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Why Toddlers Don't Do What They're Told
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Mar 29, 2009 01:38 AM
from the mine-mine-mine dept.
from the mine-mine-mine dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "New cognitive research shows that 3-year-olds neither plan for the future nor live completely in the present, but instead call up the past as they need it. 'There is a lot of work in the field of cognitive development that focuses on how kids are basically little versions of adults trying to do the same things adults do, but they're just not as good at it yet. What we show here is they are doing something completely different,' says professor Yuko Munakata at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Munakata's team used a computer game and a setup that measures the diameter of the pupil of the eye to determine mental effort to study the cognitive abilities of 3-and-a-half-year-olds and 8-year-olds. The research concluded that while everything you tell toddlers seems to go in one ear and out the other, the study found that toddlers listen, but then store the information for later use. 'For example, let's say it's cold outside and you tell your 3-year-old to go get his jacket out of his bedroom and get ready to go outside,' says doctoral student Christopher Chatham. 'You might expect the child to plan for the future, think "OK it's cold outside so the jacket will keep me warm." But what we suggest is that this isn't what goes on in a 3-year-old's brain. Rather, they run outside, discover that it is cold, and then retrieve the memory of where their jacket is, and then they go get it.'"
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Oh (Score:4, Funny)
So children learn by DOING, I get it.
Man, I'm glad millions of dollars are going to these kinds of studies.
Re:Oh (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep or pretty much anything with an organic brain.
Attempt > Feedback > Store > Next Attempt
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:4, Funny)
Heck you could substitute a slug and you'd get the same result. Only you would also get a cool slug trail also, so that would be cooler.
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Interesting)
Toddlers unlike slugs are also stubborn, selfish and attention seeking. Refusing to put on the coat can also reflect the learnt skill, that refusing instruction results in more attention and becomes a fun game, the toddler training the adult rather than the adult training the toddler.
To really understand the learning patterns of children you need to combine it with the learning patterns of their parents ;).
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno man. My pet slug never does what he's told. All he ever does is eat, eat, eat. And if he doesn't get what he wants then he slimes my shoes. Ick.
My slug directly disproves your point. It's stubborn, selfish and attention seeking. I hate my slug.
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Funny)
One thing toddlers have on slugs, though. Mine didn't die the last time I put salt on it.
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:4, Funny)
P.S. slugs are much worse than toddlers when it comes to putting on their jackets. At least the toddler gets around to it. Slugs just like totally ignore you. When was the last time you saw slug wear a jacket? Never? Thought so.
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Funny)
Same as with children.
-- Hannibal
<ducks/>
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, science is all about gut feelings. Why bother researching anything when we already know what the answers will be. We already know God created the universe in 7 days, why the hell are we wasting billions of dollars on astronomy, biology and physics?
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Funny)
We already know God created the universe in 7 days, why the hell are we wasting billions of dollars on astronomy, biology and physics?
To find out how he did it.
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Insightful)
So children learn by DOING, I get it.
That's a nice summary, but can you describe the cognitive mechanisms by which they "learn by doing" and how that relates to brain development? I bet you can't without doing a study-- at least not in a way that provides anything but conjecture.
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Interesting)
They learn faster when you punctuate their lessons with the back of your hand.
It only subjectively seems like this is true. Objective data indicates otherwise.
Punishment is a strong negative reinforcer to the person doing the punishing (it makes the aversive stimulus stop). This reinforcement influences the punisher's perceptions and makes the punisher feel like the punishment action is being effective. Objectively, however, the punisher is just conditioning him- or herself to hit the kid more.
Parent
Re:Oh (Score:5, Informative)
There's a lot on corporal punishment in the Behavior Analysis literature. Full text of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis is free to the public (up until the most recent 2 issues).
http://seab.envmed.rochester.edu/jaba/ [rochester.edu]
My boss at my last job was a hard-core Applied Behavior Analyst. He continually emphasized with our staff to be aware of our use of aversive stimuli with the residents we worked with and be aware of how they were conditioning us as well as vice versa. I'm almost directly quoting him in that last post.
