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> But does it matter? I think it matters that the examples are untrue. It's quite easy to craft a nice story that illustrates a point. The story is more infl
by jdsully 7y ago
> But does it matter?
I think it matters that the examples are untrue. It's quite easy to craft a nice story that illustrates a point. The story is more influential than mere statements because it doubles as proof. Thus the student may come away thinking he or she not only knows a fact but now that they can prove it. This will make it much harder to correct if false.
- rossdavidh 7y agoAgreed. If you are just trying to explain what division of labor is, then you can explicitly label your example as fiction. If you are trying to provide evidence as to how much good it does (and the benefits of division of labor are controversial, to this day), you need to be using examples (and numbers) that are true.
- jariel 7y ago"(and the benefits of division of labor are controversial, to this day)" No, the benefits of division of labour are not remotely controversial. Does everyone at a company do financial planning, marketing, hr, write code devops? No, rather software people write/support software. Finance people do finance. Marketing people do marketing. Even in factories - are almost no products these days assembled from start to finish by the same team. There might be some cases wherein there's a decision to be had, but generally no. There's no controversy here. Finally - Smith's story is still valid. Making pins faster using division of labour is still probably valid. The 'truthiness' of the story isn't even the issue - the issue is the 'impact'. A single labourer might be able to do 'all the parts of the pin' by doing a different task each our of the day. But for more complicated processes, wherein there's real skill involved ... not so much.