I think my history teacher's promoting woo

[tkingdoll]

2) There is a guy named Sheldrake who thinks that dogs have a strong enough sense of intuition to predict what their owners will do. My teacher tells me Sheldrake's studies have been replicated.

Your teacher is 100% right, he does believe that, and his studies have been replicated. His findings, however, have not. And there are some interesting discrepancies in his published data between sources. His paper says one thing and his book says another.

http://www.richardwiseman.com/Jaytee.html
http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=849

 

[aggle-rithm]

I seem to remember it was about light being diffracted by two parallel slits and causing an interference pattern. As the light approaches a state where only one photon is emitted at a time the interference pattern will still be registered.
A single photon of light going through both slits at once. Wow.
When the experimenters tried to find the slit the photon went through the diffraction pattern no longer appeared. The photons went through only one slit. Double wow.

The important thing to remember is that these weird effects only occur at the subatomic level. In the macroscopic world we all know and love, the effects cancel each other out; and the net result is that everything we observe follows the normal laws of cause and effect. That's what the woos fail to understand about quantum mechanics.

 

[aggle-rithm]

though you might want to think twice about it if you want to be popular

I still remember a nerdy student in my high school chemistry class who was shouted down by the rest of the class when he disagreed with the teacher who said that a negative exponent meant the number was less than zero. People hate a know-it-all.

(The teacher realized her mistake after a few minutes, but the impression had been made.)

 

[fuelair]

Don't go that route.
You disagree with what he's telling you, then say so.
Say it politely, firmly and explain your rasoning.
If he's a decent teacher, he'll hear you out and argue back.
Could be this is a learning opportunity for everyone.

If you are going on to college, bear in mind that you will be expected to think for yourself, not to passively absorb what you are told there. You have a chance to practise. Get in there.
ETA- A useful tactic is toi ask him to explain IN DETAIL what he means. This is damn hard with woo reasoning and the person usually ends in a muddle, which is when you go in for the kill.

I wish my teachers had given me the chance. The buggers were always right.

And, if you pass the AP test, there's not much playing with grades that the teacher can do. If you do not pass it though.....

 

[sophia8]

The important thing to remember is that these weird effects only occur at the subatomic level. In the macroscopic world we all know and love, the effects cancel each other out; and the net result is that everything we observe follows the normal laws of cause and effect. That's what the woos fail to understand about quantum mechanics.

Yup - I've had "But quantum mechanics proves it!" quoted at me to about everything from ghosts to reincarnation. But ask them to explain how QM proves it and watch their eyes glaze over......

 

[Foolmewunz]

I sent an e-mail to the principal. I don't want to get my teacher fired like that other guy, though---I just want them to talk.

In fairness to my history teacher, he is very far from being the most...uh..."wooish" person here at my school. My 8th grade science teacher was tons worse; she would preach Christian stuff almost every class and she had an entire bookcase stuffed with the Left Behind series and creationist tomes. Needless to say, evolution was never explored in that class, which is a pity, since I have found it's one of the most fun subjects that can be taught in a science class. Thankfully, all my science teachers after her have been wonderful; my 10th grade bio teacher even gave a lecture on why he refused to teach ID despite being a personal Christian.

ETA: BTW, this happens to be in Hong Kong. Other than some members of the faculty here at school, I haven't noticed much of a fundy problem here. Either there is a problem that I simply haven't detected yet, or the local Confucian and Taoist religions don't inspire as much fervor and anti-science fanaticism as the Abrahamic faiths. We're also a private school, so presumably my parents don't have to support it with their tax dollars.

Bolded part....

We're taking over the world! Chris Gallaga(sic), RabbiSatan(another young one - he's about 20, I believe), yourself, me.... 4 down and 7,999,996 to go! We'll run this place, soon!

Back on topic. Nope, although you get the born-again Filippinas praising the lord down in Central on Sundays (while their naughty sisters are drinking it up in the discos at two in the afternoon), there aren't a whole lot of fundies here. I do have my pet Jehovah's Witness at work, though (I'm the envy of all the guys in the States, 'cuz even if they had one, they couldn't trot her out and play with her without getting fired for PC issues).

