A warning to the people who like to find stuff out
Science education as it currently stands is only geared towards teaching how to solve certain kinds of problems (though you can learn how to solve them really well). Even the ill-structured problems in science and engineering have a particular structure, and the idea of an ill-structured problem in physics never comes close to being an ill-structured problem I feel is really important.
Scientists and engineers are really good at creating problems for their solutions, and are really good at solving problems because they know they can. I think people need to know that they can solve other bigger problems that currently aren't in the purview of science for traditional and pseudo-philosophical reasons. Yeah okay, we've made a more efficient fridge, or something equally trivial, and if you can make a living off of that I think there might be a problem. Bigger and more definitely a problem, some of these "efficient fridges" are harmful to people, and there is a strong push to have more people that make a living solving what amounts to either triviality or harm. There is a problem with our problem solving.
Something they don't tell you before you get to college: a physics degree is not a good way to learn how to write, or to learn how to communicate in any general sense (duh). I started writing this because I feel like my physics education dulls me. It makes me stupid. It makes me think that all I have to do in order to be a person is fabricate nanoscale hinges. I honestly would care less if I thought it had no effect on where I might go, or what I might do. I want the best shot at getting this humanist spin into science, so I guess the stress of dulling, irrelevant work for a year is a small price to pay for that, but it still sucks.
One day we'll teach people how to be open and critical and self-knowledgable more often than we don't.
There is still room for the kind of education I am receiving to be appropriate, because not all of science and engineering is trivial; I only feel that a disproportionate amount of it is. I also feel that the freedom to explore and joyfully solve any problem is worth giving up in order to attempt to solve a select few important problems, but I may revise my view of this. Also I haven't completely addressed the role that economy plays in this educational system but I think that is for another time.
P.S. There are many posts on the backburner for now, since they rely more on slow thought than quick feeling for communicating their message, and my slow thought belongs somewhere else.
Scientists and engineers are really good at creating problems for their solutions, and are really good at solving problems because they know they can. I think people need to know that they can solve other bigger problems that currently aren't in the purview of science for traditional and pseudo-philosophical reasons. Yeah okay, we've made a more efficient fridge, or something equally trivial, and if you can make a living off of that I think there might be a problem. Bigger and more definitely a problem, some of these "efficient fridges" are harmful to people, and there is a strong push to have more people that make a living solving what amounts to either triviality or harm. There is a problem with our problem solving.
Something they don't tell you before you get to college: a physics degree is not a good way to learn how to write, or to learn how to communicate in any general sense (duh). I started writing this because I feel like my physics education dulls me. It makes me stupid. It makes me think that all I have to do in order to be a person is fabricate nanoscale hinges. I honestly would care less if I thought it had no effect on where I might go, or what I might do. I want the best shot at getting this humanist spin into science, so I guess the stress of dulling, irrelevant work for a year is a small price to pay for that, but it still sucks.
One day we'll teach people how to be open and critical and self-knowledgable more often than we don't.
There is still room for the kind of education I am receiving to be appropriate, because not all of science and engineering is trivial; I only feel that a disproportionate amount of it is. I also feel that the freedom to explore and joyfully solve any problem is worth giving up in order to attempt to solve a select few important problems, but I may revise my view of this. Also I haven't completely addressed the role that economy plays in this educational system but I think that is for another time.
P.S. There are many posts on the backburner for now, since they rely more on slow thought than quick feeling for communicating their message, and my slow thought belongs somewhere else.
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