Terminally Incoherent

An interesting tidbit of pseudo-scientific news from nature.com:

Durham University researchers think that physics, chemistry and biology are a grade harder than drama and media studies and three-quarters of a grade harder than English at ‘A-level’, roughly equivalent to high school diplomas. (…)

“This research shows that science and technology subjects are much more severely graded than subjects like media studies and art,” says Robert Coe, author of the new report on the subject that’s stirred things up (press release).

To reach this conclusion Coe reviewed a host of previous attempts to determine the relative ‘difficulty’ of subjects and conducted his own analysis on examination data from 2006. His work found similar results from five different statistical methods, all of which are rather complicated (maths is hard remember).

These methods either compare the performance of the same candidate in different exams or compare exam grades between people of similar ability, as determined by a reference test of some kind. Science and maths subjects were all at the top of the difficulty range.

Just to stoke the fires a bit, Coe notes, “A student with a grade C in Biology will generally be more able than one with a B in Sociology, for example.”

Duh! No shit sherlock. That’s because science and math can only be graded objectively. You either get it or not. You either answer the question correctly, or incorrectly. There is a leeway for partial credit there, but in most cases to get it you still need to show understanding of the problem. Media studies and art on the other hand… Let’s face it, I don’t even know what media studies is.

Grading art is problematic, because we do not have a quantitative measure for creativity and originality. One art teacher may thing your work is brilliant and innovative, while another may consider it shallow and unimpressive. It is all matter of taste and opinion. And of course some people simply lack the talent or the spatial skills to actually create good art. Therefore most in class art projects are graded on how well students followed the directions, and how much work and effort they put into their work. Which again is a subjective measure.

In a lot of humanities classes, the grade reflects how good you are at bullshitting and not your mastery of the material. Let me tell you a little story. My senior year in college I took “Cultures of the Middle East” class because I needed to fulfill the “Non Western Perspectives” course requirement. The final exam was part general knowledge based multiple choice quiz, and par essay in which we would have to discuss one of the 6 short stories which I neglected to read. Before the test a friend who did read them primed me with basic plot outlines, and names of main characters. The test question was to compare and contrast the changing roles of women in the middle east as depicted in the stories. I got and A. Why?

I assume it’s because the grader was looking for specific set of issues, ideas - or key buzzwords to be mentioned in the paper. And I was able to hit all of them based on what I knew about social customs in the area, the brief plot outlines and the general direction of in-class discussions. In a very similar way many literature and sociology and philosophy students can cost through classes relying on nothing more than cliff notes and a decent writing style. More often than not your task when writing a paper for one of such classes is to interpret, analyze or express an opinion and argument using examples. Very often your thesis may be wrong and misguided but with a little creativity you can make up argumentation to support it and make it look like the text is supporting them and get away with it.

Science and math are really clean cut, formalized and no nonsense subjects. You can’t gloss over details. You can’t “creatively” interpret your data. It is due or die. You just have to learn it, and understand it - there is no room for bullshitting, hand waving and any of that stuff. So it’s not that science is inherently harder. It’s because science is inherently easier to test accurately. It is not very difficult to design a decent set of questions which will test ones knowledge of a given scientific subject - and it is fairly easy to grade. Here is the answer key - if the students write something else, mark it wrong. That’s it.

Art, sociology and literature on the other hand… It takes some skill and experience to make up questions that will show that students really “read” the assigned text, and really understood it.

But that’s just my opinion. Feel free to prove me wrong and argue in favor of your favorite subject in the comments.

I keep noticing a recurring trope in mainstream TV and movies which really bothers me. Maybe you noticed it too. Next time you watch a random sitcom, or some crappy a movie on some cable channel look for the way it portrays smart people. More often than not, the main protagonist will be an average Joe (or Jane) who is good looking but usually not terribly smart. Whenever the hero needs to tackle some scientific/technology related problem he/she will call on the token geek, almost invariably portrayed as a socially inept, reclusive eccentric with taped up glasses and a pocket protector.

Medical doctors are exception to this rule. They can be portrayed as highly intelligent, well adjusted characters with multi-faceted personalities and are allowed to be role models for the audience. But only if they are holding and MD. Anyone who has a PHD or any other doctoral degree automatically becomes an walking plot device or comic relief.

