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> The dead aristocrat also had a deformation of the skull caused by wearing a headdress or headband as a baby. Interesting details by just looking at a decayin

> The dead aristocrat also had a deformation of the skull caused by wearing a headdress or headband as a baby. Interesting details by just looking at a decaying skeleton. I guess that historians can tie this deformation to practices of that time, or even may help to fill in missing knowledge.

Waterluvian 4y ago
Indeed. But it always irks me that they speak with such confidence. There’s inference and then there’s theorycrafting.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Reminds me of the “science based” dinosaur books I had as a child - elaborate descriptions of dinosaurs and what they did based on three bones and wishful thinking.
  - verisimi 4y ago
    "Trust the experts!"
  - slfnflctd 4y ago
    There has been a ton of speculation presented as fact in science-related reading materials for kids across the board, and I'm not sure how much that's improved (although it has in some places). It seems the thinking often was that we need to keep things simple for children so they'll uptake it more easily. Many educators want to avoid getting bogged down in fuzzy areas like debates about support for theories, or difficult ones like the details of actual research. The unfortunate downside is that the oversimplification of introductory material inevitably leads to a period of frustrating cognitive dissonance for anyone who develops an interest in a subject, as they need to unlearn all the nerfed-to-the-point-of-being-wrong stuff. I suspect those who have multiple & diverse interests are more likely to go through mentally and emotionally devastating experiences of overall disillusionment with humanity as a result.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I remember a "Our Universe" book [64] that was pretty cool; and it was quite capable of describing what we knew from telescopes and other scientific sources, while still having "fanciful" pages detailing how a mars base might look and what a creature that lived on Jupiter might look like. I feel that was a pretty good way to balance the objectives. [64] https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/national-geographic-picture-atlas-of-our-universe_roy-a-gallant_margaret-sedeen/253504/item/5599812/ https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/national-geographic-picture-at...
      - yamtaddle 4y ago
        One of my favorite books in elementary school. Checked it out from the school library several times per year. Now I grab a copy just about every time I see one, think I've bought three—I have kids now, and because of the format combined, now, with the age of the book, the binding tends to fail, so they're a bit consumable at this point. I've lost one so far. IIRC from when I looked into this a while back, there are actually two versions of the book, and one has more pages than the other (like, a dozen more, or perhaps twenty) so if you pick one up and are like "I could have sworn..." it might be because you're holding the one with less material, and are used to the larger one. I noticed and did some digging because I flipped through a digital version on archive.org and it was missing some stuff that (at least) one of my physical copies has. I forget whether it's the earlier or later edition that has more material.
      - dekhn 4y ago
        I had completely forgotten about this! It was clearly influential on my developing mind.
    - Waterluvian 4y ago
      I cannot speak to all kids and all contexts, but I have a 4 and 5 year old and something I've learned in the past ~3 years is just how completely wrong I was about this. My kids are completely ready to hear "we don't know, but we think it might be like X or maybe even like Y." It's actually incredibly empowering, I think, for a specific reason: a conclusive answer shuts the book, an inconclusive one begs imaginative minds to think about the blanks to be filled in. And my kids leap on the opportunity to begin imagining what the answer might be, with such boldness and confidence that most adults seem to have been stripped of somewhere in school.
  - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
    This is why I always told my children that books (and later - teachers) are as good as the people who wrote them. And that some of these people are dreadful. They learned that they first must trust what their parents tell them (just joking), and then cross-check and have an open, inquisitive and sceptic mind. This basically set religion aside (though I encouraged them to look at it from a sociological aspect) and they challenged some teachers at some point - fortunately their teachers were great and happy to see someone interested. We also systematically had an opposed view to theirs (no matter what we thought) to force them to argument but the effect was mitigated. Yes, they have sensible opinions but they also challenged us with "why should I be home at 22:00 when I am not going to school the day after"? (to which I still have no idea what to answer)
    - Waterluvian 4y ago
      Related to your very last statement, something I'm trying to avoid as much as possible as a parent is, "because I said so." That line means, "this is a dictatorship and I do not feel like explaining myself." I say "avoid" because young children can be irrational or have limited capacity for big picture logic, so there is a need for a (benevolent) dictatorship for safety and growth. Sometimes we cannot always stop to have the conversation, but I feel we need to try. So I've changed it to forms of, "because I said so, but I owe you an explanation when there's time for one." The follies of a dictatorship are, in my opinion, equally perilous at the large scale as they are at the small scale: it becomes too easy to dominate your subjects and never be wrong. I sense a level of empowerment and agency for my children in the occasional time we review a situation and the conclusion is, "I was wrong, you should have been able to take that to school. I'm sorry." Followed-up with a chat about how I got it wrong and how I try to get it right next time.

