Gary Ackerman @garyackerman@qoto.org

A post on intelligence and variation and AI and one of my favorite books:
https://hackscience.education/2025/08/03/intelligence-ai-reviews-the-mismeasure-of-man/

Of course it works both ways... I’ve heard plenty of educators telling IT how to set things up... and that doesn’t end well either.

Storyboarding is like writing... you get half way through and realized you were wrong... usually because you understand it better now.

Just because you had an original idea that you think is pretty good does not mean others must go along... especially if it has been disproved many times before.

Lists of resources are fine... most faculty are in search of advice on how to use one or two effectively, however.

Of course it works both ways... I’ve heard plenty of educators telling IT how to set things up... and that doesn’t end well either.

Nothing worse than IT people telling educators what IT they need.

“But students shouldn’t be taking my class on a phone” is like saying “but students shouldn’t walk to campus.”

“When science doesn’t conform to my ideas, I dismiss it,” is this one of the biggest changes in our thinking in the last decades, or is it just me?

Hey IT, if you immediately say, “oh, that can’t be done,” your clients/ customers either inside or outside your organization don’t believe you... and with good reason. They have often seen it done elsewhere.

“I enjoy it/ find it valuable” is not evidence.

Look at the things you are trying to accomplish (I know accomplish is a dubious concept but you know what I mean)... if anyone else responsible for any part (a boss, supervisor, hiring committee, advisor, parent, child, co-worker, committee, etc.) then remove it from your list.

Listening to a YouTube featuring a Stephen Jay Gould lecture on my walk, I appreciate the support of advertisers, but when your company interrupts the content every 2-3 minutes, I’m unlikely to become a customer.

Yeah, so when you are dealing with natural systems (viruses, brains, atmospheres) it is best to follow science.

A multi-literate brain? Hmmm... that’s an interesting concept to ponder.

Learned ignorance? No, I think "practiced" is the appropriate adjective.

“The power of some needs the folly of others.” Can’t argue with that.

One reason I don’t make recordings of presentation available is it takes so long to try to figure out how to closed caption the natural speech. It quicker to record an abbreviated version and closed captioning that.

Billionaires with bags of money they are willing to hand out to schools convince “educators” to try their quacky idea about schools & teaching, then they interpret *anything* that can be displayed on misleading graphs as “data that its working.”

Stephen Jay Gould asked, “What if variation was reality, and species cannot be reduced to its essence?” Yeah, he was spot-on.