On Tuesday, August 17, 2021 at 10:56:20 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> On 8/17/21 6:48 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Tuesday, August 17, 2021 at 6:47:58 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
> >> On 8/17/21 3:44 PM, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >>> On 17.8.2021. 23:04, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>> On Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 5:55:17 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic wrote:
> >>>>> On 8.7.2021. 21:37, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>>> On Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 11:31:56 PM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic
> >>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>> On 8.7.2021. 1:56, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On Wednesday, July 7, 2021 at 1:33:24 AM UTC-4, Mario Petrinovic
> >>>>>>>> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> https://youtu.be/uyS1cXrsgIg
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> OK, I watched the rest of it. And if the narrator is telling the
> >>>>>>>> truth, it (and an even more absurd problem)
> >>>>>>>> is a sobering example of how all too many elementary school
> >>>>>>>> students cannot recognize that there is not enough
> >>>>>>>> information in a math problem to answer it.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Either that, or they are so inhibited by the "authority figures"
> >>>>>>>> they have for teachers that they cannot
> >>>>>>>> bring themselves to write that there isn't enough information
> >>>>>>>> given to solve the problem.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Instead, we are told, a lot of the students thought the "right
> >>>>>>>> answer" could be found by adding
> >>>>>>>> or subtracting or otherwise manipulating the numbers given in
> >>>>>>>> simple ways. And so that was
> >>>>>>>> what they turned in. IOW, they guessed that the teacher wanted an
> >>>>>>>> actual answer and didn't
> >>>>>>>> care whether it really had anything logically to do with the
> >>>>>>>> problem, thinking it might improve their score on the test.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> There may be a general lesson about human behavior in here
> >>>>>>>> somewhere, but I'm not going to spend any
> >>>>>>>> more time trying to figure it out.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> PS I do see the way the title of your post is, in a satirical way,
> >>>>>>>> a comment on all of the above.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Yes, those students can be, and, obviously, are, confused by many a
> >>>>>>> things. One of the thing is that they think that the problem is
> >>>>>>> solvable. There may also be a lot of other things which distracts them
> >>>>>>> from seeing the answer.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> But, on the other hand, the problem is extremely simple, *everybody*
> >>>>>>> should be able to solve it without problems. It is *obvious* that
> >>>>>>> captain's age has nothing to do with sheep and goats.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On the other hand, the video did give a clever way of theorizing that
> >>>>>> the captain had to be at least 28 years old. So it could be argued that
> >>>>>> the only thing wrong with the problem was that it didn't ask, "What is
> >>>>>> the minimum age that the captain could be?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> Actually, no. The whole "license" thing isn't part of the equation at
> >>>>> all. Those variables aren't part of the test.
> >>>>
> >>>> Wrong. To carry cargo beyond a certain low limit, one needs licensure.
> >>>> This could then be a test question like so many other test questions
> >>>> that ostensibly study intelligence, yet require specialized knowledge,
> >>>> such as a vocabulary beyond
> >>>> what the ordinary person knows. Here is one question from an
> >>>> intelligence test that shows this:
> >>>>
> >>>> ocean : littoral : : river : _________________
> >>>>
> >>>> Can you answer it? I assure you, the word is only part of the
> >>>> vocabulary of
> >>>> maybe 1% of Americans, mostly those who have studied law or geography
> >>>> on an advanced level.
> >>>
> >>> Creek? :) . Maybe, stream. Pond shouldn't be. Spring isn't
> >>> there, yet. In Croatian it should be "potok".
> >>> No, this (the original question) isn't a "trick" question, the
> >>> question is for kids, the "license" thing is out of the scoop.
> >
> >
> >> I believe the word Peter is looking for is "riparian".
> >
> > How could you miss the hints that I was NOT "looking for" the word
> > but had it well in mind? Didn't my putting "law" in addition to
> > "geography" tip you off?

> You are misunderstanding what I said.

Wrong. YOU are misunderstanding what you said.

> By "looking for" I meant "asking
> you for". No implication that you didn't know the word, and in fact the
> implication was that you did.

Wrong again. If that was your intent, you should have said,
"I believe the word Peter has in mind is "riparian."

But over a decade of putting the worst spin that you can
think of [1] on thousands of things I say or do has probably clouded
your mind to where you often don't realize that what you are saying is bullshit.

And that's why I wrote "should" instead of "would" where I fixed your sentence for you.

[1] A very notable exception was the oasis of civilization you agreed to
in sci.bio.paleontology between June (or was it April? I'll have to check when I have more time)
1995 and early 1998. But you kept up that denigration full blast on talk.origins the
whole time.

> > Oh, well, no harm done. Mario has already made his guesses,
> > and they are a lot further off than mine when I first saw the
> > question about four decades ago: I had guessed "fluvial." But then somewhere, sometime,
> > I have no recollection when or where -- I chanced across the word "riparian" and knew
> > it was the best fit.

> Mario isn't even playing the game, because he didn't know that it was an
> analogy question.

Yes, I should have also spelled it out for him: "ocean is to littoral as river is to __________"
But I mistakenly assumed that the notation was familiar to him.

I did not make that kind of mistake when I told him about the Unique Factorization Theorem
of integers. I very carefully removed all possible ambiguity from it, and wrote "whole number"
instead of "integer".

But hey, if you had really wanted to help him, you should have told him it was an
analogy question instead spoiling the riddle for him.

> >> Not clear what
> >> anything in this post or thread has to do with paleontology.
> >
> > Well, I became convinced that you had totally lost interest in Dickinsonia,
> > having posted such nonsense as not knowing how to look for pictures, of
> > all things, of specimens to see if some light could be shed on what looked like
> > budding. YOU, who in times past used the stock phrase regularly, "Google is your friend."
> >
> > I had no trouble finding more pictures of somewhat similar looking structures,
> > including in a peer-reviewed article which specifically mentioned them.

> So you can't bother to cite that article? Why? Are you uninterested in
> paleontology?

There you go again, putting the worst possible spin on what I wrote.
You just can't break yourself of the habit.

I wouldn't have said what I did if you hadn't shown a total lack of interest
in what I wrote in talk.origins about the spectacular master gene in *Anabaena* the
first time around, only to misrepresent what I had written the second time around.

> > But it did not hypothesize about their nature, so what minuscule interest the
> > preceding sentence might have sparked in you is probably dead as cold ashes.
> >
> >
> > But all this is just a prelude to something you may have already noticed:
> > Beagle seems to be down again. The last post on record there was at 1:46 pm.
> > So the usual hospitality rule that I've promoted for years, of s.b.p. becoming
> > a talk.origins-in-exile haven as long as Beagle is down, applies.
> > And, as you know, almost anything under the sun can be talked about there, and often is.
> >
> > The only reason I said what I did above [and, believe me, I could really have given
> > you an earful, but I decided to pull my punches for the sake of hospitality] was to
> > let you know why I turned to Mario instead of you or your buddies.
> >
> > Mario and I get along well, and our numerous disagreements are all friendly,
> > and only serve to spice up the conversation. And the topic interested both of us.
> >
> > 'nuff said?

> Way more than enough. Notice that you take offense when there is no
> offense offered. Try dialing it back.

Notice that you cast aspersions on my sanity when I caught you red-handed
in a lie on a talk.origins thread, following the lead of the perennial "you need to show
what you wrote to your psychiatrist" Mark Isaak, and supported
by Hemidactylus to the hilt, with all three of you gossiping about me in a
typical Internet Hellion Thread Diluting Kaffeeklatsch.

You are a fine one to talk about dialing back. It is only because Mario doesn't
care for personal fighting that I'm not documenting what I wrote just now.

Peter Nyikos