Parent
Not planning for the future? (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm sounds like me. I also don't do what i am told and i don't plan for the future.
Re:Not planning for the future? (Score:5, Funny)
Not quite. I think living in your mother's basement is a perfect plan for the future.
Parent
Re:Not planning for the future? (Score:4, Funny)
Also sounds like my ex wife. It's not that she planned to have arguments, but everything I said and did was stored for future use against me.
She also stored details of my bank accounts, income and capital assets which she was surprisingly adept at recalling during mediation.
Parent
Lacking in Sardonic Tone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lacking in Sardonic Tone (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
kids and AI's... (Score:5, Insightful)
it makes one ponder how one approach the development of AI's to.
sounds a bit like they are building up a bayesian database of conditions and actions, going more and more specific over time.
like say how cold at first will just be a generic sense of temperature thats uncomfortable (thanks to it driving the surface temperature of the outer skin below whats healthy for the cells that makes up the skin). then later one add specifics like snow on the ground, ice and other indicators. as more of these shows up, one get a stronger sense that its cold outside, and that again triggers conditioned reflexes like wearing thick clothing.
so, to turn this over to AI research, the approach may well be to start with a blank database and a collection of sensors and outputs. then one pile on a generic bayesian filter, and leave it running.
Re:kids and AI's... (Score:5, Insightful)
I second the motion. I'm learning more about AI by watching my daughter grow up than any academic experience. She's 19 months old now, and it's been a true education for me to see what is learned behavior and what is innate. [slashdot.org]
Parent
Re:kids and AI's... (Score:4, Interesting)
When he was about two years old we went to a science museum. There was a school group there at the time with kids sitting on the floor in a circle listening to a teacher. My son seemed to recognise this configuration immediately. He walked over to them, found a gap in the circle and sat down.
Parent
Neanderthal? (Score:4, Insightful)
That Neanderthal comparison continuation at the bottom of the article may not be accurate. For one, we don't know if they had language. Their voice box does not appear as developed as ours, but they may have used sign-language, which may be better for hunting than verbal. And they were not necessarily "more emotional". We just don't know.
Re:Neanderthal? (Score:4, Interesting)
Though their voice box was less developed than ours, it does not mean they did not have language. Their language may have been less refined, sure, but I'd give odds they really did have language of some sort.
Besides, languages can also be whistled, clicked, drummed... the developed voice box surely makes it all the more convenient, but the cognitive abilities required for lanugage use are a tad different matter.
Parent
Sounds like a good system (Score:4, Insightful)
I really wanted to link to The Onion's "Study Reveals: Babies Are Stupid," but this is a far more critical and analytic approach to problems than most people tend to use. Blindly following rules is a horrible way to learn about anything. The best learners, in my experience, take advice into consideration, then try to see if it's good advice, and discover why or why not. Applied to the example from the summary, the kid who thinks "is it really that cold outside? Yes it is, I'll go get my coat" is going to turn out a lot better than the kid who goes straight for the coat, especially at times when the authority figures are wrong.
This is really old news (Score:5, Interesting)
He said that toddlers will always be toddlers; they will always do things that they have been warned against, and perhaps been punished for before, over and over again. The reason, he said, was because toddlers only remember the consequences of their actions after the action. "They don't look ahead at the consequences of the action that they might be about to commit, but rather look back after the action and realise what the likely consequence is going to be."
That was about 9 years ago!
Re:This is really old news (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think that is rubbish.
The pain response has been around for quite a while and is designed specifically to say to us... "That thing you just did... it was dangerous and damaging, DON'T do it again!!". I cannot believe that toddlers are somehow hardwired *not* to follow this piece of sensory advice. I am not a student of this subject, but it just makes good logical sense that there is a part of the brain (active at birth) that does the job of avoiding the repetition of actions that previously generated a painful response.
