On 8/18/21 4:43 AM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> 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.

You misunderstand simple English expressions and idioms. "The answer I'm
looking for" is easily and commonly understood as implying that I know
the answer and are hoping you can also produce it. Perhaps
mathematicians have difficulties with idioms?

> > 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.

I don't think he knew the word either, so no spoiler.

>>>> 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 assume the irony escapes you. I suspect you have no idea what I meant
by "the irony" too.

> 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.

What's so spectacular about it?

>>> 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,

No, you supposed you had caught me in a lie, in which you were wrong.
The crazy part was the obsessive, Queeg-like rant.

> 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.

If that's the only reason, that's a problem too.