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This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things w

This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things were discovered of how you could prove them yourself. I think it would be cool if we taught kids how things work along with how they can prove it for themselves. Currently the only field which encourages you to prove things for yourself is maths, and proofs aren't even given that much importance. Even with softer topics like history, I think it should be essential to include context explaining how we know these things to be true. On what evidence are these beliefs based on? What is the level of epistemic uncertainty of the information we're being given?

michpoch 3y ago
> This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things were discovered of how you could prove them yourself. Could you give some example of what would you like to prove, from your college curriculum?
- TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
  Honestly, after reflecting on it I do think that I had more courses cover how to prove things ourselves than I was initially remembering. In particular, my physics and electronics labs were the most thorough. When I wrote that I was specifically thinking about chemistry. It's really been too long since I last studied the topic, so I can't remember any exact details. I just remember a vague sense of thinking "how did we figure this out in the first place?". Part of the responsibility definitely falls on me, I should've been more inquisitive when I was younger. Maybe the professors would've been willing to explain if I'd been more self-confident and courageous to visit their office hours to inquire further.
ImPleadThe5th 3y ago
My calc 2 professor would start every new concept by first describing (briefly) how the greeks would have done it with pure geometry, then how classic mathematics came to the solution from a different angle. Probably the only higher math course I took that I was excited to go to lecture every day.
crooked-v 3y ago
> never No, you definitely do eventually. I remember plenty of that stuff from back in my advanced math days (even if I can't remember any of the math itself at this point), like the aha moments showing linear algebra work underpinning the memorization from calculus. It's just way up there in the coursework because the 100- and 200-level classes don't have the time to explain that stuff to 50-plus people and make sure any of them understand any of it.
dagw 3y ago
maths, and proofs aren't even given that much importance That doesn't match my experience with college at all. I was admittedly a math major and possibly other departments do it differently, but most math courses I took put a lot of emphasis on proving stuff and proofs, and proving stuff was around 50% of the final exam in most courses.
TheDong 3y ago
Colleges have 4 years, and most important discoveries took a brilliant person a lifetime of work. How do you propose we give more detailed explanations and information for proving everything for yourself? Should college last a few hundred years instead of 4? Did college not teach you how to access and parse through research papers and books? If you want a more full explanation and to prove things for yourself, why didn't you do so? When you were told, from authority, about the american antarctic base, why didn't you prove its existence by taking a boat there (repeated ad-nauseam for each location in the world)
- TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
  Come on, it's a spectrum. I don't expect everything to build up a careful chain of trust and verification. But I think we can still do better than what the current education ecosystem provides. You're taking the most extreme perspective to a pretty reasonable claim. Figuring out how to prove everything myself is impractical because I'm not an expert in every subfield. I think experts in various fields can write shortcuts and simple experiments which prove a lot of knowledge. It doesn't have to be perfect.
  - TheDong 3y ago
    I just can't tell what you want. Like, colleges right now provide "shortcuts and simple experiments" to approximate knowledge that was gained with a much more rigorous path. Yet, you decry current college as not showing the full path, as taking shortcuts. Now, you're saying that yes, we need such shortcuts, it doesn't have to be perfect, and it's a spectrum... all of which I agree with, and seems to be the opposite of what you said above. What's the fundamental difference between what you describe and what colleges do? Or is it just a matter of execution quality?
mistermann 3y ago
> Currently the only field which encourages you to prove things for yourself is maths, and proofs aren't even given that much importance. Can you prove this assertion with math?

michpoch 3y ago

> This was one of my complaints in college. You're taught a ton of things from a position of authority, but you never get a full explanation of how those things were discovered of how you could prove them yourself. Could you give some example of what would you like to prove, from your college curriculum?

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
Honestly, after reflecting on it I do think that I had more courses cover how to prove things ourselves than I was initially remembering. In particular, my physics and electronics labs were the most thorough. When I wrote that I was specifically thinking about chemistry. It's really been too long since I last studied the topic, so I can't remember any exact details. I just remember a vague sense of thinking "how did we figure this out in the first place?". Part of the responsibility definitely falls on me, I should've been more inquisitive when I was younger. Maybe the professors would've been willing to explain if I'd been more self-confident and courageous to visit their office hours to inquire further.

ImPleadThe5th 3y ago

My calc 2 professor would start every new concept by first describing (briefly) how the greeks would have done it with pure geometry, then how classic mathematics came to the solution from a different angle. Probably the only higher math course I took that I was excited to go to lecture every day.

crooked-v 3y ago

> never No, you definitely do eventually. I remember plenty of that stuff from back in my advanced math days (even if I can't remember any of the math itself at this point), like the aha moments showing linear algebra work underpinning the memorization from calculus. It's just way up there in the coursework because the 100- and 200-level classes don't have the time to explain that stuff to 50-plus people and make sure any of them understand any of it.

dagw 3y ago

maths, and proofs aren't even given that much importance That doesn't match my experience with college at all. I was admittedly a math major and possibly other departments do it differently, but most math courses I took put a lot of emphasis on proving stuff and proofs, and proving stuff was around 50% of the final exam in most courses.

TheDong 3y ago

Colleges have 4 years, and most important discoveries took a brilliant person a lifetime of work. How do you propose we give more detailed explanations and information for proving everything for yourself? Should college last a few hundred years instead of 4? Did college not teach you how to access and parse through research papers and books? If you want a more full explanation and to prove things for yourself, why didn't you do so? When you were told, from authority, about the american antarctic base, why didn't you prove its existence by taking a boat there (repeated ad-nauseam for each location in the world)

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
Come on, it's a spectrum. I don't expect everything to build up a careful chain of trust and verification. But I think we can still do better than what the current education ecosystem provides. You're taking the most extreme perspective to a pretty reasonable claim. Figuring out how to prove everything myself is impractical because I'm not an expert in every subfield. I think experts in various fields can write shortcuts and simple experiments which prove a lot of knowledge. It doesn't have to be perfect.
- TheDong 3y ago
  I just can't tell what you want. Like, colleges right now provide "shortcuts and simple experiments" to approximate knowledge that was gained with a much more rigorous path. Yet, you decry current college as not showing the full path, as taking shortcuts. Now, you're saying that yes, we need such shortcuts, it doesn't have to be perfect, and it's a spectrum... all of which I agree with, and seems to be the opposite of what you said above. What's the fundamental difference between what you describe and what colleges do? Or is it just a matter of execution quality?

mistermann 3y ago

> Currently the only field which encourages you to prove things for yourself is maths, and proofs aren't even given that much importance. Can you prove this assertion with math?