> “Color” is by definition a perceptual response [...] Objects don’t inherently have a color.
"Dad, what color is my shirt?" "Well son, it’s hard to give it a color label, but let’s say it looks ‘white’. Objects don’t inherently have a color. Under differently circumstances, lit differently, or seen through filters, or by people with different eye genetics, they can look quite different. Illuminated by a red flashlight, your shirt would look red!" :) Ok, sure.
But for me, that doesn't quite make "yellow" (or "red" or "it doesn't have a color" or "it's rainbow color") into nicely reasonable answers for a 5-year old's "What color is my <white> shirt?" Nor for their "What color is my <white> Sun?" Especially not for the Sun, given the local unavailability of similarly-scaled red flashlights.
And once you have a spectra, you have chromaticity, however crufty Color Matching Functions are. And thus at least one reasonable definition of color.
> Of course, if you talk to philosophers or physicists instead of color scientists, you might get alternative definitions.
Yeah, that's an issue. So while I start with a strong agreement with "People are starting with too many misconceptions and gaps in foundational knowledge.", getting to actionable "you have to start with at least the basics" implies an ability to successfully execute that approach.
My experience is that it requires vastly greater effort, and domain expertise, than is currently considered non-insane, just for the associated content creation. To craft usefully-correct and accessible stories about the physical world.
So I while I think (some value of) "teach [from the] basics" could be a transformative improvement in science education, and consider it a profound failure of current science education research that the opportunity doesn't get more work, I wonder if it's currently a viable approach for teaching?
I've a one-liner that goes "Consider a best case. An MIT professor, with a strong background in education, trying to teach their own kid, 1-on-1, with lots of time available (we're getting very counterfactual), about their own area of expertise, indeed their own research focus... the science education content doesn't exist to allow them to succeed". Which may not be useful without additional context, but basically, any non-trivial topic will extend to require someone _else's_ research-level expertise to craft good content, at which point the hypothetical MIT professor hits the pervasive lack of existing technosocial mechanisms to obtain that, and thus is back to crappy content, and thus fails.
> [sensor clamping] This is a bit confusing/confused.
Sorry I was unclear. I was targeting a misconception that the Sun is itself yellow, and only appears white because it's brightness causes cone saturation. And being puzzled by "Coming up with [...] named color [for a bright source] is hard"... but punt.
> A lot of 1:1 attention from an expert mentor/tutor [...] isn’t considered economical for widespread adoption
One nifty possibility is hybrid computer-human systems providing this via AR/VR avatars. Extreme personalized learning. Just having eye tracking data gives a lot of insight into attention and interest.
> “learn how to solve exercises in a typical introductory physics textbook”
There's a story of a long-existing end-of-chapter problem, in a popular physics textbook. A problem that survived multiple new-edition reviews, and presumably some use. And one question it raises is, should we consider all the physics professors, graduate students, and students, who plug-and-chugged the problem to the in-the-answer-book "correct" result, should we consider those a successful understanding and application of the ideal gas law? Or should we reserve "success" to describe the presumably rare recognition, that the numbers described solid Argon?
If the former, is our objective then a variant of Indian-style "memorize and regurgitate without understanding"? Just with plug-and-chug added? And might we be better off not pretending otherwise?
If the latter, there would seem a misalignment between that objective and our current effort allocation and testing.
> so long as everyone is clear on how it relates to the world.
And that's the question which prompted my thought. One perspective is "transferable understanding is our educational goal, and we're abjectly failing at it, and worse, we're so dysfunctional, we're not even really trying". An alternative is, "we've an ecology of goals, of which actually understanding the physical world turns out to be a very low priority... we're just often less than transparent about reporting our actual collective goals". And so I wondered... What if everyone was clear on how our science education content doesn't relate to understanding the physical world? Might that clarity yield additional points of leverage for change?
> Light has a spectrum, and thus a color, regardless of where the light came from. And can be so bright as to appear to the eye white, or so dim as to appear dark gray (rods vs cones), also regardless.
was no longer the conversation with the 5-year-old. I would call those two sentences ‘confused’ for pretty much any audience, but obviously a conversation with a 5-year-old isn’t going to get too deep into the weeds about definitions.
* * *
> getting to actionable "you have to start with at least the basics" implies an ability to successfully execute that approach.
Fair enough. But someone who doesn’t have the background to more or less properly explain the basics should expect some criticism when they completely ignore them.
> My experience is that it requires vastly greater effort, and domain expertise, than is currently considered non-insane, just for the associated content creation.
