Coronavirus, Covid 19 Discussion and How It Has Affected Your Daily Life Chat Thread

[Folly's place]

Rote memorization is essential in many areas of learning! Also learning critical thinking, but must be based on more than 'alternative facts' and wishes.
Of course history is mostly written by the winners, and learning how to read it matters a lot.
What will our decendents think about our current culture and choices? I hate to think!
In HS, we had history every year, and logic, and English literature including Shakespeare, and really no 'fluffy' classes at all.
Not so true any more. And home schooling can be great, or awful, depending.
Mary

 

[CarpCharacin]

This may sound pretentious, but I wouldn't really trust someone who is average for overall cognitive ability to be able to critically evaluate and weigh evidence relating to complex issues while maintaining reasonable accuracy. And there are of course many, many people who are below the mean in terms of cognitive ability. The data from the National Adult Literacy Survey is a good example, and functional literacy is arguably a proxy for g. Simple tasks requiring relatively little pre-existing knowledge were used, yet most people flunked.

 

[TropicalBabies]

Lion, Dog, horse

How'd I do?

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Carp, I agree with you in two ways. One is those scores should be higher. The other is that the average person doesn't or maybe even can't know a lot. Which is why a culture of trusting people who are smarter and more capable than us in areas we can't possibly dedicate our lives to is more important than education IMO. Like we can educate forever but by necessity half of all people in the world will be below average at using any of it. There's no way one person can know everything there is to know in the world and be capable of using it.

If you create, however, a culture where experts can be relied upon - not just through culture but also intelligent regulation to prevent abuse - that has a way greater effect upon things like people who just plain don't understand the data or refuse to comprehend it than most forms of "education".

In Platos republic he advocated that a ruler be trained in the best ways to rule a nation, in diplomacy and philosophy and economics so that he can understand what he needs to rule better, much like how an apprentice carpenter trains to be a carpenter etc. Because how can you possibly expect to do a good job if you've got no experience doing what you're trying to do. I think about that a lot when I think about how we've organized our society. I think that general populace should be in charge of oversight so it's not free to be abused because people who are poor and downtrodden and average are far better at spotting injustice than people who are in places of power. But also that we put experts in charge of things all the time and honestly that's frequently how it should be.

 

[CarpCharacin]

Another issue is that the public school system discriminates against those who possess extreme mental ability, and ironically, that discrimination is often driven by attempts made to further prop up the facade of equality. This is a good example. Though to be fair, I doubt the NYC gifted programs were really designed for truly brilliant children, but more for "bright" children who are undoubtedly above-average but not all that rare. However the former group would still likely be better-suited in a classroom designed for above-average kids rather than in one designed for the mediocre.

 

[h2oratt]

MROO. Admire that you put it so well!

I also wonder if people could benefit from the lessons of my 50s generation. Today we have a chicken pox vaccine and one day the very painful disease of shingles may be a historic oddity. However, before the vaccine when I was a kid, when word of a kid with chicken pox at some opportune time like the summer made the street, parents were lined up outside the doors to make play dates and get their kids infected at convenient times. The theory went that childhood diseases were inevitable so they might was well get it over with before the kids missed school.

I don't know if anyone knew -- they certainly weren't throwing it into the mix -- that the reasonably benign chicken pox virus would take up residence in our bodies and mutate so that it could eventually resurface as the very painful variant shingles. I've known people who suffered with it for months at a time! I was lucky enough to have a very mild case of chicken pox when I was little and, blessedly, when I got shingles it sucked but an antibiotic knocked it out pretty fast.

Likewise, the Ebola virus takes up residence in surviving victims' eyeballs and can re-emerge. Frankly, it would be awful enough for me just to know I had a virus living and mutating in my eyeballs!!!

So there are Covid long-haulers, as you say, MROO, but we don't yet know if there will be people who find that it has a future expression worse than the current one. Playing Russian Roulette with viruses Just. Isn't. Smart.

OTOH, there's a theory of epidemiology that proposes that the people getting the first vaccinations probably should be the deniers who are running around most likely to infect others and act as super spreaders. IF they can identify them and talk them into getting vaccinated mabbe they could talk them into sterilization as well as they really don't belong in the civilized gene pool. (OK. See how I'm starting out the New Year by being a MUCH finer person???? You're welcome!)

How could an antibiotic knock out shingles? I thought it was a virus.

 

[h2oratt]

Rote memorization is essential in many areas of learning! Also learning critical thinking, but must be based on more than 'alternative facts' and wishes.
Of course history is mostly written by the winners, and learning how to read it matters a lot.
What will our decendents think about our current culture and choices? I hate to think!
In HS, we had history every year, and logic, and English literature including Shakespeare, and really no 'fluffy' classes at all.
Not so true any more. And home schooling can be great, or awful, depending.
Mary

They don’t teach critical thinking anymore in public school.

 

[cheepteach]

unfortunately, this online school crap has taught my 7th grade granddaughter (who used to be proud of her high honor roll status), just how worthless school is now. She does barely nothing challenging.

 

[CarpCharacin]

They don’t teach critical thinking anymore in public school.

Attempts made to teach it do improve performance on the kind of practice tasks used, however that improvement doesn't tend to transfer to other situations. 'Tis the nature of g.

 

[MROO]

Does anyone understand how Amazon works? I've just had the 3rd Amazon delivery of the day. On Sunday!

I know I shouldn't be out cruising 3 stores to see if I can find the arcane thing I'm trying to acquire but it CAN'T be good for the environment -- and, ultimately, the evolution of new viruses in a degrading ecosystem -- for 3 different trucks to be spewing carbons into the atmosphere to bring me the unusual size coffee filter I need AND the craft objet that I ordered a week ago AND the book that was recently released to the same address on the same day... Can't they plan these things out? I'd be more than happy to wait a few days and get 1 or 2 deliveries a week.

Waymaninit? YOU'RE GETTING DELIVERIES? How can that be possible? I have a package (ordered well before Thanksgiving) that has been languishing in a warehouse in Fresno, CA, the first of its' stops on its' coast-to-coast journey since December 15. Another, ordered a week later, still sitting on the outskirts of DC (note - 100+ miles SOUTH of me) from it's origination point in New Jersey (note - less than 100 miles NORTH of me) since the 19th. A third, which originated in central PA (I'm in northern Maryland) has only been stuck for a week ... but it's still stuck.

A fourth package is in limbo somewhere in the ether. NO ONE knows where it is. It was ordered Dec 3. I filed missing package reports on five packages. two have since magically appeared on my doorstep. I have "case closed" reports on the three missing USPS packages - all saying that they're on their way ... but tracking says otherwise. All were form letters issued within 24 hours of my request ... NO WAY did anyone physically look for those boxes before closing the inquiry. Then they had the nerve to send me a survey asking how satisfied I was with the search service.

I held my breath for a moment ... and replied as nicely as I could.
I GET that they're overrun I UNDERSTAND that there are justifiable (sortof) delays. But DO NOT patronize me with useless, empty form letters. If they can't get mean answer right away ... tell me so ... I'll wait. But I HATE being patronized and brushed off. GRRRRR!!!!!

So, yeah ... whaddaya mean YOU got a Sunday delivery? And you're complaining about it (giggles here - you know I don't mean that) As my buddy Madea would say ... "Somebody oughtta smack your Momma!"

PS - My package from England - Yes, The British Isles - got here three days early. Go figure.