For this reason, I support so called 'corporal punishment' as a tool for parents to hijack this process to teach kids to avoid behaviors where the end result might otherwise not simply provide a quick 'sting' (like running out into the road), or behaviors that break more complicated rules (like stealing). You certainly cannot reason with children this young and expect them to understand, but you can hijack a basic evolutionary mechanism and use it to your own (and the child's) advantage.
Of course, there is a huge difference between a quick smack to the bottom to instill a sense of danger that is mentally linked with a given action and actually beating children in a way that causes lasting damage. The former is effective, proactive parenting, the latter should be punished to the full extent of the law.
Parent
Re:This is really old news (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether corporal punishment works or not. The issue is the word punishment.. A child can not react to the classical definition of punishment. They can only digest, as you suggest the fact that there is an immediate reaction to walking into a wall, touching a hot plate, etc. Simulating the immediate reaction can only work if it's as consistent. If a child eventually learned that they can sometimes run through a wall with no pain, then they will be all the more encouraged and frustrated when they are only occasionally blocked. Thus the occasional punishment leads them to learn something other than what the evolution-hijacking was intending.
Namely that X + parent == pain, instead of just that X == pain.. If you implement (X,Y,Z,A,J,K) + parent == pain, but X..K by themselves don't, then eventually they learn that it's really parent that equals pain.
Certainly controlling your child's behavior is critical, but just recognize that you need nearly 100% consistency in the experiences of a child to assure discouraged behavior.. Most likely this isn't always practical - thus the unintended side-effects might outweigh the benifits in this case.
I haven't decided which approach I'm going to take just yet.. I only have another couple months. :(
Parent
Choosing 3.5yos was insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
As any parent will tell you, the "terrible twos" are a myth. It's the three-year-olds that have the potent combination of independent ability and lack of responsibility.
I think they should name this study in honor of Bill Cosby's "I dun-no!" sketches.
Same Conclussion, 100 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
What would be more effective would be to somehow try to trigger this reactive function. So don't do something that requires them to plan ahead in their mind, but rather try to highlight the conflict that they are going to face.
The wonderful thing is that this knowledge is already being put into widespread practice today. After "fixing deficient children" and having them score equally to "normal" children on exams, Dr. Montessori was given an opportunity to open a school in a ghetto in Rome. The law at the time would not allow her to work with Elementary aged children because she was not a certified teacher, so she was initially forced to work with children between 3 - 7 yrs. It was there that she came to the same conclusion (and others) about developmental psychology.
The school evolved into an environment where the children of the younger plane (3-6) could use autodidactic materials in order to "trigger this reactive function" and "highlight the conflicts that they were going to face". Even the teachers in the school were instructed on how to become part of this environment, while guiding the children to new challenges. This is in stark contrast to the "teacher-centric" environments that we still have today, in which the teacher tries to control the activities through adult reasoning and psychology.
Towards the end of her life, after working with all ages, she considered that developmental psychology could be looked on as 4 distinct age groups, she called "plains of development": (0 - 6), (6 - 12), (12 - 18), (18 - 24). Each has a number of characteristics and tendencies that strengthen or become marginalized depending on their natural development. These tendencies are strongest in the middle (which is why Dr. Munakata's research worked so well), and blend in between.
Dr. Montessori gave up her career as a doctor to create materials, open schools, train teachers, and put her findings into useful practice. I'd recommend anyone with children to look into it further. As with Dr. Munakata's research, there's much that can be done in both home and school. There's a fairly good, quick overview from Milwaukee Public schools [k12.wi.us] where many public schools were converted into Montessori schools. Most Montessori schools you'll find are private.
But be warned, the name "Montessori" is not copyrighted, and many use it to make money. I'd suggest starting with schools associated with AMI (Association Montessori Internationale [this is the association Dr. Montessori created herself]), NAMTA (North American Montessori Teacher's Association), or AMS (American Montessori Society), as they seem to be the more reputable organizations.
The Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] mainly focuses on (3-6) education, and other aspects are sparse. One book that attempts to explain the approach through modern psychological findings is: "Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius [google.com]"
But probably the best thing to do, after a bit of web research, would probably be to visit a school run by AMI or AMS trained teachers and see for yourself.
