tut comments on Expecting Short Inferential Distances - Less Wrong

107 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 October 2007 11:42PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (91)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 19 April 2010 11:10:39PM *  6 points [-]

What you want to teach depends on what you're trying to accomplish. I don't think there's much point in trying to give Aristotle an overview of modern scientific conclusions.

Assuming we want to accelerate technological progress, I'd rather teach him scientific method, decimal notation, evolution, and maybe what Feynman said (iirc) was the most important conclusion-- that matter is made of tiny bits of elements. I don't know what other specific subjects might be a good idea. Bayes? Calculus?

I don't know what would be convincing experiments for atoms.

One more I'd want to teach him that you can learn a lot by doing careful measurement and thinking about the results.

I don't know what Aristotle would come up with, given all that-- he was very smart.

Comment author: RobinZ 20 April 2010 12:21:10AM 1 point [-]

I don't know what would be convincing experiments for atoms.

Assuming you convinced him of the epistemological primacy of experiment, I see two obvious paths:

  1. The kinetic theory of gases, particularly the ideal gas law;

  2. Stoichiometry in chemistry - for example, electrolysis of water.

Comment author: tut 20 April 2010 07:07:14AM 2 points [-]

I would add Brownian motion to that list.