomes funny again, something you'd ask your witty friend to do at a party.
I can't laugh now. But people will laugh, in the hoped-for better future, when he has no more power and is only a collective memory of an utterly pathetic man.
It feels good when someone tells you that the egg heads have it wrong and your basic uninformed guess solved the problem faster, better and more correcter than all those people who always make you feel stupid.
There is a deep unmet need in this country ... for people to feel informed, like they aren't being tricked, like they get it... and it's being exploited to continue to trick them ... which will only make that need grow deeper ... if they don't die before they catch on.
I don't even think it's that being informed, having a real sense of what you know (and what you don't know!) makes people less vulnerable to this because they know more information... No, it's the confidence to not be flattered by anyone who tries to make you feel like you know better than people who have studied the problem more.
It's more than "trusting experts" it's knowing how you can identify experts, the degree to which they can & can't be trusted.
@futurebird
This is something I've come to think of as the modern crisis of epistemology:
If you aren't expert enough to know a thing, and aren't exposed enough to specialized knowledge on a regular basis to even get a vague sense of what is likely/unlikely, then you will have to trust experts (or text created by) to inform you.
But how do you learn to judge who the real experts are, when you lack expertise yourself?
And when you lack expertise on how to evaluate claims objectively?
It starts when we are kids. Did adults treat your questions with respect? Did they help you find your errors and understand why they were errors?
Do you feel included when you listen to people who work in science talking? Do you feel like you could be one of them if you took a different path or is it alienating?
@futurebird
In my mind a couple other aspects were:
Were you exposed to experts who both explained how various conclusions were established, and who admitted when something was still unknown or they personally were unsure of something?
Were you exposed to teachers who both taught the general idea (or "lies to children") version of concepts, but noted that there was a more detailed version with nuances and exceptions you could learn more about.
@futurebird Even highly educated people can fall prey to this kind of thinking, often out of the belief that the expertise they already have should be enough to have everything figured out.
Physicists are notorious for thinking they have the key to understanding other fields of knowledge better than the people who are actually working on them, because they're such intellectual generalists. And sometimes they become kind of crankish as they "go emeritus".
@futurebird It also happens with scientists who get wedded to old ideas that were once contenders but didn't win (seems to happen in astronomy a lot for some reason: the steady-state cosmologists; Arp's insistence that redshift was not cosmological). Sometimes they start insisting that everyone is conspiring against them.
@futurebird I once took a class on the Canterbury Tales, in original Middle English, given by emeritus professor at Harvard (their adult education school is amazing for the humanities. and vastly cheaper than Harvard College). He gave a long rambling intro I totally didn't understand, using the word "schwa" a lot. Great class, really enjoyed it, by the end we could kinda read Middle English. And now I know what a schwa is.
@futurebird every known human need or desire or drive has been exploited, and new ones will be, as quickly as they are discovered, for political and financial gain.
@futurebird I've been seeing a lot of conspiracy theorist activity on scientific topics lately--particularly the flat earth/"space is fake" people pushing wilfully ignorant cosmology.
I've noticed that they always lean in the direction of making the universe smaller, more intuitive, more qualitatively simple (at the cost of imagining an elaborate and poorly motivated conspiracy). Anything that seems peculiar or counterintuitive at first glance is evidence that it's all fake and there's a conspiracy. It doesn't matter if the real explanation is pretty simple because if you're explaining you're losing.
I suppose it's like that with non-scientific topics too. The answer is always simple, something a first-grader could grasp, and if it's not, that's because some bad person is tricking you. You'll never, ever have to feel you don't understand something.