Re:And that's different how? (Score:4, Funny)
You're right - certainly... and I completely agree.
I believe the speaker just became tripped up when they went for an explanation, however.
What they meant to say was "Uggbga gholps belam gonitoa slhudipp-ti." - Which of course clearly shows that the toddler's train of thought was not only reasonable but well framed and acted upon.
Parent
Re:And that's different how? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this research is meant to show a couple of things of import that you are seeming to gloss over in your criticism.
For one, the difference between a lazy teenager ignoring what their parents told them and a toddler doing the same thing is that a lazy teenager IS choosing to ignore their parents - there is nothing different going on in their brains, they just don't want to do what they are told.
A toddler, on the other hand, literally CAN'T do what they are told in certain instances, because they don't have the same thought process that adults have (which is what this research is trying to show). It's not that they are choosing to ignore their parents, they just don't have the reasoning capability at that age to comprehend complex conditional statements like "When I tell you it is cold outside get a jacket"
I think the point of the research is that many parents expect things from their very young children that are just not possible. They think their kid is being stubborn or misbehaving when it is just developmental. So many parents get frustrated and angry at their child when they should just realize that they just have to wait for the kid to grow up a bit.
Parent
Re:And that's different how? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the point of the research is that many parents expect things from their very young children that are just not possible. They think their kid is being stubborn or misbehaving when it is just developmental. So many parents get frustrated and angry at their child when they should just realize that they just have to wait for the kid to grow up a bit.
I try to give my kids the chance to get more experience when they don't do as I need them to do. For instance, when we go out (winter time now) I tell my kids to start putting clothes on. My older ones (5) obviously get it, whereas my younger ones 2.5 sometimes do, and sometimes run away laughing.
So I take one of the smaller kids and put their clothes on. Once done I take the other one, start doing the same thing. If they cooperate we're done in 5 mins or so (4 kids), whereas if they don't it can take ages.
So if my younger ones don't cooperate I tell them that daddy will open the door soon and it will get cold unless they let me dress them. Eventually I do, they go "cooooold" and I get to dress them right away. :)
So it seems I'm doing things right. I give them the chance to try and reason in their own way, and finally I give them proper incentive to do as I suggested in the first place by introducing nice motivating sensory stimuli. ;)
Parent
Re:And that's different how? (Score:5, Funny)
So basically your kid is like a programming language with poor looping support
Parent
Re:And that's different how? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of some really great research I read about in relation to morality.
Before the age of I think ~3.5 children are unable to see the world from any other perspective but their own. If you run a test where you do something that the child would know about but someone not present wouldn't, they would be unable to understand the concept that they know something someone else doesn't.
This applies strongly to empathy where a child is incapable of empathising with something else unless they themselves are feeling it.
So when you ask a very small child "How do you think it makes so and so feel when you..." they have absolutely no clue. They incapable of creating a scenario in their head where they're on the receiving ends of their actions. Essentially they're little sociopaths. But it also means a lot of parents waste a lot of time and breath trying to get their children to understand something their brains just simply can't process. You can only give them very specific rules which they can understand. If you hit Tommy then you'll have to sit in time out. As opposed to trying to explain to your child "it makes tommy feel bad when you hit him."
Parent
Re:And that's different how? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you (and a lot of posters here) are missing a basic point. Which is that you can have your own kids, observe them as much as you like or whatever, but unless you do a very careful and controlled experiment, you cannot distinguish what you think they are doing versus what is actually going on in their brain.
That is the difference that distinguishes science from superstition. The whole history of science is chock full of examples where reality turns out to be different from intuition. Even if your intuition is actually correct in this case, simply knowing for sure that your intuition is correct is useful knowledge. And without a doubt, there are some details about the functioning of your child's brain where your intuition is completely wrong. The process of science is figuring out exactly what that is.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:4, Insightful)
You're pretty stupid. Science is methodological and precise to avoid relying on "common sense" because common sense often is not actually correct. Also, it's often easy for you to see ahead of time that this seemed obvious, but in fact was not. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection? Seems obvious to us now (although given the stupidity of your post I wouldn't doubt if you deny it!) but in fact took quite a long time for us to get a good theory of evolution down. Hell, it took a long time to get rid of phlogiston and the ether and "animal spirits." It took us an Einstein to get relativity!
