Everyone should be required to sign up for a year of being followed around by an inquisitive child who will pockmark the landscape of their knowledge with exploratory boreholes.
I have multiple environment and science degrees and feel generally knowledgeable and my oldest will put on his best Feynman face and be entirely unsatisfied when I offer and explain “Rayleigh scattering.”
I love it. I love it so much. I love how curious he is. I love how there is so much to not know. I would hate to know it all because I love exploring it with him.
100 percent can relate on the relentless curiosity of a child. I was dumbfounded yesterday by this question -> if cars go at high speed, and breaks stop it suddenly, how come the friction doesn't generate enough heat to start a spark?
They generate enough energy to, I mean have you seen racing brake discs?
It's just that the energy is spread out over a larger area (brake discs/pads as opposed to a tiny spark) that is also constantly being cooled by air movement, so the energy in any one point is not enough to ignite any of the materials involved. It's why they used to put asbestos in the brake pads, but they now use ceramics and other heat-resistant materials.
In my experience sparks are generally generated when quite small metal surfaces get in contact at high speeds, meaning they can generate a lot of friction in a very small point, and thus not have enough braking effect despite the local friction in one small point (think rail wheels squeeking in curves).
Brakes OTOH are designed to spread out the friction on a somewhat larger area, which allows more material to take up the friction and the heat, and spread it around.
I know brakes can get extremely hot too though, and after a really hard braking you might have to worry about deformed brakes sometimes.
Race cars tend to have really large breaks (and brake pads) for this reason.
Car brakes can get hot enough to start a fire (wood, paper, maybe even gasoline - see race cars) but a spark is a hot piece of material that is large enough so it can keep its heat for a while.
Brakes generate very fine dust that cools off almost immediately.
I would answer that heat is a form of energy. A horse pulling a carriage a 1000 yards requires more energy than pulling 30 yards.
When a car slams on the brakes the distance is too short to generate enough heat to deform. I would also suspect the treads would partially melt and deform before it catches on fire.
There needs to be more "prediction depth", vs. explanatory depth. If you can explain something but can't predict what's going to happen, you don't have an understanding of it sufficient for engineering.
This is why economics is not much of a science. Not enough predictive power.
I feel like its human psychology that as we get exposed to the world and we learn it, we feel like we form an understanding of the world around us at a sufficient level to survive in our current circumstances. Then we have all sorts of stimuli and feedback that tell us whether our understanding is correct or not overtime. Sometimes we challenge that understanding and realise that we were wrong. Life is an iterative process of that.
Then as we move into building a career, we essentially need to understand a topic or field to a degree that we're useful enough to sell it or provide it as a service compared to others.
Do I understand some things more than others? Perhaps. Do I need to understand everything about a particular thing to be knowledge on it, perhaps not.
> Unfortunately, when information is not directly in front of us, our memories and conceptions of it are shaky at best―but our egos are still intact.
I have often found this when as part of my job I have been exposed to a particular area of my field. But years later when presented with questions about it, whilst I can't extract all of the information I have learnt, but if my memory is jogged the information comes back. For example, lets say you learnt a particular skill 5 years ago, but now you struggle to perform it. Egotistically you know you've been able to do it, but your lack of training in recent years prevents you from doing it.
Here's an example making the rounds, originally from 2022: there is systemic bias in Americans' understanding of US national statistics about all kinds of subgroups:
> On the whole, people far too often hold strong opinions about topics for which they have limited information. This can cause social and political movements to have plenty of people behind them with limited ideas of what they are even fighting for.
Generally, it is people with a lower ability to understand the world that overestimate their own intelligence because they are unable to imagine anyone being smarter than them, and those on the smarter end who underestimate their own intelligence because they believe everyone else must be able to see what they are able to see.
There was a paper, quite famous now, on the topic titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments"
I feel like hearing this is dangerous in itself - even if you overestimate yourself, surely you yourself don't overestimate yourself as much as others?
Personally, I ran against a closed glass door yesterday. All I hope for is that I was entertaining to onlookers at least.
What I commonly see is people take a mental model that worked in the past and apply it in another context assuming it will work again. Irregardless of different constraints, people, or technologies. Agile cult members are the worst offenders. Second on my list are the HR pop psychology fads like Myers Briggs and Fish!
You might think seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth (duh), but why? Exercise left for the reader.
I have multiple environment and science degrees and feel generally knowledgeable and my oldest will put on his best Feynman face and be entirely unsatisfied when I offer and explain “Rayleigh scattering.”
I love it. I love it so much. I love how curious he is. I love how there is so much to not know. I would hate to know it all because I love exploring it with him.
It's just that the energy is spread out over a larger area (brake discs/pads as opposed to a tiny spark) that is also constantly being cooled by air movement, so the energy in any one point is not enough to ignite any of the materials involved. It's why they used to put asbestos in the brake pads, but they now use ceramics and other heat-resistant materials.
Also, engineering.
In my experience sparks are generally generated when quite small metal surfaces get in contact at high speeds, meaning they can generate a lot of friction in a very small point, and thus not have enough braking effect despite the local friction in one small point (think rail wheels squeeking in curves).
Brakes OTOH are designed to spread out the friction on a somewhat larger area, which allows more material to take up the friction and the heat, and spread it around.
I know brakes can get extremely hot too though, and after a really hard braking you might have to worry about deformed brakes sometimes.
Race cars tend to have really large breaks (and brake pads) for this reason.
Brakes generate very fine dust that cools off almost immediately.
When a car slams on the brakes the distance is too short to generate enough heat to deform. I would also suspect the treads would partially melt and deform before it catches on fire.
There needs to be more "prediction depth", vs. explanatory depth. If you can explain something but can't predict what's going to happen, you don't have an understanding of it sufficient for engineering.
This is why economics is not much of a science. Not enough predictive power.
Then as we move into building a career, we essentially need to understand a topic or field to a degree that we're useful enough to sell it or provide it as a service compared to others.
Do I understand some things more than others? Perhaps. Do I need to understand everything about a particular thing to be knowledge on it, perhaps not.
> Unfortunately, when information is not directly in front of us, our memories and conceptions of it are shaky at best―but our egos are still intact.
I have often found this when as part of my job I have been exposed to a particular area of my field. But years later when presented with questions about it, whilst I can't extract all of the information I have learnt, but if my memory is jogged the information comes back. For example, lets say you learnt a particular skill 5 years ago, but now you struggle to perform it. Egotistically you know you've been able to do it, but your lack of training in recent years prevents you from doing it.
https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/41556-americans-misestimat...
(Although, apparently the poll didn't ask how uncertain they were. The question was, "If you had to guess, what percentage of American adults...")
There was a paper, quite famous now, on the topic titled "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments"
Personally, I ran against a closed glass door yesterday. All I hope for is that I was entertaining to onlookers at least.
Wikipedia on Illusion of explanatory depth - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_explanatory_depth
The misunderstood limits of folk science: an illusion of explanatory depth - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3062901/
How you can learn in a world of information overload - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbiyPOn-__M
The structure and function of explanations - https://cognition.princeton.edu/publications/structure-and-f...
The Science of a Good Explanation with Tania Lombrozo - https://www.annieduke.com/the-science-of-a-good-explanation-...