Post 553100 by fexel@mastodon.sergal.org
(DIR) More posts by fexel@mastodon.sergal.org
(DIR) Post #552790 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T15:42:21Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
"all knowledge is now available instantly" is only partly true. Sure you can read the Wikipedia page on a thing and get some surface level knowledge. Factoids. But the knowledge you can actually use is gained from linking together lots of facts into an over-arching idea. You can't learn calculus by memorizing the formulas for a few derivatives and integrals.
(DIR) Post #552791 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T15:50:30Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker yeah, you can't get knowledge by reading things. you have to do things. reading can be useful though.
(DIR) Post #552915 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T15:56:31Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen you can definitely get knowledge by reading. But you have to read a lot, and if you're trying to learn a technique(like calculus) you also need to practice.
(DIR) Post #552990 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T16:00:18Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker I don't know, I think you kind of have to use the facts you got by reading to construct your own understanding.
(DIR) Post #553062 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T16:03:44Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen how can you "practice" history though? Or philosophy? In both of those the only things you can do are read and think, and the reading is there to help you think.
(DIR) Post #553100 by fexel@mastodon.sergal.org
2018-10-15T16:06:01Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefuckerThe same applies with the arts. You can know all the definitions and how techniques work just by using the internet, but it doesnt make someone an artist, nor does it instantly grant the ability to make work on par with the Masters of old.
(DIR) Post #553222 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T16:17:32Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker What does the practice of history consist of? Well, you can find lots of historians writing about that, but I assure you that historians do more than read and think. They also construct arguments based on the evidence they have sought out — a process which, yes, involves a lot of reading, but it's not simply a matter of reading a book from beginning to end.
(DIR) Post #554372 by maverynthia@mastodon.starrevolution.org
2018-10-15T17:43:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker Also Wikipedia is curated by men so you are only going to get the idea that men are the only one doing these things.
(DIR) Post #555824 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T19:25:26Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@maverynthiaI'm a little confused, are all wikipedia curators men? And do curators actually cause bias?
(DIR) Post #556305 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T19:54:05Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragenOK, but you don't need to be a historian to know about history. You don't need to be a journalist to know the news. You don't have to be a physicist to know about physics. There's a basic level of familiarity you can have in any subject, without actually practicing it. I think that the "instantly available information" we have doesn't provide that.
(DIR) Post #558456 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T22:00:29Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@popefucker I think the kind of illusion of "knowing about physics" that you can get by reading A Brief History of Time or watching Nova is also available from reading Wikipedia. I think that to actually know about physics, you actually have to do physics — at least at the Physics 101 level, even if not discovering new results. And, to actually know about history, you actually have to do history.
(DIR) Post #558543 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T22:04:50Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker If you aren't doing history, you may happen to have true beliefs about history (though it's not particularly likely — more likely you'll be regurgitating government propaganda), but they won't be justified true beliefs, so they aren't knowledge. Moreover, you won't have the practice with reasoning about those beliefs, true or justified or not, to do anything more than just repeat them, like a sort of nostalgic parrot.
(DIR) Post #558642 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T22:09:48Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker By "doing history" I don't mean, necessarily, getting a Ph.D. in history and teaching classes in it. I mean you need to do the same activities that you would need to get a Ph.D. in history, though perhaps less of them.
(DIR) Post #559069 by maverynthia@mastodon.starrevolution.org
2018-10-15T22:28:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker A lot of curators are men, a lot of women face harassment from other curators and yes there is a ton of bias.
(DIR) Post #559411 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T22:51:23Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen I don't think watching nova is "knowing about physics" either. I also don't think taking a physics 101 class is really "doing physics". It's learning some basic knowledge about physics. You can get the same knowledge from reading a book. Same with history.
(DIR) Post #559460 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T22:53:55Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen reading about something in depth isn't a passive activity. When you read something and engage with it you're really learning something. Don't need to write an essay to have real historical knowledge, don't need to do an experiment to have real physics knowledge.
(DIR) Post #559493 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T22:54:59Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker I don't think you can. You have to actually apply the physical relationships to answer questions in order to pass a Physics 101 class, at least where I took the class. Reading a book isn't the same thing.Of course, applying the relationships to answer questions — potentially novel questions — doesn't require any externally observable activity.
(DIR) Post #559500 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T22:55:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker Oh, I agree with you there!
(DIR) Post #559516 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T22:56:03Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen why is passing a class the standard of knowledge? What does "apply the physical relationships" even mean?
(DIR) Post #559542 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T22:56:38Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen I fully believe that somebody who has never taken a physics class or done an experiment can know just as much about physics as someone who has. There is no doubt in my mind about that.
(DIR) Post #559549 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T22:57:01Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker Passing a class isn't my standard of knowledge. There are in fact classes that you can pass without any knowledge. Expanding your capabilities is my standard of knowledge.
(DIR) Post #559555 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T22:57:23Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker I agree with you there too.
(DIR) Post #559587 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T22:59:30Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker I was just saying that I had to actually learn things — expanding my capabilities to do things I couldn't do before — in order to pass Physics 101, but I didn't in order to read A Brief HIstory of Time, or to watch Nova.
(DIR) Post #559625 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T23:01:54Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen I agree there. But I don't see why expanding capabilities must be the same thing as expanding knowledge.Nova and wikipedia are low on depth or explanations. But if you read a good textbook, you can get the ideas conveyed rather than just the factoids.