There are plenty of people with a solid basic understanding of whatever subject you might point to. The problem is more that folks making materials for beginners are (often) not part of that group, and in many cases should be leaving the job to someone with more expertise.
I don’t think someone has to be a cutting edge researcher (or tenured professor) in order to do a good job explaining the basics about scientific topics. They should at least read the introductory material aimed at scientists though.
> [1:1 instruction] via AR/VR avatars
I am not holding my breath. I expect videos, readings, interactive diagrams, better programming environments, ... will more likely be helpful than future-VR-Clippy.
But it’s hard to substitute for human interaction with someone competent.
> we're just often less than transparent about reporting our actual collective goals
Well the first goal is more or less babysitting so that parents can go to work. But this doesn’t sound too inspiring.
> “Color” is by definition a perceptual response [...] Objects don’t inherently have a color.
"Dad, what color is my shirt?" "Well son, it’s hard to give it a color label, but let’s say it looks ‘white’. Objects don’t inherently have a color. Under differently circumstances, lit differently, or seen through filters, or by people with different eye genetics, they can look quite different. Illuminated by a red flashlight, your shirt would look red!" :) Ok, sure.
But for me, that doesn't quite make "yellow" (or "red" or "it doesn't have a color" or "it's rainbow color") into nicely reasonable answers for a 5-year old's "What color is my <white> shirt?" Nor for their "What color is my <white> Sun?" Especially not for the Sun, given the local unavailability of similarly-scaled red flashlights.
And once you have a spectra, you have chromaticity, however crufty Color Matching Functions are. And thus at least one reasonable definition of color.
> Of course, if you talk to philosophers or physicists instead of color scientists, you might get alternative definitions.
Yeah, that's an issue. So while I start with a strong agreement with "People are starting with too many misconceptions and gaps in foundational knowledge.", getting to actionable "you have to start with at least the basics" implies an ability to successfully execute that approach.
My experience is that it requires vastly greater effort, and domain expertise, than is currently considered non-insane, just for the associated content creation. To craft usefully-correct and accessible stories about the physical world.
So I while I think (some value of) "teach [from the] basics" could be a transformative improvement in science education, and consider it a profound failure of current science education research that the opportunity doesn't get more work, I wonder if it's currently a viable approach for teaching?
I've a one-liner that goes "Consider a best case. An MIT professor, with a strong background in education, trying to teach their own kid, 1-on-1, with lots of time available (we're getting very counterfactual), about their own area of expertise, indeed their own research focus... the science education content doesn't exist to allow them to succeed". Which may not be useful without additional context, but basically, any non-trivial topic will extend to require someone _else's_ research-level expertise to craft good content, at which point the hypothetical MIT professor hits the pervasive lack of existing technosocial mechanisms to obtain that, and thus is back to crappy content, and thus fails.
> [sensor clamping] This is a bit confusing/confused.
Sorry I was unclear. I was targeting a misconception that the Sun is itself yellow, and only appears white because it's brightness causes cone saturation. And being puzzled by "Coming up with [...] named color [for a bright source] is hard"... but punt.
> A lot of 1:1 attention from an expert mentor/tutor [...] isn’t considered economical for widespread adoption
One nifty possibility is hybrid computer-human systems providing this via AR/VR avatars. Extreme personalized learning. Just having eye tracking data gives a lot of insight into attention and interest.
> “learn how to solve exercises in a typical introductory physics textbook”
There's a story of a long-existing end-of-chapter problem, in a popular physics textbook. A problem that survived multiple new-edition reviews, and presumably some use. And one question it raises is, should we consider all the physics professors, graduate students, and students, who plug-and-chugged the problem to the in-the-answer-book "correct" result, should we consider those a successful understanding and application of the ideal gas law? Or should we reserve "success" to describe the presumably rare recognition, that the numbers described solid Argon?
If the former, is our objective then a variant of Indian-style "memorize and regurgitate without understanding"? Just with plug-and-chug added? And might we be better off not pretending otherwise?
If the latter, there would seem a misalignment between that objective and our current effort allocation and testing.
> so long as everyone is clear on how it relates to the world.
And that's the question which prompted my thought. One perspective is "transferable understanding is our educational goal, and we're abjectly failing at it, and worse, we're so dysfunctional, we're not even really trying". An alternative is, "we've an ecology of goals, of which actually understanding the physical world turns out to be a very low priority... we're just often less than transparent about reporting our actual collective goals". And so I wondered... What if everyone was clear on how our science education content doesn't relate to understanding the physical world? Might that clarity yield additional points of leverage for change?