25% of Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth.

The BBQ Pit
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I would like to say that Mtgman has made some good points and has been very articulate in this thread.

We obviously have a lot of science people at the SDMB, who find it shocking and wrong that some people have no interest in science. I too can’t help but feel superior to people who couldn’t answer these basic questions correctly. I like to tell my people the story of how in a group of very intelligent, very well educated law students, I was the only one who knew that spiders have eight legs and insects have six. I also had a lawyer friend who didn’t understand why he has getting a shock when he touched things because he had never heard of static electricity. It seemed to me that he lacked a basic awareness and curiosity about the world around him. But I’m sure if I went to a science class in a top university I would find a large number of people who, for example, do not know that Portuguese is spoken in Brazil (as a friend with a PhD in physics did not). It seems that anyone with any curiosity about the world around them would know what language is spoken in the largest country in out hemisphere, and is more interesting and important to me than how lasers work. Knowledge is better than ignorance, but on a quiz on all the world “basic knowledge,” every single one of us would come up short.

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Vdc: Its always rich to see people lament the lack of critical thinking in others while at the same time speaking of individuals and society as if they were two seperate things.

How exactly does it indicate a “lack of critical thinking” to speak of “individuals” as opposed to “society”? Of course everybody knows that society is composed of individuals: duh. But that doesn’t negate the fact that individuals within a society perceive rules and expectations that apply to them as being imposed by “society” in general.

If you don’t like references to “individuals” as opposed to “society”, then how would you express the concept that the members of a society as a group follow certain customs, and impose certain expectations upon members of society as individuals?

chula: Knowledge is better than ignorance, but on a quiz on all the world “basic knowledge,” every single one of us would come up short.

Nobody’s denying that. What I object to in Mtgman’s position is that he seems to be arguing that nobody should be required to learn any particular “basic knowledge”, except for stuff that’s immediately practical in everyday life.

It’s certainly debatable what kinds of information belong in the ideal “basic non-essential knowledge” kit, but I think it’s completely counterproductive to suggest that there shouldn’t even be any such kit in the first place. Of course the components of any “basic non-essential knowledge” kit will be somewhat arbitrary (which is why it’s useful to debate about them), but it’s still better than having no such kit at all.

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I don’t mean to but in here. But I 've noticed this phenomena before from leftists. I’ve never heard this question put so directly. I am taking the oportunity to put my $.02 in.

What you have, Kimstu, is a tendency to blur the lines regarding which individuals belong in which group. When you say the “society” imposes rules on “individuals”, what you mean is that some individuals impose rules on others. When you say it the first way it makes it too easy to forget that those imposing the rules may not, in fact, be the same ones being imposed upon. Supposedly the individuals in both groups belong to the “society”. But when you talk about “society” as some sort of homogeneous anthropomorphized individual in and of itself it becomes difficult to see the difference between the imposers and the imposed.

For instance, if we were to talk about a family, we might see what I’m talking about. *Being born into my family means that you have access to certain resources and that you must fulfill certain responsibilities. My father has several cars. He allows the children (when they are of age) to drive them. In exchange drivers have to take responsibility for putting gas in the cars, noticing malfunctions, and even some routine maintenance. Additionally, the family has to collectively negotiate for use of specific cars at specific times. When one person want to use the truck for a specific purpose, he may have to negotiate with another who is currently driving it.

Now, you could say that the “family” provides these cars. You could also say that the “family” requires certain behaviors in exchange. You could say that individual drivers are required to put gas in the car by the “family”. All these things would be true. However, they would miss the important factor that not all of the “family” actually participates in the provisioning of said cars. Not all of the family participates in the maintenance of them either.

The fact is that some people participate in ways that others do not. Although there is overlap, the line becomes unnecessarily blurry when you anthropormorphize “society” or the “family” in the way Voodoochile was criticizing.

Sorry to but in. I tend to agree with you, Kimstu with regards to the necessity of learning basic information.

*I am speaking in the first person here for the sake of brevity. This is not, in fact, a story from my own personal family.

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I’ll let him defend his own posts, but I didn’t read it that way. Beyond practical knowledge, people pick and choose what to learn about. Of those surveyed, 39% say they are not interested in science. Why do you expect them to have knowledge of a subject that they have no interest in and that has no practical application in their lives? It seems that what you find shocking is that so many people simply don’t care, as evidenced by this quote:

When I look at the moon, I’m more likely to think of the origins of the word “lunatic” and wonder whether any other cultures have held similar beliefs, than about the scientific reasons for the phases of the moon. I don’t think it’s pathetic that you think of something else.

You say you agree that every single one of us lacks the complete set of basic knowledge. So what is the big deal about a survey that shows what we already know?

By the way, I am playing devil’s advocate to some extent here, because I do agree that that the percentage of people who answered that question wrong should be lower. Doesn’t the Bible say the Earth is the center of the universe? I suspect our problem, once again, is Christian Fundamentalists.

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chula: Beyond practical knowledge, people pick and choose what to learn about. Of those surveyed, 39% say they are not interested in science. Why do you expect them to have knowledge of a subject that they have no interest in and that has no practical application in their lives?

Because I think it’s important to have a background of “common knowledge” in a society that includes some non-essential knowledge of various kinds, even though people’s levels of interest in the different kinds of knowledge will inevitably vary.

Plenty of people aren’t interested in poetry, but I think that nonetheless, at some point in their basic schooling, they should have to read some poems and learn something about poetry. Same for drama, art, music, history, science, mathematics, languages, and a whole host of other subjects that won’t necessarily be immediately practical in their daily lives.