I wouldn't say I've encountered a lot of woo-ish teachers here. (Other than the native Chinese superstitions that you get in a lot of the public schools.)

 

[LostAngeles]

In Search of Schrödinger's Cat by John Gribbin is a book I read almost twenty years ago. This book explains about how an observer can alter an experiments outcome.
I seem to remember it was about light being diffracted by two parallel slits and causing an interference pattern. As the light approaches a state where only one photon is emitted at a time the interference pattern will still be registered.
A single photon of light going through both slits at once. Wow.
When the experimenters tried to find the slit the photon went through the diffraction pattern no longer appeared. The photons went through only one slit. Double wow.
I think the book is still in print and is well worth searching out.

I myself have a copy somewhere. My friend gave it to me for Christmas in 1997 after a horrible, horrible chemistry class (for me, at least, but that's another tale). Apparently there was something going on in the class with the Schroedinger Wave Equation. I don't remember.

Now, I can do basic general chem, however.

As Gate2501 says, it's not just that observing alters properties, the particles simply don't have an absolute value for certain pairs of properties, position and momentum being the best known. No matter how clever you try to make your measurements, it will never be possible to know both position and momentum above a certain precision at the same time.

Of course, as with all science, the situation can always change if it turns out that current theory isn't correct, but as far as we understand at the moment, there are some things that really are governed by probability.

I certainly agree that this teacher should be reported. No matter what your opinion of this nonsense, the fact is that it is nothing to do with the class he's supposed to be teaching.

W00t! Thank you! I thought it was something like that.

I don't think the teacher should be reported, but the teacher should at least be challenged in class and if things look potentially retaliatory, go to the principal.

 

[godless dave]

He also asserted two things that I am very skeptical about:

1) Studies have confirmed that people's intentions and consciousness can affect the outcomes of random number generators;

You were right to be skeptical. That's a flat-out lie.

 

[LostAngeles]

You were right to be skeptical. That's a flat-out lie.

You know, that makes me wonder...

One-time-pads, used correctly, are unbreakable. This requires a sufficiently random key, if I remember the beginning of this quarter correctly. If we can influence random number generators, shouldn't we be able to use this to break the one-time-pad by concentrating on the chosen key generator?

Likewise, when I ask Maple for a random 100 digit number to then get the next prime when I do RSA for homework, shouldn't, "Eve," be able to break it by concentrating on Maple and affecting what it gives me?

And when I pick primes to do the discrete logs too.

...

Yeah, shouldn't that totally cock-up cryptography, asks the student taking her first cryptography class.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Are there dead bodies and spider webs in it?

 

[Complexity]

Report the bastard.

 

[AmyWilson]

My teacher thinks that we don't perceive how "connected" we and life on earth are with the rest of the cosmos

Why not? You accept evolution. God forbid your teacher might believe in things beyond both time and the material world.

 

[Cuddles]

You know, that makes me wonder...

One-time-pads, used correctly, are unbreakable. This requires a sufficiently random key, if I remember the beginning of this quarter correctly. If we can influence random number generators, shouldn't we be able to use this to break the one-time-pad by concentrating on the chosen key generator?

Likewise, when I ask Maple for a random 100 digit number to then get the next prime when I do RSA for homework, shouldn't, "Eve," be able to break it by concentrating on Maple and affecting what it gives me?

And when I pick primes to do the discrete logs too.

...

Yeah, shouldn't that totally cock-up cryptography, asks the student taking her first cryptography class.

The problem with the claims of affecting random number generators is that the effect they claim is so small. If you can get 1% of the numbers to be non-random, the other 99% is still random, so a message would still be unbreakable. The other problem is that they claim that the effect is on the generator while it's doing the generating. Unless you know exactly where and when the pad is generated, you won't be able to anything about it at all.