This discovery has very applicable uses, particularly in the general processes of the cognitive processes of toddlers, brain development, and memory storage and retrieval.
Academics, practicing science, are more in the "real world" than you are, because they need rigor and experimentation. It seems anecdote and casual observation is good enough for you.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Interesting)
When future parents are awaiting their first child, I hope they spend some time to learn how to handle small children. I don't expect them to study and evaluate original research papers, but original research papers sooner or later (usually: later) make it into what we call the "common sense". Therefore, scientific research may indeed help.
Additionally (I didn't go into the researcher's biographies), maybe they got the idea for their project while observing their own kids.
Disclaimer: I am a neuroscientist and I indeed believe that lots of behavioral and, in fact, neurological research is utter rubbish, but this belief doesn't invalidate sound studies.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Insightful)
When future parents are awaiting their first child, I hope they spend some time to learn how to handle small children.
They can study it all they want, memorizing countless tomes of wisdom on parenting, and it still won't adequately prepare them for parenting. Nothing but the actual experience of raising a child yourself will prepare you for it, regardless of how intelligence you might be. This introduces a bit of a problem, as you probably interpret this idea to mean that no parent on this planet knows what they're doing until they learn from mistakes made along the way.
On that, you'd be absolutely right.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Interesting)
Very true.
I like the idea of "it takes a village to raise a child", even though it really isn't practical these days. The good part of that idea is that half the village has probably already had kids and learned a few things along the way, and can possibly offer you some advice should you choose to listen. That's the other part of the problem - parents start out with a firm idea of how it's going to be, and won't listen to reason even when it's not working (speaking from experience :)
Also, given the smaller families these days and the lesser contact with close family once you 'leave the nest', the first real exposure a lot of couples have to a new baby is when it pops out of one of them. It's one hell of a steep learning curve.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Informative)
Hm-m-m. I don't see you offering your own experience with your own children. Allow me to suggest that until you've raised children, your studying is just so much academic bullshit.
"... the parenting they will disperse is based on the parenting they received. Children trigger countless issues in parents, resulting in all kinds of child abuse."
First, people vary wildly in their levels of self awareness about themselves and their history, and are influenced in varying degrees. Broad statements like this are simply meaningless bullshit. Second, it demeans real abusive situations to label, as you seem to do, any parenting practice that differs from your ideal as "abusive". Meet up with some kid who has bones broken, or who has lived with an end stage alcoholic who abuses her sexually, and then come back and tell me that it's abusive to swat a toddler on the rear. I'm not defending spanking, as I don't think it's effective, but your declaration simply paints a picture of you as ignorant and strident.
Calling a tantrum a 'nervous breakdown' is putting the child up on a bit of a pedestal. Kids have tantrums because they get frustrated that they aren't getting what they want. In many cases, it's a chosen and controllable behavior. If you had been around kids, you'd know this. In some situations, they learn that the behavior indeed gets them a positive result. A nervous breakdown, whatever that is, is a more persistant and unhealthy condition that indicates a problem with the person having the breakdown. Tantrums, on the other hand, are healthy, age appropriate behavior. You may not like them, but they are entirely normal. If whatever you are studying is comparing tantrums to adult nervous breakdowns, I think you should question your source. -Every- toddler has tantrums. Very few people have nervous breakdowns.
I'm reluctant to proclaim too much on what "must" be done as a parent. What worked for my wife and me was clear definition of boundaries, consistent enforcement of transgressions of boundaries, and age appropriate communication with the kids about why the boundaries existed. Age appropriate discussion with a screaming 2 year old is picking him up and carrying him out of the grocery store and strapping him in the car seat.
