[recycled material - first appeared here]
While some skeptics can be deservedly accused of disrespecting the unknown ("the" unknown -- as if it were a special, meaning-full monolith) by their overstatement of the known, I believe it is the woo-masters and true believers who most disrespect it. How? By not accepting the unknown for what it simply is: unknown. Instead, they project all sorts of highly speculative and even outright bogus ideas upon it. Because your explanation is missing, my explanation has validity.
Wrong. To respect the unknown is to tolerate the condition of not knowing. Period. To respect the unknown is to look at a fill-in-the-blank question and to leave it blank.
For an example of the right way to respect the unknown, consider this title to a science news release:
Exotic Life Beyond Life? Looking For Life As We Don't Know It
"Life as we don't know it." Brilliant. The article title expresses the recognition that any preconceptions about life and life forms may not be the best guide to finding something new.
Open-minded thinkers respect the unknown without falling into a state of slack-jawed credulity (if it can be expressed in words, it is worthy of serious consideration). They also try to refrain from knee-jerk nay-saying (that’s unusual and or new to me, therefore it has to be b.s.).
Our understanding of the universe has come a long way. But let's confuse real progress with a near-perfect knowing. There is so much more to learn, and some of what we think we understand may in fact be mistaken.
Wouldn't it be nice if all decisions could result in win-win (times n) scenarios? (Times n = any number of variables involved.) One decision that may not be win-win-win is that of deciding to be one of the few in your community to attend college. Sure, a college-degree is a win in terms of employment possibilities. But could there possibly be a drawback, a not-win?
It seems there can be. In somewhat of a bummer finding, sociologists at Cornell University discovered this correlation:
College reduces odds for marriage among disadvantaged
Darn. Go to college and you increase your chances for a good job. But you decrease your chances for marriage. That's not win-win.
The longitudinal study found a strong decrease in "marriage chances" for both males and females. For men, 38 percent, for women, 22 percent.
If this dynamic holds up, one might wonder, "Why the decrease in marriage rates for college-educated individuals coming from a community with few college-educated people?
Lead author Kelley Musick speculates:
Men and women from the least advantaged backgrounds who attend college appear to be caught between social worlds -- reluctant to "marry down" to partners with less education and unable to "marry up" to those from more privileged upbringings. Lower marriage chances appear to stem from men's and women's mismatched social origins and educational attainment.
That makes sense. Of course, it might not be the case (on average), but until ruled out, or until a better explanation is ruled in (supported by evidence), it's something to consider.
An unsung benefit to education is that it not only widens your career opportunities, but it also extends the reach of your funny bone. While anyone can guffaw over potty humor, for this element of life we are all familiar with, how many people can detect irony in statements about, say, subatomic particles? Only those knowledgeable enough to have expectations that can then be violated.
Consider these examples of educated humor:
[cartoon thanks to xkcd.com]
[cartoon thanks to treelobsters.com]
[by way of Jerry Coyne's blog, Why Evolution is True]
I have long suspected that much of any genetic influence on a gender gap in an academic/occupational field might be as much or more about innate interest in a type of activity as it is about innate ability. A new psychological theory (supported by some research, so it is more than idle speculation) supports that hunch.
The press release, Technical aptitude: Do women score lower because they just aren't interested? contains these nuggets:
Smart people, researchers have found, are able to learn the requirements of any job if they are motivated to. And research shows that men and women do not differ, on average, in general intelligence.
Frank Schmidt, author of the paper outlining the theory . . .
posits that this difference stems from sex differences in interest in technical pursuits, which leads people to acquire technical experience, which in turn increases technical aptitude scores.
Excellence follows interests by way of learning experiences. Of course, culture can play a role in how a field is presented and taught,making it more interesting to one gender or another. Social factors can also determine how accessible and attractive types of learning experiences are to one sex or the other. Engineering, nursing, etc. If females are interested, they will gain experience and acquire aptitude. If males are interested, ditto. Those uninterested will not, or at least not as much.
Of course, allow me to add, "it seems" & "in general." Greater confidence in the proposed relationship between variables awaits further research.
Preschool children with relatively poor language skills improve more if they are placed in classrooms with high-achieving students, a new study found. [source]
That's the finding that got me thinking about football players. (Yes, the human brain tends to follow neurochemical breadcrumbs in sometimes surprising directions.) Perhaps you've had the same experience. You listen to an interview of some star athlete and you think, "My gosh, what version of English is he speaking?! The mangled, incomplete pronunciation, the botched grammar!"
Before I knew better, I may have blamed the individual him or herself for their poor skills with "my" language. Now I tend to view such events as a reflection of the different social environment people grow up in. We all learn to speak -- which includes so much more than vocabulary -- from the people around us. We acquire our verbal habits at home and from our peers. And maybe at school, too.
Because students learn from their peers as well as from their teachers, the above study and other research like it reflects the importance of our learning environment. No, in this case it doesn't mean how many computers are in the room, but who else is in the room.
Of course, the influence goes both ways -- unfortunately for those desiring simple solutions to maximizing education hours. While it may help the poorer students to be grouped with the better ones, it does no such thing for the better students (though some studies have shown that if the better students are put in tutoring-type roles, it can help them, too). So what to do? Do we maximize the learning experience of those on the low end of the educational achievement bell curve, with perhaps some cost to those at the higher end? Do we help the higher climb to even greater heights?
My own opinion is that we first focus more on the middle, making sure that helping either end of the spectrum doesn't come at a greater, less visible cost to it. Then we consider part-time inclusion of one sub-group of same-age students with another. I think. Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind.
And as for "dumb" social environments -- my use of that term in the title aims to hint at the origin of it. From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
dumb (adj.)
O.E. dumb "silent, unable to speak," from PIE *dheubh- "confusion, stupefaction, dizziness," from root *dheu- (1) "dust, mist, vapor, smoke," and related notions of "defective perception or wits."
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