A good friend of mine recently commented that I always brought up role models that he had no idea who were, and I quoted as known and famous. The people in question were names such as Niels Bohr, Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey, Richard Dawkins and Einstein.
My first thought was to dismiss him as not very knowledgeable, but then I thought to ask him who he thought were good famous role models. He rambled off a number of names that I'd never heard before, primarily from motoring and sports. A quick google search showed me that these people were just as known as my role models.
It's not so much about being dumb, it's more about simply having different interests and perspectives on life. This is a good thing.
I would be a bit worried by anyone who has not heard of Einstein.
But you make a great point, and I think the article missed it. It is not that we know more, we know more about our particular areas of expertise, just as others know more about their areas of expertise. My Dad knows a lot more about airplanes than I do, because he worked on them for a number of years.
Does Einstein really hold an important relevance to 'everyman USA'? To nearly every citizen - and, I would argue, even with those a basic (HS) level of physics - he's not so different than Heisenberg, Bohr, Bethe, Shrodinger, etc. Sure, they made great advances for the world of physics, but how relevant is that to an individual who does not interact with that theory at all? More specifically, relevant enough to cause worry?
Now, I note that you could argue the Manhattan product is a reason for Einstein's relevance, but was he really significantly more relevant in that than any other of the scientists?
People know politicians because they affect taxes, healthcare, laws, etc. They know sports stars because it's a subject they enjoy following - featuring impressive feats of human ability. And they probably know a few individuals closer to their field of work.
Is Einstein really an example of something that 'everyman' should know about, or could your argument partially be a confirmation of the article's argument?
It's not about whether Einstein should be known or not. The point is that he is an icon, one that the vast majority of people do know about. Not knowing about Einstein means you're really uninformed.
No, Really Uninformed is a whole nother level of ignorance. When pictures of Jupiter from Pioneer 10 were on the front page <\dated myself>, a graduate student in my Engineering school asked me "Jupiter is a planet, right"? Astonished, I answered politely "Yes, its the 5th planet". Then, and this is the good part, she asked "So, is Earth a planet?"
There is something called "general culture". Not knowing that Einstein is a physicist, that Jupiter and the Earth are planets, that Christopher Columbus landed the Americas in 1492, is lacking general culture, i. e. being dumb. When you're so specialized you can't be bothered to know the bare "common sense" stuff, you can't even be a responsible citizen.
Knowing that Jupiter is the 5th planet from the sun is practical knowledge for how many people?
edit: (HN wont let me reply again)
I understood your point. I think in the context of the article the only irony is you think the technical fact that astronomers label Earth as a "planet" is necessary knowledge for every field of engineering or anyone with an advanced education.
Yes, I learned about the solar system in elementary school too but I wouldn't judge someone who didn't. It's not much more useful than trivia to most people.
Discussion around another recent article on HN comparing C programming to a carpenter using a hammer demonstrated that even people with computer science degrees and years of experience writing software might no nothing about HTML or SQL.
> This highly educated Engineering graduate student
> didn't know that they lived on a planet. Its ironic.
And assuming you're reasonably well educated, and reasonably well informed, and reasonably intelligent, you didn't know, or care, that "its" as you've used it should've had an apostrophe. When you write "Its ironic" the "Its" is an abbreviation of "It is".
There are things that just don't matter in people's lives. For many, increasingly, traditionally "correct" usage of the apostrophe is one of them. For others, it is irrelevant that the word "planet" has a technical definition, that Jupiter and the Earth are examples, and Pluto no longer is.
Most people don't know that a sizeable proportion of the mass in wood comes from the air, or that the Earth goes round the Sun (in the simplest model of the Solar System) or that Google is not a web browser. These are things removed from people's concerns, irrelevant to them.
Before a few years ago I didn't know that Bach pre-dated Beethoven, even though I listened to their music all the time. Why should I care? No doubt I'd be laughed at by the self-declared "cultural" people, and then I'll ask them to quote the second law of thermodynamics.
Ok, I am a holdout on the "its vs it's" issue. One is not superior to the other; they are a compromise due to 'battling syntax rules', posessive vs contraction. Following convention would be useful for the reader, yes, but I bet you weren't confused by my text.
