And now for your enjoyment pleasure - the Ig Nobel Awards for this year
9Every year a committee decides who wins Ig Nobel Awards which is for the weirdest (as in why on earth would anyone study that?) research someone has done. This link goes to an article that lists this year’s winners. The article itself is worth a read as someone with a really good sense of humor wrote it.
From the article (copy/paste):
“Winners receive a paper cube (which the recipients printed and folded themselves) and a note for $10,000,000,000,000. Not US dollars, of course, but a relic from the days of Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation. According to reports, this was the sum required to buy a loaf of bread in 2009.”
Anyway here is the article which is good for a laugh:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/frozen-fecal-knives-honored-by-2020-ig-nobel-prizes-67946
A video of the actual award ceremony can be found here:
https://www.improbable.com/2020/09/18/the-2020-ig-nobel-prize-winners/
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Don’t forget the 24/7 speeches.
No, not what you’re thinking. The speakers have to give two speeches describing their research. One in 24 seconds, the other in 7 words.
My only issue with the Ig Nobel awards is that they gave one to Dunning and Krueger when their work is clearly one of the most important keys to understanding our society (any society).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
@mossygreen Remember, the point of the awards is “first make people laugh, and then make them think”.
@blaineg @mossygreen It’s still described in the Wikipedia entry, but there is a pretty serious mathematical challenge to the Duning-Kruger Effect. It’s fun to believe, but the math behind it doesn’t hold up.
@blaineg @Limewater That’s true of most things, I’ve found.
@blaineg @Limewater @mossygreen
There were some notable issues with portions of the mathematical design if the study, and the resulting statistical eval of results.
The lay conception of the original conclusion is likely still valid (according to my mostly worthless personal guess).
One hopes that the academic issues will get worked out over time.
@blaineg @f00l @Limewater @mossygreen
DKE is just a fancy way of saying you don’t know what you don’t know.
@blaineg @Limewater @mike808 @mossygreen
Everyone doesn’t know what they know. It’s a universal, if looked at “large”
(as in, by a gifted philosopher, or a member of a star-trek-style sentient alt species.
However: no false “ignorance equivalencies” allowed.
There is “not finally knowing” when one has really *tried”. Has questioned one’s chain or reasoning deeply, and has looked at from alt and critical perspectives everything one has time to look at.
There is lack-of-education-amd info-type ignorance, and lack-of-critical-techniquea-and-skills type ignorance, which is more serious.
And there is “I’m into unsupportable prejudices, fake ‘info’, repetition of slogans as tho they were truths, and so forth, etc” level-ignorance, which is something quite different.
@blaineg @f00l @Limewater @mike808 I’m not a math person at all, but I always wondered if they sufficiently controlled for the fact that the original study was done at Cornell, and the students there came from schools where their self-assessments would have been conceivably more accurate (in a more general population) and the issue was their assumption that their self-assessments held true in an entirely different and possibly more competitive population. One may be the smartest or funniest or prettiest person in one’s family/group/school and it will mean squat once outsiders are involved. But we carry it with us anyway.
A bit more detail in the Ars Technica article.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/bellowing-alligators-and-frozen-poop-knives-the-2020-ig-nobel-prizes/