Even when the writers decide to skip the traditional nerd attire, the smart characters are almost always depicted as outsiders. They are never as a member of the inner circle of protagonists, and once they fulfill their role (hack into the main computer, identify someones DNA, explain a difficult subject to the audience and etc…) they are promptly discarded.

Sure, there are shows and movies where the protagonist is a highly educated scientist - but more often than not, these suffer from what I call the Gordon Freeman syndrome. Just like the hero of the Half Life series these characters spend most of their time shooting bad guys, and saving the world using bullets and brute force. Their education and experience only comes into play when they need to overload the flux combibulator to disable the shields on the alien mothership or something like that. And whenever they do apply science in this way, they need to explain themselves to their sidekicks almost apologizing for doing something clever.

This bothers me. How come being ignorant of science and technology is almost always portrayed in such a positive way? How come education and intelligence of a character must always be offset by his social ineptitude, or condescending attitude toward his “techno babble?” How come being above the average in some area is so often portrayed as some sort of socially undesirable eccentricity?

It would be nice to see some dynamic flipped around more often. Why not portray intelligent, educated and insightful characters in positive light, while relegating the ignorant brutes to the role of comic relief. There are shows and movies that try to do that, but many of them do it the wrong way. For example picking a bunch of socially backwards, stereotypical nerds as your protagonists, and then spending most of the time poking fun at their silly habits, hobbies and behavior is just the same kind of anti-intellectual comedy. People keep telling me about the IT Crowd but after watching few episodes, it seems almost as bad as the classic Revenge of the Nerds movies.

Let’s make a smart educated character play the straight man for a change. Instead of caricaturing geeky interests into some monstrous proportion lets elevate them into normalcy. Lets lift the stigma from science - and also science fiction while we are at it. How come characters on a show can never discuss a work of SF or Fantasy without the whole thing turning into a big joke.

How about characters have intelligent and insightful discussions on geeky topics, without making fun of them. For example, take the famous Star Wars conversation from Clerks. There you have two characters who are not stereotypical nerds, discussing a Science Fiction show, making interesting observations without turning the whole thing into a big joke about unhealthy SW obsession. I thought it was brilliant - smart, insightful, and hilarious at the same time.

We need more of that kind of stuff. Let’s make geek or scientist play the straight man for a change - make them be the “normal” character that the audience identifies with.

What do you think? Am I off the mark here? Perhaps I’m watching the wrong shows and movies. Do you think this sad state of affairs is a deeper social issue, or just a side effect of TV and movie makers pandering to the lowest common denominator?

I have absolutely nothing for today, so I will do a little trick called audience participation. Let’s post intellectual jokes in this thread right here. The idea is to find all the geekiest jokes that are only funny to a small niche group of people in the know. Usually jokes in this domain are technology or science related. I will tart you off with couple of jokes, but the rest is up to you. Here we go:

See what I did there? It doesn’t need to be image humor either. For example this one (be warned it’s been done to death so no groaning):

Q: Why do programmers often confuse Halloween and Christmas?
A: OCT 31 == DEC 25

Schrödinger’s cat jokes are all the rage these days:

Or perhaps this:

Q: What’s a polar bear?
A: A rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.

Anyway, you get the idea. Now it’s up to you to make this post funny!

Some time ago I came up with this “to ambitious for your own good” prop that could be used in essentially any setting. It could be an ancient artifact, weird piece of mysterious alien technology, magical arcana, mystical object and etc. Essentially it’s a toy you can safely lock away along with all the other game master/dungeon master/storyteller notes that you will never, ever get to use in any game session, or story.

Here is the idea - imagine a Rubik’s Cube like puzzle with a nasty twist. You can twist it, rotate it, and change the positon of the faces in some way. To solve it you must align them in some sort of a pattern. It’s important to make the pattern clear, and easy to grasp - such as for example the original Rubik’s cube goal - to make each face a solid color. Solving the puzzle will unlock something. Maybe there is a hidden message inside? Perhaps it triggers some bound spell or activates the artifact in some way. Or maybe the process of solving it teachers you the correct thinking you will need in order to understand some other, more powerful artifact.