And not knowing you live on a planet is not a "technical definition" problem - its a fundamental ignorance. I didn't go into it, but I'm thinking another sentence from me may have sorted out the flat-vs-round issue in their mind as well.
I'm afraid I disagree with much of what you've just said:
> I bet you weren't confused by my text.
Actually, I was. It took a number of tries (where the number in question is strictly greater than one) to work out what you meant, and finally I had to read it aloud. I was trying to work out who or what it was that owned the "ironic", and what the ironic was that was owned.
I've just read that capitalization matters, because there's a bug difference between helping Uncle Jack off a horse, and helping Uncle jack off a horse.
> not knowing you live on a planet is ...
> a fundamental ignorance.
I disagree with what I think you're trying to say. For that person it's irrelevant knowledge. Consider - do you know the atomic number of strontium, or the proof of the Banach-Tarski theorem? Not knowing such things is also fundamental ignorance, but you don't care about that because you don't think it's important or relevant. Why should someone else be forced to know that the Earth is a planet, or that the Sun travels around the galaxy at about a million miles a day? Why should they know that as you travel 8km the Earth drops away by 5 meters, or that the distance to the Moon is about 284 megameters? Why should they know that light travels about 1ft/ns, or that sound travels about 1ft/ms? These are things that I consider people ignorant for not knowing, but I accept that they don't need to know them.
I also accept that others will think I'm ignorant. I'll get laughed at for not knowing the characters in a Shakespeare play, or for not know who the latest contestants are in X-Factor, or America's Top Model, or Dancing With the Stars.
I'll help people learn, and I'll explain why I think it's important, but I won't laugh at their lack of knowledge. I'll appreciate that they know things I don't, and while I might not care about those things, I won't condemn them for doing so.
And finally, there are perfectly usable physical models in which the Earth is flat. To say otherwise is to display ignorance of the context in which they are useful, more useful than the more complex spherical model, which in turn is less accurate than the oblate spheroidal model, which in turn is not as accurate as the one I use in other parts of my work.
I'm veering slightly off topic here but something in this post fascinated me...
Are you sincere in your claim that you were genuinely confused because of the its vs it's mix up in the original post? I had always assumed people pointing it out were doing so just to be pedantic or to make the person who made the mistake look foolish, it never occurred to me that genuine confusion could result.
I'm honestly curious, not trying to anything subversive here. I always read the word "loose" correctly, even when by context it is clear that the author meant "lose" and end up having to pause or re-read the section, so I can certainly understand the experience, it had just never occurred to me that its or it's would really cause confusion.
For what it's worth, very personal point of view ...
I'm serious and sincere. I learned to read very young, and I don't (as a rule) vocalize. Net result is that ungrammatical constructions or phonetic spellings slow me way down and cause serious cognitive dissonance. Likewise the latest idiomatic mutation - "I could care less" - makes absolutely no sense, and forces me explicitly to guess what the author may have meant. Then I need to carry forward the possibility that my guess is wrong and I'll have to backtrack. Sort of a Garden Path sentence on steroids.
Your code will be read and modified far more often than theone time it was written, and hence you should take time to make it clear. Similarly anything you write will (most likely) be read far more often than the one time it was written. It is simple politeness to take time to make sure it's as correct as you can sensibly make it.
Yes, there are people who struggle, either because English is not their first language (although many of them put native speakers to shame) or because they are dyslexic, or whatever, but remember that the comparatively small amount of time it takes to get it right is paid back many-fold in the readers' time by not having to backtrack, second guess, or even, worse still, give up and ignore you completely.
Einstein is basically consider to be the stereotypical genius in pop-culture; it's not so much the details of his work that's important to the weirdness here, but that he is widely known for having been brilliant. (Consider common phrases like, "I'm no Einstein, but ...") The fact that he is unfamiliar with Einstein is like being unfamiliar with King Tut or Mozart or George Washington; at least in the US, you'd expect most people to recognize the names, even if they might not remember all the precise details about them.
My first thought was to dismiss him as not very knowledgeable, but then I thought to ask him who he thought were good famous role models. He rambled off a number of names that I'd never heard before, primarily from motoring and sports. A quick google search showed me that these people were just as known as my role models.
It's not so much about being dumb, it's more about simply having different interests and perspectives on life. This is a good thing.