In Defense (and Ridicule) of the Insane Clown Posse

[tongodeon]

Despite the video and its ridicule going viral, my initial reaction to the Insane Clown Posse "Miracles" video was actually quite positive. It may have helped that I found it right after my post about numinous experience, but I interpreted the song in the same spirit. If I was going to make a list of the things that bring me joy as a naturalist/

Comments

[ikkyu2]

For what it's worth, by the way, I actually like this Miracles video, and I kind of like ICP in general. They are reaching an audience that is disheartened, dispirited, and confused, and I think overall they are delivering a pretty positive message to that audience, who desperately need something positive in their lives. The kind of stuff that delights folks like us who have been fortunate in our selection of parents and socioeconomic milieu may not be the kind of stuff that is available or pleasant to your average Juggalo

[mmcirvin]

Magnets are one of those subjects that are rife with simplified, intuitive explanations that break down or reveal hidden assumptions when examined closely. The "electrostatics + Lorentz contraction = magnetism" argument I mentioned above is one. Another is the treatment of "field lines" as if they were literal elastic objects. And then there are the pseudo-classical explanations of diamagnetism and paramagnetism that you sometimes see tossed about in freshman texts, which are fairly bogus too.

So you could reasonably argue that scientists are in fact fucking lying about them, in popular works and introductory textbooks, in the Terry Pratchett sense of lies-to-children. Some of these oversimplifications are pedagogically useful and some really aren't.

[mmcirvin]

...but magnetism is actually simple, as things go. I think the microphysics of *friction* is only dimly understood to this day. But laypeople don't regard friction as mysterious.

I spent several semesters TAing the electricity and magnetism semester of a physics-for-premeds class, in which we undertook the impossible task of making the future doctors of America care about Maxwell's equations, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff. Come to think of it, you probably took that exact course at some point.

[ikkyu2]

I went to great lengths to avoid taking that course. I took 15b and c instead. Those were the worst-taught courses I have ever taken anywhere.

I was not premed at the time, either. I wanted to become an experimental plasma physicist. The shitty quality of undergrad physics instruction at Harvard served as an able deterrent - no offense intended.

I still care deeply about Maxwell's equations, although I always will have a soft spot for the Biot-Savart law.