Having some common basis of knowledge, especially if it includes some knowledge outside their own individual preferences, helps people communicate and helps them understand the perspective of people with different preferences. For Pete’s sake, don’t you think that, say, scientists and poets already have enough trouble understanding each other’s worldviews? Why would we want to increase mutual misunderstanding and ignorance by saying “Don’t worry, you’ll never have to learn even the slightest bit about poetry (or science) if you don’t personally happen to like it”?

Why should we privilege immediately practical knowledge (much of which, btw, is bound to be of only transitory usefulness and will be obsolete after a few years) so highly that we wouldn’t even require people to learn anything that wasn’t immediately practical? If other kinds of knowledge are genuinely important, then why should we leave their acquisition totally up to chance and individual preference? Seems very anti-educational to me.

chula: You say you agree that every single one of us lacks the complete set of basic knowledge.

I didn’t say that: I said there’s no such thing as a complete set of basic knowledge, because there are always some arbitrary choices involved in constructing such a set. Is that what you meant?

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I don’t find your explanation very useful. If you only understand societies simply as the aggregation of discrete individuals, you won’t understand much about how they work. For example, on a psychological level, people behave differently as members of groups, and we set up institutions (government, religion, corporations, etc.) that affect how our societies function. These institutions do not think, feel, or act in the same way as individual human beings. The actions of Corporation, Inc. do not simply reflect the values of its CEO, Joe Capitalist, or its board of directors, or its shareholders. In his capacity as CEO, Joe Capitalist is subject to different rules and different influences than he is as just Joe, human being, and his behavior reflects that. We talk about the actions of Corporation because it is easier than talking about the actions of each individual that influences Corporation’s actions. It is important to recognize that outside of Western culture, the notion of the individual as the fundamental unit of society is weak or non-existent. Funny that you think leftists understand these concepts better.

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Forgive me, but this is because you fundamentally misunderstood it.

For instance:

This is entirely correct. That is why I never said that “societies” are “only…aggregation of discrete individuals”. This is taking what I was talking about too far the other way. You cannot look at a group as only the collection of its parts. Similarly, however, you cannot look at a group as only a homogeneous idealization of some of its parts.

I never said that leftists understood any particular thing better or worse. I only said I had seen the thought expressed by leftists. Specifically I suggested that leftists tend (again, in my experience only) to overly simplify the concept of “society” in the way I described. You on the other hand have over simplified the concept of the individual. You may notice that I never said individuals were the “fundamental unit[s] of society”. I only suggested that "society is a more complex concept than it sometimes appears.

I realize this has the potential to hijack the thread. So I’ll stop if you want.

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pervert: * When you say the “society” imposes rules on “individuals”, what you mean is that some individuals impose rules on others. *

Of course, strictly speaking, only individuals are ever responsible for any individual act of “imposition”. But refusing to use a generalization like “society” in cases where very many individuals are in strong agreement about imposing a particular rule is just silly.

Your analogy of a few individuals in a “family” is flawed for this very reason. (I’ve often noticed that libertarians tend to fall into this error of making analogies involving a small group of individuals and then trying to apply them to large groups.) In your example, it’s quite easy to distinguish the individuals imposing the “family rules” from the individuals forced to abide by them. This is simply not the case for many of the rules imposed by what I will continue to call “society”, since there really is no better term for it.

Let’s take a more realistic example of an actual social rule. In our society, which individuals are responsible for the restriction that individuals may not go around naked in public? Please list all of them, and then explain to me why it isn’t far more sensible and practical just to speak of “society” as a whole imposing this restriction.

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No one ever said that unless you had all their names you could not talk about the group. To answer your question, I’d say that the police is a good answer. You can add the religious or even moral activists to the group calling for the laws in the first place. But to simply say “society” leads one to believe that you are including the nudists in your group. Clearly this is not the case. Specifically, clearly, “society” is not imposing this restriction on its members. Some parts of society are imposing this restriction on other parts. Which do you think is a more sensible formulation?

Society imposes the rule that people not walk around naked in public.

The government imposes the rule that people not walk around naked in public.

The prudish amongst us impose a rule on the rest that restricts our freedom to walk around naked.

American society is a unique blend of individualists and prudes. At the same time many honor dissidents for speaking unpopular ideas, many react vociferously to displays of public nudity.

There are other ways to formulate this. No?

Again, as I told chula, there is nothign wrong with generalizations or simplifications as long as wer recognize that that is what they are. “Society” as a word is not inappropriate. The only thing which is inappropriate is using it nn a way which anthropomorphizes it or over simplifies it.

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I am not arguing for that position. Here is a closer statement of my position, although it may be a bit imprecise as well.

Nobody should be piloried for failing to retain any particular “basic knowledge”, especially when it is likely their only exposure was some brief treatment of the topic in school and it was not reinforced with real world experience or subsequent education on the topic.

We throw tons of knowledge at our kids in their thirteen years of basic schooling(through high school). Require the exposure to the knowledge all you want. It is a basic tenet of education that some of it will stick and some won’t. Likelyhood of it sticking is increased by spending more time on the topic or by reinforcement by experience. Since this particular factoid, heliocentric versus geocentric, is only reinforced by experience in a tiny segment of the population(astronomers, astronauts, etc.) then you’re down to how much time was spent on the topic in school. For this topic it is likely to be fairly short and a long time ago for a good many people. If it was a multiple choice question they may have guessed at it while their long-term memory was trying to locate this factoid. As much as science oriented people may wish these ideas were more than factoids to most people, the reality is they are just factoids. Something to regurgitate on the next exam and with no lasting/deeper significance for many, perhaps even most people.

Enjoy,
Steven