You sound pretty willing to proclaim what "most parenting education" is and does. I wonder if you have any experience that would make such a statement meaningful. After 17 years as a parent, your statement does not fit my observations. Further, your apparent belief that parenting should not involve dominating the child at least at times seems naive. Do you recommend not dominating your toddler when he tries to run into the street? Should we not control our child's willfulness and make them wear a bicycle helmet?
I think you should get a dog, and learn how to live with it, before you try to have children. You're reading some stuff that is going to give you trouble. Living with a dog will teach you the error of your ways, and when you end up with a neurotic and misbehaving dog, you won't do as much harm as when you do it with a kid.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Interesting)
No. ;)
Concerning behavioral research (my career has nothing particular to do with this, I'm a molecular biologist concerned with early brain development), there are repeatedly studies presented here on /. with crappy conclusions (and good commentaries from the /. crowd).
And I think the current study is indeed insightful, because I always become desperate when confronted with small children that simply don't listen to my arguments. Maybe I can use a different approach when handling kids in the future. (Yes, you guessed it, I'm the child-less sort of /.ter I have already described [slashdot.org]. ;))
Concerning neurological research, I won't elaborate in detail. Not that my boss would ever read /., but I'd rather stay on the safe and AC side. It works like this:
Some time later:
No, while this narrative is somewhat comprehensive and prepared for easy digestion by the reader, this is not made up. Actually, the boss' comments are somewhat more harsh at times.
And our lab is fairly well known in the research area in question, our boss has some good friends in competing labs, and since many results are not reproducible, I believe that many of the competing labs have similar standards of scientific methodology.
What could I do about this? I have found my niche where I think I can work somewhat untainted by the boss; and in some time I will leave. I know the /. crowd will shout and throw stones and evil words on me, but to bring up proven evidence that our lab's research is not as scientific as it seems at first glance, and, furthermore, to make this a public scandal, needs you to be very, very strong and committed. And since we are all small ones, those who'll make it public will lose their jobs and find no other one, afterwards. That's like it is, face it.
No more comments from my side.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:4, Insightful)
Concerning behavioral research (my career has nothing particular to do with this, I'm a molecular biologist concerned with early brain development), there are repeatedly studies presented here on /. with crappy conclusions (and good commentaries from the /. crowd).
When you say "crappy conclusions," do you mean conclusions that are poorly supported by the evidence, or conclusions that are well supported by the evidence but not that interesting, or what?
I've rarely seen much in the way of good commentaries on science from the crowd here. Sometimes a few people who actually know the area in question will post some insightful comments. But the rest generally respond to the popular report that's been posted, which almost invariably misses the point of the research. I'd be curious to hear what most Slashdotters think the take-home message was meant to be from the study under discussion here.
As a behavioral researcher, I certainly sympathize with your contempt for the field. But at the same time, I think there are good reasons to ask scientific questions that involve behavior (even more so neurology). The fact that some people do it poorly doesn't change that, nor does the fact that some people prefer an extreme reductionist approach.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
Absolutely not! If we went by your standard of evidence, we would consider there to be a mountain of evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. Nowadays it's easy to see that it's the other way round, but if we went by your standard of evidence it's doubtful that our collective scientific knowledge would actually have gotten far enough to discover that.
You're no scientist and have no idea what scientists actually do.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Informative)
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
Absolutely not! If we went by your standard of evidence, we would consider there to be a mountain of evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. Nowadays it's easy to see that it's the other way round, but if we went by your standard of evidence it's doubtful that our collective scientific knowledge would actually have gotten far enough to discover that.
You're no scientist and have no idea what scientists actually do.
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
The correct answer here is that some engineers are scientists and some aren't. Among those engineers who are scientists, there are basic scientists, whose aim it is to understand the principles of engineering, and applied scientists, whose aim it is to understand how our knowlege of engineering interacts with real world problems.
That's the cartoon version, of course, but it should clear up some unnecessary confusion.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they're not. They "merely" apply science to specific well-known problems.
