Hacker News Reader

Comment by nomilk | Hacker News Reader

Russ Roberts (host of Econtalk podcast) says: take the teacher, not the class, meaning (at least in economics) you'll get more value from a great teacher of a boring topic than from a poor teacher of an exciting topic.

I feel that describes my YouTube preferences: I'd prefer to see amazingly intelligent/engaging content on any topic than just average content on topics I'm ostensibly very interested in.

View on HN

I had that experience with the Robert Sapolsky lectures on Human Behavioral Biology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PLtdr2qSB8H...

My take away is that everyone is probably interested in everything, only we let the messenger kill the message. By let, we seem to have a messed up pathology where we think they are the same, so much so that it is a huge cognitive flaw, easily used for sabotage.

Ah, that explains why teachers dislike students who are disinterested. Its not merely a disregard for the subject at hand, it tells them they're not the great teacher they'd like to believe they are. The best teachers I had, also had great humor. Great humor helps a lot.

I can vouch for that idea. I dreaded taking statistics in college, because I'm just not a mathy person. But the teacher was fantastic. I actually enjoyed the class - which was 100% due to his passion for the subject, and deep interest in teaching it to the next generation.

I still remember, all these years later, how my CC statistics teacher “taught” us that airplanes don’t indeed fly by the Bernoulli principle producing lift but because the wind hits the underside of the wings and pushes it up into the air.

Totally random I know.

I can't tell why you're putting "taught" in quotes...? Your teacher was correct. Or you mean because it was outside their official subject matter?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-can-explai...

A good follow up by NASA https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/ber...

"So both “Bernoulli” and “Newton” are correct. Integrating the effects of either the pressure or the velocity determines the aerodynamic force on an object."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com