Here is the twist: the puzzle is unsolvable. The “faces” are not well defined, and there is just no possible way to arrange the moving pieces in a way that that would produce the desired pattern. A smart character with a good grasp of math or science can figure this out mathematically - either on paper, or perhaps build a computer simulation. The pattern just can’t be produced. There is just no way to do it.

And yet, there is evidence that it was solved in the past. No notes on how it was achieved survived, but someone before did unlock the great mystery it hides, and lived to tell about it. You can find vague, cryptic hints, but no complete solution.

Why is that? Why can’t anyone solve it? Because the object you see is not the puzzle itself. It is just a 3 dimensional projection (ie. a “shadow”) of a 4 dimensional object. If you need a visual, it would be something like this:

This is actually a picture of a real sculpture at Penn State designed by a math professor to illustrate representation of 4d object in 3d. If you are unfamiliar with this, let me explain.

Consider a map of the world. It is a representation of the 3 dimensional globe, in 2 dimensions. Each location on earth can be found on the map, but their relative position in space is change, and altered. Now imagine a randomly generated state of Rubik’s Cube projected onto paper this way. The rules for rotating the faces are still the same, so when you move one piece, the whole picture shifts around in a weird way. In this representation, solving the puzzle is still possible? If you “unroll” the cube into the familiar cross like shape made out of squares, then yes. You can identify the faces and figure out how to manipulate it. But what if the cube is unrolled in a different way - for example, starting at a corner, and slicing it into triangular shapes? Can you still solve it then without knowing that in the 4D shape, a face is really a square, and not a triangle?

This is exactly what we are dealing with with our puzzle. It can’t be solved unless you recognize that it is merely a projection of the 4d object, reconstruct the object, and re-evaluate the goal. Of course we tend to think in 3 dimensions, and can’t really imagine 4d objects. But, we could mathematically figure out what would be the shape of a face, or segment, or component of our puzzle and what would be it’s relation to other pieces. Furthermore we can directly map it onto our “shadow”.

So there it is - that’s the concept. It’s ridiculously complex to even explain, few people will get it, and there is just no way to role-play solving the puzzle in a meaningful way. The only thing that the players could solve is the dimensionality issue, but I’m not sure how would introduce the problem in a way that would hint at it without giving it away. So I gave up on introducing it in a game. But I still think it is an interesting idea. If you want to use it, it’s under CC, Attribution, Non-Comercial, Share Alike, 3.0.

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0.

I just finished the main story arc in Freelancer and I must say I loved the last mission. Dyson Sphere’s have been my fascination for a long time now and I was absolutely thrilled to see one being used in this game.

If you ever played the game, you know that the scale is a tad wonky. Battleships, space stations and planets are much smaller than they should be. But the Dyson is so immense in the game that it makes you forget about all of that. When you first jump into the system in which it is located you don’t actually see a big sphere. You see something like an endless checkerboard wall in front of you. The designers actually put a planet in front of it so that you get the sense of immense scale.

The wall stretches so far and wide that it simply fades out of view. The NPC’s initially refer to it as a “barrier” because that’s what it looks like. To get inside you need to fly Star Wars style above the surface destroying power generators to kill the shield that guards the entrance hatch.

Then when you pass the hatch, you see something confusing. You see outlines of oceans, continents, mountain ranges and etc… In all directions. You roll left, and right, and you see land and sea everywhere. Then you flip around and you see a sun - and beyond it, more land. And then it hits you - you are inside of a Dyson Sphere. This is how it must feel like to enter one of those things. Mind blowing!

And yes, I know. Nitpickers will most likely point out this is not technically a “Dyson Sphere”. The original concept developed by Dyson was for a system of satellites, not for a solid sphere enclosing the sun. What you see in Freelancer is the fictional concept known as a Dyson Shell - a solid shell with a working biosphere on the inside. Apparently such as system would be unstable, and impossible to construct and maintain. But it doesn’t make it any less awesome.

To bad it is a “special” location in the game. I would love to go back there and just fly around inside of it.