I take offense to that. Although a lot of engineering involves solving well-known problems, there's a good deal of "never-before-done, at the conceptual stage, we're not sure if it's even possible" problems. Yes, we still use well known physics in the design process, but calling us "not scientists" is a little bit like saying modern mathematicians are not mathematicians because all they're doing is applying well-known math to solve their new problems.
Good engineers apply the scientific method in their design process. When creating something nobody has done before, they examine previous work, they construct a "hypothesis" of how to best solve the problem, they perform tests and simulations to make sure their assumptions are correct, and then they analyze the data, draw a conclusion (create a plan), and build the thing.
if we went by your standard of evidence it's doubtful that our collective scientific knowledge would actually have gotten far enough
I agree with you in principle. You can't take anything for granted, common sense is often wrong. And that applies in engineering a LOT.
If we went by your standard of evidence, we would consider there to be a mountain of evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth. Nowadays it's easy to see that it's the other way round
However, you picked the worst example ever to make your point, because you just used a "common-sense, everyone thinks this is right, but technically it's not" example. It's not necessarily "wrong" to say the Sun goes around the Earth. It's inconvenient for calculations because the center of mass of the earth-sun system lies inside the Sun. It doesn't mean that you can't come up with an elaborate mathematical model with the Earth as the reference center of the solar system (and it has been done), it just means that you'll be doing too much damn work.
There's no absolute reference points in the universe. Picking the Sun as the center of the solar system is the equivalent of using the cylindrical coordinate system instead of the cartesian one for problems that make sense. Things get a whole lot easier, and the math is way simpler and more elegant.
Parent
Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe so, but weak empirical evidence. Even if you're completely accurate in describing what you see, and that assumption is often a stretch, your conditions are likely not controlled enough to isolate anything in particular--and it may conflict with what somebody ELSE sees, which opens a completely different can of worms.
It sounds like in your line of work, simply knowing that the blueprint you got handed won't work in the real world is enough. That's perfectly fine; everybody is concerned with different particulars depending on their own perspective. What you have is a conclusion: "No, you're an idiot. This is faulty." From your perspective that's important. From a scientist (or engineer's), it's a starting point: "Why is this faulty? What can we learn from it? How can we avoid the same mistake later?" Neither of you are wrong, neither of you are wasting your time, but at the same time if you two swapped positions everything would likely go to hell pretty quick.
Anecdote and casual observation are great things to direct us on what we need to study rigorously; they're not a study in themselves.
True, but that's not what this is. Hao Wu basically said (paraphrasing) "parents have known this for ages, if scientists could get any they would have known too!"
Aside from being a bit of a douchebag, his statement isn't particularly rigorous. Parents have known WHAT for ages? That children don't listen? That little kids have particular trouble listening? That's spectacular, and it's a good jumping-off point for exactly the kind of study that was done -- but it's not particularly meaningful in itself. I noticed the sky looks blue, too; that's meaningless as well. Somebody coming along and telling me about white light and wavelengths and giving me the reason WHY it's blue can be important. It chains a statement like "the sky is blue" into any number of potential discussions ranging from anatomy to physics to meteorology.
Knowing that little kids have trouble listening is interesting, and frankly even people without kids have observed that (making the little pot-shot comment about scientists not having kids distasteful,) but what's more interesting is to know WHY--the study seems to be pushing the idea that it's literally a functional difference in their brain. That's cool. Can we do anything about it? That might be useful. Why does it happen and what changes as they age that makes it stop? That might be useful too, in any number of applications and particularly for people who have any sort of learning disorders that we might find have similar physical causes and might respond to similar treatments. Is this just a lack of life experiences, or are we literally altering the way the brain works as we get older?
What your parent poster said was correct: Science is necessary to validate our observations because so many things we have "known" to be true have turned out to be false. I'm not big on name calling, and wouldn't have taken that tact myself, but saying that science wastes its time by studying things we "know" does seem illogical at best.
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Re:Thank you Einstein (Score:4, Insightful)
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No way (Score:4, Interesting)
My three year old has a piggy bank (actually it is Thomas the Tank Engine, not a pig) with about $55 in it.
I can't think of one big name financial CEO who managed to make even half that much profit.
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