(DIR) Post #559760 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T23:10:56Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker I've read a hell of a lot of textbooks without understanding them. Only when I actually try to use the concepts they describe do I discover what I do and don't understand. Apparently this is true of other people as well, although most of them aren't as good at memorization as I am; witness the wild popularity of totally incoherent ideas like "the long tail", "the 10,000 hour rule", or "the single responsibility principle", which all collapse immediately when thought about
(DIR) Post #559781 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T23:12:07Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker I think that if you don't have capability in an area, you can't justify your beliefs in it, so you can't have knowledge under even the "justified true belief" definition, let alone the tighter definitions that have been proposed to avoid Gettierization.
(DIR) Post #559876 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T23:16:47Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen that's not really true for me. I've definitely read a book, of part of a book and had a good grasp on the ideas. More so in things where there really isn't a way to "use" them, for example in philosophy. What does it even mean to have "capability in philsophy"? It just means being able to understand and engage with the ideas, and think critically, which you are *already doing* if you read a philosophy text closely.
(DIR) Post #559886 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T23:17:45Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen or in a completely different way: there are plenty of people who know how to play sports, but are garbage at them. Does that mean they don't really know how to play sports? Or do they just have knowledge they can't apply? I think the second is more likely.
(DIR) Post #559932 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T23:20:12Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker I think it means they know how to play sports badly but don't know how to play sports well, because presumably if they did, they would choose to do so, rather than playing them badly.But we've just shifted the discussion from "knowing that" (factual knowledge) to "knowing how" (procedural knowledge). It seems very easy to justify my claim that knowledge is gained by practice, not reading, when it comes to procedural knowledge.
(DIR) Post #559993 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T23:22:56Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker The more debatable question — and the one we've mostly been debating — is whether factual knowledge similarly requires some kind of practice to acquire. But it seems that we actually agree on the substantive issues there, and were merely getting hung up on issues like what it means to "read" a book.
(DIR) Post #560083 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T23:27:03Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker I think there are definitely people who could give you a reasonable summary of something Hegel wrote, but who couldn't come up with criticisms of Hegel without being fed them, or analyze the relationships between Hegel and some idea of Marx's. I would say that these people haven't developed their philosophical capabilities, even if they've "read" Hegel. Obviously that isn't the ideal.
(DIR) Post #560137 by p@freespeechextremist.com
2018-10-15T23:30:03.684507Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen @popefucker I'm very, very sorry in advance for this message. The conversation will only be safe if you ignore this message.The difference between people that actively play the sport and those that don't have an opportunity to apply what they "know" is the same as the difference between "articulated knowledge" and "unarticulated knowledge" (in the sense described by Jean Piejet and Claude Levi-Strauss and Carl Jung). It's completely possible to grasp the knowledge about a thing by reading but without putting it into practice, you are missing a huge chunk of that knowledge that comes from acting the things out. Rulesets in any field that is adversarial or open-ended (sports and history) tend to be too complex to fit into language.I think it's entirely possible to read "steer into the skid" and understand the knowledge in the articulated sense, but it's another thing to hit a patch of ice in your car and learn to actually steer into the skid.
(DIR) Post #560242 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T23:34:17Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@p @popefucker Yeah, I was thinking a lot about Piaget in this thread. I think the articulated/unarticulated distinction is actually sort of orthogonal to the procedural/factual distinction, though. The issue with steering into the skid is not that it's too complex to fit into language; it's that you have 700ms to do it in, so you're acting mostly from habit and instinct, which are counterproductive in that case without training. Try turning your mouse 180° for an hour.
(DIR) Post #560406 by p@freespeechextremist.com
2018-10-15T23:40:41.491047Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen @popefucker I can't do that to my mouse, I use acme to edit code.Reflexes are part of it, I think. The neurons that can talk know it, but the neurons that can't talk don't. Plenty of neurons inside the skull that can't talk, and most of the neurons in your body are outside your skull.But I think, even doing it slowly, there are things that you know about turning into a skid that you don't if you live somewhere dry and warm. (People here in LA drive terrible on the rare occasions when it rains.)So you can take reflexes out of the equation by talking about making a pie crust. "Don't over-knead the crust" is the first thing everyone warns you about, but you have to get a feel for it. A lot of cooking is like that, you just "know" how much is the correct amount of salt for a pot of chili after you've made it a few dozen times.
(DIR) Post #560455 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T23:44:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragenBut playing sports is not all about knowing how to play sports, its also about reflexes and fitness. You don't need those to know how its done.
(DIR) Post #560583 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T23:49:24Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker Hmm, you're saying that, for example, if LeBron James went into cancer treatment and lost most of his muscle mass, he wouldn't be able to play basketball very well, but he would still know just as much as he did before?
(DIR) Post #560756 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-15T23:55:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragenExactly
(DIR) Post #560797 by kragen@nerdculture.de
2018-10-15T23:57:17Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@popefucker Do you think something similar could happen with a stroke? I mean you could lose your ability to think critically, hypothetically; would you have lost knowledge?
(DIR) Post #561880 by popefucker@cybre.space
2018-10-16T00:55:49Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@kragen yup. Also dementia or simple forgetfulness.