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Funny story about this. When I was a kid we had the whole "design a science experiment" in our science class. My dad was an electrical engineer, so I did an exp

Funny story about this. When I was a kid we had the whole "design a science experiment" in our science class. My dad was an electrical engineer, so I did an experiment with connecting up a clock through resistors to drain batteries more quickly than normal to test which batteries lasted longest (IIRC, I think the Walgreens brand ended up being best). When I went to my teacher with the experiment, she laughed at me and told me it was absurd, because batteries wouldn't drain that quickly; she was really quite rude and aggressive about it. I'm still not sure what she was thinking; I had to contradict her multiple times and say that my Dad was an electrical engineer several times; she was still skeptical. I learned while young that people in positions of authority, even when nominally "credentialed" in science, are often completely incompetent, not curious, not open-minded, and are instead arrogant and patronizing. She thought she knew what the answer was and she hadn't seen it before, so she just ridiculed me. This was in one of the best school systems in the country, in one of the best schools in that district.

barry-cotter 5y ago
> When I went to my teacher with the experiment, she laughed at me and told me it was absurd, because batteries wouldn't drain that quickly; she was really quite rude and aggressive about it. I'm still not sure what she was thinking; I had to contradict her multiple times and say that my Dad was an electrical engineer several times; she was still skeptical. This would only be surprising if your teacher was a Physics teacher. If you want to be extra charitable a Science teacher. Most people don’t care about it understand the scientific method and it’s a profoundly unnatural way of thinking, much like doing formal logic.
- teachingassist 5y ago
  > This would only be surprising if your teacher was a Physics teacher. I'm not sure. Physics teachers often have to deal with absolute laws of physics, e.g. "you can't make a perpetual motion machine". You can't ever demonstrate that something doesn't exist (philosophy of the black swan/inviting disproof by counter-example), so it's challenging for teachers to communicate this as a fact to curious students: the result is sometimes teachers appearing scornful. One slightly-misunderstood law of conservation and you're suddenly a physics teacher who is scorning the truth.
jozvolskyef 5y ago
I learnt a similar lesson about teachers early on at school and extended it to all classes of authorities through life. See also Are Experts Real?[1] [1]: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/01/11/are-experts-real/ https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/01/11/are-experts-real...
phaemon 5y ago
> people in positions of authority, even when nominally "credentialed" in science, are often completely incompetent That's genuinely a baffling lesson to take from that incident. I mean, your father was the credentialed one, with an engineering degree, and the teacher was the unqualified one who was just a science teacher. Surely the lesson should be the exact opposite?

barry-cotter 5y ago

> When I went to my teacher with the experiment, she laughed at me and told me it was absurd, because batteries wouldn't drain that quickly; she was really quite rude and aggressive about it. I'm still not sure what she was thinking; I had to contradict her multiple times and say that my Dad was an electrical engineer several times; she was still skeptical. This would only be surprising if your teacher was a Physics teacher. If you want to be extra charitable a Science teacher. Most people don’t care about it understand the scientific method and it’s a profoundly unnatural way of thinking, much like doing formal logic.

teachingassist 5y ago
> This would only be surprising if your teacher was a Physics teacher. I'm not sure. Physics teachers often have to deal with absolute laws of physics, e.g. "you can't make a perpetual motion machine". You can't ever demonstrate that something doesn't exist (philosophy of the black swan/inviting disproof by counter-example), so it's challenging for teachers to communicate this as a fact to curious students: the result is sometimes teachers appearing scornful. One slightly-misunderstood law of conservation and you're suddenly a physics teacher who is scorning the truth.

jozvolskyef 5y ago

I learnt a similar lesson about teachers early on at school and extended it to all classes of authorities through life. See also Are Experts Real?[1] [1]: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/01/11/are-experts-real/ https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/01/11/are-experts-real...

phaemon 5y ago

> people in positions of authority, even when nominally "credentialed" in science, are often completely incompetent That's genuinely a baffling lesson to take from that incident. I mean, your father was the credentialed one, with an engineering degree, and the teacher was the unqualified one who was just a science teacher. Surely the lesson should be the exact opposite?