4 ms·

> It's just a very bad article. I think you're taking it far too literally (do you also complain that the 2D illustration of gravity wells is inaccurate?), but

> It's just a very bad article. I think you're taking it far too literally (do you also complain that the 2D illustration of gravity wells is inaccurate?), but I don't care to argue about it all day. Take it up with Stanford.

Jach 1y ago
> do you also complain that the 2D illustration of gravity wells is inaccurate? Sometimes: https://xkcd.com/895/ https://xkcd.com/895/ Poor analogies usually cheat the learner. Though at least with gravity well diagrams, it's often (though not always, or explicitly enough) marked up as just a conceptual aid in grasping how the trajectories and orbits we can see arise without Newtonian forces. It's not passed off as the whole thing. Nor, importantly, is it used to justify policies about what people can do or should be allowed to do, or can be seen as responsible for. This bad article isn't just oversimplification, it's a gross misrepresentation of actual developmental science and the name of the site it's on just lends it fake scientific authority that will only further encourage people to use it to justify real decisions based on the false claims. That's not harmless. It's somewhat contained, being an article aimed at clueless parents of teens, until it's spread around more reinforcing the "brains don't mature until 25" meme. I hope you'll at least reconsider if you think of spreading it again.
- leereeves 1y ago
  Just out of curiosity, you have a very strong opinion about this and I wonder what you're basing it on.
  - Jach 1y ago
    Sure, though I'm curious if you think some voluntary pyscho-analyzing changes anything about the truth. Or are you just looking for paper links? It's one of my minor hobbies over the years to sometimes browse various papers for fun (childhood mastery of conservation of volumes is pretty interesting) or to check what the scientists actually claimed about various things, the Slate article wasn't the first I'd heard of this particular myth being a myth but it still seems like a good reference to point out the problems that I could quickly find again, and it's got links to enough papers (like the 'maturity index' one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3135376/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3135376/) that it didn't seem necessary to find or recall more. It's not so much that I have a very strong opinion on this in particular so much as I have negative opinions about false popsci memes being spread in general, and today I decided it'd be fun to try and briefly swat at another one. I had an aside to Dunning-Kruger at the start. Dunbar's number is another false meme. Here's a small collection of others, though I'd say the chess one isn't particularly damaging apart from being false: https://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/ https://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/ Sometimes a meme claim just doesn't stand up if you actually look at the paper(s). First you have to find the papers, if a citation isn't forthcoming, but if there even is a literature you can just read some of it. To check if a meme matches, you don't even need to be an expert or have real scientific training, or read the whole thing, all that's needed in many cases is just: read the abstract, the conclusion, check if it matches the meme. Sometimes looking at charts or seeing wait a minute they are basing this supposed human universal on one undergrad subject (or finding fMRI brain activity in a dead fish) can also be illuminating. There's a lot of bunk science out there, and reproducibility is a problem everywhere. This is irritating, though it's not like I'm thinking about it much of the time or crusading to correct everyone wrong on the internet. More directly on the brain maturity thing, I suppose part of the interest also comes from how I really find the ongoing infantilization of western society grotesque and see the meme as part of it. I also just remember being a teen, and remember many teens around me from then. Some were scouts, some had jobs, a lot of us drove carefully, some not so carefully. There were temptations, some succumbed and some didn't. We were alright, overall. People change, but not usually by a huge degree, this cuts both ways for those who were more responsible and those who were more reckless. Still, comparing stupid stuff done then with stupid stuff done now by 30-somethings... a lot of the time it's a tossup which is really more stupid. The 30-somethings can cause a lot more collateral damage though, generally having greater assets and responsibilities.

Jach 1y ago

> do you also complain that the 2D illustration of gravity wells is inaccurate? Sometimes: https://xkcd.com/895/ https://xkcd.com/895/ Poor analogies usually cheat the learner. Though at least with gravity well diagrams, it's often (though not always, or explicitly enough) marked up as just a conceptual aid in grasping how the trajectories and orbits we can see arise without Newtonian forces. It's not passed off as the whole thing. Nor, importantly, is it used to justify policies about what people can do or should be allowed to do, or can be seen as responsible for. This bad article isn't just oversimplification, it's a gross misrepresentation of actual developmental science and the name of the site it's on just lends it fake scientific authority that will only further encourage people to use it to justify real decisions based on the false claims. That's not harmless. It's somewhat contained, being an article aimed at clueless parents of teens, until it's spread around more reinforcing the "brains don't mature until 25" meme. I hope you'll at least reconsider if you think of spreading it again.

leereeves 1y ago
Just out of curiosity, you have a very strong opinion about this and I wonder what you're basing it on.
- Jach 1y ago
  Sure, though I'm curious if you think some voluntary pyscho-analyzing changes anything about the truth. Or are you just looking for paper links? It's one of my minor hobbies over the years to sometimes browse various papers for fun (childhood mastery of conservation of volumes is pretty interesting) or to check what the scientists actually claimed about various things, the Slate article wasn't the first I'd heard of this particular myth being a myth but it still seems like a good reference to point out the problems that I could quickly find again, and it's got links to enough papers (like the 'maturity index' one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3135376/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3135376/) that it didn't seem necessary to find or recall more. It's not so much that I have a very strong opinion on this in particular so much as I have negative opinions about false popsci memes being spread in general, and today I decided it'd be fun to try and briefly swat at another one. I had an aside to Dunning-Kruger at the start. Dunbar's number is another false meme. Here's a small collection of others, though I'd say the chess one isn't particularly damaging apart from being false: https://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/ https://danluu.com/dunning-kruger/ Sometimes a meme claim just doesn't stand up if you actually look at the paper(s). First you have to find the papers, if a citation isn't forthcoming, but if there even is a literature you can just read some of it. To check if a meme matches, you don't even need to be an expert or have real scientific training, or read the whole thing, all that's needed in many cases is just: read the abstract, the conclusion, check if it matches the meme. Sometimes looking at charts or seeing wait a minute they are basing this supposed human universal on one undergrad subject (or finding fMRI brain activity in a dead fish) can also be illuminating. There's a lot of bunk science out there, and reproducibility is a problem everywhere. This is irritating, though it's not like I'm thinking about it much of the time or crusading to correct everyone wrong on the internet. More directly on the brain maturity thing, I suppose part of the interest also comes from how I really find the ongoing infantilization of western society grotesque and see the meme as part of it. I also just remember being a teen, and remember many teens around me from then. Some were scouts, some had jobs, a lot of us drove carefully, some not so carefully. There were temptations, some succumbed and some didn't. We were alright, overall. People change, but not usually by a huge degree, this cuts both ways for those who were more responsible and those who were more reckless. Still, comparing stupid stuff done then with stupid stuff done now by 30-somethings... a lot of the time it's a tossup which is really more stupid. The 30-somethings can cause a lot more collateral damage though, generally having greater assets and responsibilities.