This really highlights the big problem with these claims and studies - they're simply looking for psychics of the gaps. It's exactly the same as the god of the gaps, where things gods used to be invoked to explain have now been explained without gods, so the concept of god shrinks to a substanceless, powerless "We can't explain this little bit here yet, so it must be god.". No-one has ever claimed to have such an ability, no-one has ever seen evidence of such an ability and no-one has ever even had the chance to observe the effects. The only reason they are even looking here is because there is nowhere else left. They believe psychic powers exist, but every single power that has been claimed has failed miserably when tested. All that is left is looking for an effect so small that no-one would ever notice it, or care if they did. It's all rather sad really.

 

[aggle-rithm]

Why not? You accept evolution. God forbid your teacher might believe in things beyond both time and the material world.

He can believe he's a spotted snarklepuss for all I care. He just has an obligation to teach his students ACTUAL KNOWLEDGE rather than his own fantasies, even if others share them.

 

[aggle-rithm]

2) There is a guy named Sheldrake who thinks that dogs have a strong enough sense of intuition to predict what their owners will do. My teacher tells me Sheldrake's studies have been replicated.

It's really funny that people are so self-centered that they can't imagine other species having a different perception of their environment than we do. If WE can't hear it, see it, or smell it, then the only possible way it could be detected by ANY species of animal is by MAGIC POWERS.

It never occurs to them that other species may be able to hear, see, or smell things that we can't.

Throw in a little confirmation bias and a dash of poor experimental design, and you have MIND READING DOGS!

(Temple Grandin has written some good stuff on some of these experiments and has more rational explanations for the results.)

 

[fls]

(Temple Grandin has written some good stuff on some of these experiments and has more rational explanations for the results.)

Where would I find this?

Linda

 

[Prometheus]

Where would I find this?

Linda

Try this for a start.

 

[Jon.]

I still remember a nerdy student in my high school chemistry class who was shouted down by the rest of the class when he disagreed with the teacher who said that a negative exponent meant the number was less than zero. People hate a know-it-all.

(The teacher realized her mistake after a few minutes, but the impression had been made.)

I was the nerdy student in my Grade 11 chemistry class who contradicted the teacher when she said that the litre was a defined, rather than a derived, SI unit. She was not too bright, and my dad has a PhD. in chemistry.

 

[LostAngeles]

The problem with the claims of affecting random number generators is that the effect they claim is so small. If you can get 1% of the numbers to be non-random, the other 99% is still random, so a message would still be unbreakable. The other problem is that they claim that the effect is on the generator while it's doing the generating. Unless you know exactly where and when the pad is generated, you won't be able to anything about it at all.

This really highlights the big problem with these claims and studies - they're simply looking for psychics of the gaps. It's exactly the same as the god of the gaps, where things gods used to be invoked to explain have now been explained without gods, so the concept of god shrinks to a substanceless, powerless "We can't explain this little bit here yet, so it must be god.". No-one has ever claimed to have such an ability, no-one has ever seen evidence of such an ability and no-one has ever even had the chance to observe the effects. The only reason they are even looking here is because there is nowhere else left. They believe psychic powers exist, but every single power that has been claimed has failed miserably when tested. All that is left is looking for an effect so small that no-one would ever notice it, or care if they did. It's all rather sad really.

So in short, once again, the psychics have this awesome power, yet it's absolutely useless.

Too bad because it'd be nice to test them by giving them just the encryption exponent and then asking them to break RSA. That'd be more than a million-dollars worthy.

 

[Autolite]

Well, Brandon....

First, I commend you for being astute enough to catch the teacher at this. Second, though you might want to think twice about it if you want to be popular, since I'm sure the class just loves this little side trip into fantasyland...... But, assuming you don't want to call him/her down in class, then at minimum, the teacher should be reported. Post-Modernism has no real place in a high school World History class (I assume AP = Advanced Placement). It's philosophy, at best... (and smarmy woo, at worst).

I see it differently Brandon. I understand your concern but personally I wouldn't report the teacher. You're talking about just one batty teacher in one class that (I presume) you will likely have endure for only one school year. I'd keep a low profile, get good grades and fuggetaboutit. I know it doesn't seem like it now, but when you get older you'll realize that your high school years were just an infinitesimal blip in your life...