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gwern comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 18, chapter 87 - Less Wrong Discussion
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So you have multiple Pensieves and each student does a different memory at a time, and when they get confused they ask another student No different than books or 'flipped' classrooms.
If the pensieve memories don't confer greater understanding though, why not just use books instead? They're cheaper.
Faster (at least in the movies, wasn't a time-speedup implied?), 3D sound & audio, literally immersive, forced attention...
I don't know, I've only watched a couple of them, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't in the books.
I think wizards can probably produce 3d sound and audio via illusions without needing pensieves anyway.
A pensieve puts you in the memory, so you can't focus on something outside it, but I don't think there's anything that prevents you from zoning out or dozing off in someone else's memory. Of course, in the books, everyone perusing a pensieve memory had enough reason to pay rapt attention that it wasn't an issue.
To reuse the argument from silence which everyone is using on the pensieves: we don't see the wizards produce 3D sound and audio via illusions for educational purposes despite the obvious utility in such classes as History of Magic, therefore they cannot.
We can produce 3D images now, and we don't use them for education even in well funded private schools. Why would we? I disagree that there's obvious utility in using such methods, I don't think it's very likely to improve students' educations.
Our 3D images cost a fortune to program, for starters, but I can weaken the argument: they don't produce any 2D images with sound either, and we certainly do that a ton.
They produce moving, talking paintings capable of carrying a conversation. The whole castle is full of them. A wizard painting probably could teach a class.
Also, at least some textbooks in canon contain moving illustrations, and unlike the paintings, we know those are mass produced, and at least one book in the forbidden section of the library in the first book could scream.
I believe newspapers also contain talking images, although I may be remembering movie canon for that.
I'm glad you're coming around to my conspiracy theory! And let's not forget that Voldemort's diary could teach quite well, it seems.
I don't remember them talking; in any case, the photos are even more brainless than portraits.
If the schools are conspiring to keep elite education expensive, they're not doing a very good job, seeing as the Weasleys managed to send all their numerous children to the most prestigious (and maybe only, it seemed like Rowling never really made up her mind) school in Britain, despite being poor.
Even if there are theoretically more effective ways to teach students, the students don't want to lose the prestige of studying at an ancient university founded by some of the greatest wizards ever, where some of the best wizards in history have taught, and the professors don't want to lose the prestige of being able to teach at said university.