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Science in the NewsThe Town VoiceThe Complex Made Simple

 

Which Learning Deficiency Might Be the Culprit?

By Arlon Staywell
RICHMOND    February 2021 — American society is averse to labeling people in ways that imply deficiencies or disabilities.  For example the term "retarded" is no longer used professionally.  While it is generally recognized that some people have very different abilities and talents, there is an assumption that all people are worthy for some significant role or other.

However recent news is dominated by rather unsuccessful attempts to incorporate various notions of proper adjustment to society.

Various "sides" believe their opposition is mentally incapable and requires force of government to achieve any success.  Yet there is that pressure to avoid casting disparaging labels.  At some point it can appear the time has finally come for the "teacher" to send the "unruly student" to the principal's office.  That has resulted in booting people off various media, despite the customary acceptance of any comments made by adults.

... recent news is dominated by rather unsuccessful attempts to incorporate various notions of proper adjustment to society.

There now appears an urgent need to sort out who are the teachers and who are the unruly students.  This could be surprising.  It should serve here to examine the different types of learning and success in life.  One essential means of arriving at a conclusion is by thorough individual testing and investigation.  Another means, just as essential, is acceptance of some long established finding or conclusion.  The latter is necessary because there isn't enough time to test everything over and over.  In better times with better leaders it can save much time, resource and heartache if people simply do what they are told.  For quite many jobs they are preferred employees.

The acceptance of long established findings, sometimes quite blind acceptance, is also known as "faith" and has especially lately been regarded as too error prone to be allowed to continue by some elements of society.  There are people who believe religion is the problem and "science" is the solution and who would eradicate religion.  Read more here.  When it is noted that automatic acceptance of rather many rules in life is simply necessary because life is too short to test everything again and again, the people seeking to eradicate religion will balk and claim that their faith is somehow different, better and ought to be called something else like "trust" or "confidence."  Significant evidence shows that faith in science is no less error prone than faith in anything else.

For example while guidelines that prevent the virus from ever reaching people in the first place can be for the time at least more effective than vaccines that attempt to disable the virus after the fact, many people have a childish faith, or "trust" or "confidence" in current vaccines that can lead, especially in these early stages, to more "asymptomatic spreading."  That would be something like more infants dying in car accidents if with infant restraints so many more infants are taken on car rides.

Identifying who are the unruly students and who are the teachers might be easier if the years before the recent pandemic are considered.  It has been obvious for decades that notions of the assembly of life from lifeless matter are impossible with any agencies found in nature.  There has been a growing movement in education to recognize this truth in the classroom.  But the unruly students took charge of the matter Kitzmiller v. Dover.  They "kicked out" those teachers.  The unruly students have taken charge of most of the internet and remain in charge today.  The case for the school system made in the trial was not the modern case, otherwise the school system would have won.

Which Learning Deficiency Characterizes the Trump Base?

If asked what about Trump is most offensive many would say that he is a "racist."  While there might be a few racists who for whatever misconceptions feel aligned with Trump, the problem is rather that Trump has failed to do his own work.  In better times, with better immediately previous leaders, his blind acceptance of various political stances would not be a problem.  In these times it is necessary to apply more math, science, and other philosophical disciplines.  Although he is "right" about certain details it is entirely an accident.  He lost "fair and square" because of the general confusion about what is and is not science.  Although some people were obviously duped into voting one way or another, it is still very highly likely, in this country anyway, that their votes were counted exactly as they noted on their ballots.

"Republicans" who believe Trump was "cheated" out of the election and still follow him are obviously too ignorant of the math, science, and other philosophical disciplines for any public office.  Democrats who believe that are right about that much however wrong they might be about everything else.

Trump failed to put the unruly students in order because he is an unruly student himself.

The problem rather escalated.  Especially since the pandemic the people with a blind faith in science have become overbearing.  It can be difficult to see any fault in blind faith in science in a pandemic.  It is there though, it was there before the pandemic, and unless that problem is properly addressed it will be worse after.