Waterluvian 4y ago

Indeed. But it always irks me that they speak with such confidence. There’s inference and then there’s theorycrafting.

bombcar 4y ago
Reminds me of the “science based” dinosaur books I had as a child - elaborate descriptions of dinosaurs and what they did based on three bones and wishful thinking.
- verisimi 4y ago
  "Trust the experts!"
- slfnflctd 4y ago
  There has been a ton of speculation presented as fact in science-related reading materials for kids across the board, and I'm not sure how much that's improved (although it has in some places). It seems the thinking often was that we need to keep things simple for children so they'll uptake it more easily. Many educators want to avoid getting bogged down in fuzzy areas like debates about support for theories, or difficult ones like the details of actual research. The unfortunate downside is that the oversimplification of introductory material inevitably leads to a period of frustrating cognitive dissonance for anyone who develops an interest in a subject, as they need to unlearn all the nerfed-to-the-point-of-being-wrong stuff. I suspect those who have multiple & diverse interests are more likely to go through mentally and emotionally devastating experiences of overall disillusionment with humanity as a result.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I remember a "Our Universe" book [64] that was pretty cool; and it was quite capable of describing what we knew from telescopes and other scientific sources, while still having "fanciful" pages detailing how a mars base might look and what a creature that lived on Jupiter might look like. I feel that was a pretty good way to balance the objectives. [64] https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/national-geographic-picture-atlas-of-our-universe_roy-a-gallant_margaret-sedeen/253504/item/5599812/ https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/national-geographic-picture-at...
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      One of my favorite books in elementary school. Checked it out from the school library several times per year. Now I grab a copy just about every time I see one, think I've bought three—I have kids now, and because of the format combined, now, with the age of the book, the binding tends to fail, so they're a bit consumable at this point. I've lost one so far. IIRC from when I looked into this a while back, there are actually two versions of the book, and one has more pages than the other (like, a dozen more, or perhaps twenty) so if you pick one up and are like "I could have sworn..." it might be because you're holding the one with less material, and are used to the larger one. I noticed and did some digging because I flipped through a digital version on archive.org and it was missing some stuff that (at least) one of my physical copies has. I forget whether it's the earlier or later edition that has more material.
    - dekhn 4y ago
      I had completely forgotten about this! It was clearly influential on my developing mind.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    I cannot speak to all kids and all contexts, but I have a 4 and 5 year old and something I've learned in the past ~3 years is just how completely wrong I was about this. My kids are completely ready to hear "we don't know, but we think it might be like X or maybe even like Y." It's actually incredibly empowering, I think, for a specific reason: a conclusive answer shuts the book, an inconclusive one begs imaginative minds to think about the blanks to be filled in. And my kids leap on the opportunity to begin imagining what the answer might be, with such boldness and confidence that most adults seem to have been stripped of somewhere in school.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  This is why I always told my children that books (and later - teachers) are as good as the people who wrote them. And that some of these people are dreadful. They learned that they first must trust what their parents tell them (just joking), and then cross-check and have an open, inquisitive and sceptic mind. This basically set religion aside (though I encouraged them to look at it from a sociological aspect) and they challenged some teachers at some point - fortunately their teachers were great and happy to see someone interested. We also systematically had an opposed view to theirs (no matter what we thought) to force them to argument but the effect was mitigated. Yes, they have sensible opinions but they also challenged us with "why should I be home at 22:00 when I am not going to school the day after"? (to which I still have no idea what to answer)
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    Related to your very last statement, something I'm trying to avoid as much as possible as a parent is, "because I said so." That line means, "this is a dictatorship and I do not feel like explaining myself." I say "avoid" because young children can be irrational or have limited capacity for big picture logic, so there is a need for a (benevolent) dictatorship for safety and growth. Sometimes we cannot always stop to have the conversation, but I feel we need to try. So I've changed it to forms of, "because I said so, but I owe you an explanation when there's time for one." The follies of a dictatorship are, in my opinion, equally perilous at the large scale as they are at the small scale: it becomes too easy to dominate your subjects and never be wrong. I sense a level of empowerment and agency for my children in the occasional time we review a situation and the conclusion is, "I was wrong, you should have been able to take that to school. I'm sorry." Followed-up with a chat about how I got it wrong and how I try to get it right next time.