[ journal / ramble / micro-rant ]
I'm currently reading John Cramer's
new book, which presents his
"transactional" interpretation of the quantum mechanics formalism. It's exciting stuff. It's unconvincing to me in places, but I get the feeling that it's unconvincing because it's unclear. Cramer has worked out the details of this interpretation over three decades, and I'm certain he has a complete and consistent picture of how it fits together. But he's trying to describe
processes using
sentences, and the result appears hand-wavy.
Like
Carver's book (which it draws upon), Cramer's book is crying out for explorable models.
I've said before that I'm not particularly interested in pedagogical interactive illustrations, such as "
Explained Visually" (except perhaps as exercises for developing idioms). Or in pedagogy in general, really. How's Cramer's book different?
Cramer is not trying to "teach" -- he's trying to convince. He has an idea, and he's using evidence and reasoning to argue for it. The reader is in the position of critically evaluating this idea -- the reader is active. (This is generally the situation with genuine scientific discourse.)
This is a completely different situation than pedagogical material, where the author is setting forth The Truth (as determined by Authority), and the reader is in the position of "learning" it, accepting it. I consider such a reader to be passive, no matter how much "interacting" they're doing.
An active reader asks questions, considers alternatives, questions assumptions, and even questions the trustworthiness of the author.
This is not a typical feature of textbooks, or "explainers". Pedagogical material declares, not convinces. If there are explorable illustrations, they can be toys, because they are not intended to be held up to scrutiny. Like the cartoons about molecular binding that Alan always complains about, where two molecules swoop out of nowhere and fortuitously find each other, completely misrepresenting the physical situation. "Good enough for education."
People have watered down the term "explorable explanations" to just mean "articles with interactive pictures", and, well, whatever, you have to let these things go. But I didn't want to just let it go with Nicky, because Nicky's work really matters, so I tried putting it this way to him:
I'd like to suggest, as you work on your projects, you keep a couple questions in mind:
- By playing your model, can a reader learn something that you don't already know yourself?
- Could a reader potentially use your model to argue against your position?
If so, then you're enabling independent thought, not just pushing your own beliefs. It's a kind of anti-rhetoric. Sounds scary! But I think you can do it, and you'll be onto something really valuable.
I think he got it, but it might take time to sink in.
This is what I'm thinking about as I'm reading John Cramer's book. I want him to use interactive diagrams backed by computational models to convince me of his wacky fringe interpretation, and I want to be convinced by actively trying and failing to refute it through these models. This is what it should mean for a modern author to be intellectually honest. This is worlds away from pedagogy.