Things All Adults Should Know

[dsrtao]

Dimensional analysis.
Orders of magnitude.
How to estimate.
Significant figures.
Error bars.
The meaning of "derivative with regard to time".
Basic predicate logic.
Rate of growth is constrained by the availability of the rarest requirement.
Correlation is not causation, especially with humans.
Food and water cycles.
Humans are not inherently rational, but they can fake it when they're trying.

Comments

[seawasp]

Oh well. I've never considered myself an adult.

[dsrtao]

Which of these is not something you know?

[seawasp]

Dimensional Analysis isn't familiar to me. How many dimensions are we talking about, and why is it put up there with things like knowing ROMs?

Not sure I know basic predicate logic or food and water cycles, depending on what you mean by them. (i.e., I may know them, just not the term)

[dsrtao]

dimensional analysis: you have 8 bits to a byte, 1048576 bytes to a megabyte, and 3600 seconds to an hour. Convert 10 MB/hour to bits/second.

predicate logic: aka Boolean algebra, aka formal logic.
p OR q IMPLIES r
p is TRUE

therefore r is TRUE

food cycles: plants use photosynthesis to turn carbon dioxide and sunlight into oxygen and sugar, some of which they store as starch. Herbivores eat plants and produce manure...

water cycles: water is evaporated by the sun into gas in the atmosphere which forms clouds, condenses into rain when the temperature drops sufficiently, and flows into streams and rivers and oceans...

[seawasp]

Ah. The first is just algebra plus what I always just called "units", short for "track your units".

I sorta know formal logic, in bits. But not the language thereof (i.e., I don't read Boolean statements easily).

Okay, the one I know as "food chain" or sometimes "food web" these days. The water cycle I do know.

[siderea]

There's one term you use that I'm unclear what you mean by: "should".

[dsrtao]

expands to "in my opinion, it is highly advantageous for themselves and for society as a whole that these things be universally grokked"

[siderea]

Do you see that condition being plausibly or possibly approximated?

[dsrtao]

I think of it as a goal for which to aim, rather than something I expect to happen outside of the realm of fiction.

Sea Wasp, above, didn't recognize the nomenclature but has the knowledge. That's what I expect from most people I interact with. I am disappointed when I find it is not so. Such a disappointment was the basis for my initial post.

[siderea]

D., I think you're the bees knees, a superior man of generous heart, contemplative mind, and noble action. And I say this to you with great admiration and affection for you, and deep concern: in this moment, you sound really awful.

It is not that I don't think your listed desiderata are undesirable. But your specifying of them for all human kind in this way, in a world in which many people have trouble reading -- and by "world" I mean "greater Boston area" -- and balancing a check book, and acquiring sufficient job skills to do other than unskilled labor, in which 99% of the people have lower IQs than yours through no fault of their own... this sounds like the worst sort of ivory-tower Marie Antoinettism.

You live and function in a world which seems enormous and varied to you, but, please believe me when I testify, is in the greater social context a very small and homogeneous social bubble, one enormously blessed with all sorts of good fortune which has not come to others. Indeed, entrance into that bubble is substantially regulated by gatekeeper institutions such as colleges and employers, specifically to exclude those who do not have those excellent qualities fortune bestows and they desire of their membership.

Some sizeable part of the populace will never, no matter how wonderful their education, learn the things you list. They may (and often do) have other gifts -- gifts of character, gifts of ability -- besides those of intellectual comprehension. I think to tell them that this is what they should do with themselves is somewhat insulting to them and the talents they do have to contribute.

I do not think you meant to insult them. I think it never occurred to you that they were there, as part of "all adults", to be insulted. You swung your hand in gesture, unaware someone was standing next to you to be struck.

And I appreciate your frustration. I have my own list (essay in process!) of things that I think that other people learning would make my life more pleasant. I know what it is to be exasperated that someone hasn't learned something one feels is reasonably expects of a person of that station.

So can I propose a compromise? "All college-educated people should know"?

[dsrtao]

How about this: I would like it if everyone could learn all those things. I recognize that some people can't. I want everyone who can to have the opportunity to learn, and everyone who can't, to have the opportunity to learn as much as they can.

Does that make me less awful?