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"The lecture that Myron L. Fox delivered to the assembled experts had an impressive enough title: ‘Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education’. Fox was billed as an ‘authority on the application of mathematics to human behavior’. His polished performance so impressed the audience that nobody noticed that the man standing at the lectern wasn’t just Myron L. Fox from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine: he was also the attorney Amos Feders from ‘Falcon Crest’ and the vet Dr Benson from ‘Columbo’, who looked after the inspector’s dog. Myron L. Fox’s real name was Michael Fox, and he was an actor (though no relation of Michael J. Fox of ‘Back to the Future’ fame). And he didn’t know the first thing about game theory.

All that Fox had done was to take a scholarly article on game theory and work up a lecture from it that was quite intentionally full of imprecise waffle, invented words and contradictory assertions. Fox delivered this lecture in a very humorous tone, all the while making specious references to other supposed works. The people behind this spoof were John E. Ware, Donald H. Naftulin and Frank A. Donnelly, who wanted to use this demonstration to spark a discussion on the content of the further education programme. The experiment was designed to find out whether it a brilliant delivery technique could so completely bamboozle a group of experts that they overlooked the fact that the content was nonsense. John Ware put in hours of practice with the actor, to the point where the text had been stripped of all its substance. As Ware reported, "the problem was to keep him [Michael Fox] from making sense".

Fox was convinced he’d be rumbled. But the audience hung on his every word and, when the hour-long lecture was over, bombarded him with questions, which he displayed such virtuosity in not answering that nobody noticed. And on the feedback form that was handed round, all ten people who attended the lecture said that it had given them food for thought, while nine of them also reckoned that Fox had presented the material in a clear manner, put it across in an interesting way and incorporated plenty of good illustrative examples into his talk.

Ware and his colleagues showed two other groups of people a video of the lecture – with much the same result. One person even thought they remembered having read some papers already by Myron L. Fox. In these instances as well, the audience wasn’t made up of students but of experienced educators, who had allowed themselves to be dazzled by the actor’s slick presentation.

The researchers conducted further experiments on larger audiences. The phenomenon in which the style of a lecture can blind the listeners to its poor content soon became known as the ‘Dr Fox Effect’.

These results raised doubts in Ware’s mind about the usefulness of teaching evalution. When students were asked to fill out questionnaires assessing a class, these might actually be indicating little more than how much they liked the lecture along with "their illusions of having learned". As the authors wrote in their paper on the experiment, "there is much more to teaching than making students happy".

Nevertheless, there was one surprise that qualified this conclusion: when Fox’s true identity was revealed to the audience, some of them asked about where they could read up more about the subject. In other words, although the lecture had been unmasked as gibberish and a fraud, the panache with which it was delivered had nevertheless clearly stimulated interest in the topic. This led Ware to suggest an innovative method of increasing students’ motivation: instead of giving lectures themselves, professors could train actors to deliver them for them.

A journalist later wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "There are implications in this study, though, that even its instigators have not perceived. If an actor makes a better teacher, why not a better congressman, or even a better President?" Seven years later, Ronald Reagan became the US President."
-The Mad Science Book

4 million gajillion billion

These are really awkward posting with only two people reading them, but I don't want to facebook link it because I want my mother to not read it. And then it feels even weirder linking people individually, because it's like I'm commanding them to read my strange and silly random drabble. But don't read this as "well, clearly he's saying he just wants me to link people to this." However, if you legitimately find something I say interesting, sharing it would be appreciated. On with the silly drabble:

Why do people keep pets? They're cute, but ultimately you get over how cute they are and just find them annoying. They aren't comforting, they either bring in the trouble of training them or they make a mess, lots of people are allergic to them (which might not affect you personally, but it could affect your company); they are replaceable and yet their death brings about unfailing and instant tragedy. Then again apply the same to human relations. I guess pets are just the same basic instinct, with much less effort.

This isn't all true. I enjoy my cats' company every now and then. But they also get on my nerves more than any human ever has.

ripples by the drop

Every night before I fall asleep I find myself swimming in an ocean of smiley faces and one of them is calling my name I go to him and he is dying I hold him until he's gone and I tell him I will always love him and vomit and they all stare and before I know it I'm awake again and he's gone though I loved him.

passive

There was this cool final fantasy concert tonight. I really wanted to go. Actually I started practicing piano for the first time in too long and I wanted to keep doing that, but I knew I would regret not going to the concert. So when my brother called me at 6:55 offering to buy me a ticket I decided I would go. I searched for the car GPS for too long before deciding to use google maps, running up and down between levels all the while to make sure I had the right things in my pockets. I finally received the time estimate of about an hour from google maps at about 7:15, and decided that plus parking I had missed the concert. Story for a rainy day, everyone nods and says "aww golly" while staring blankly to the side.

This is the blog of a person who no longer has anything to say. Actually he never had anything to say in the first place; he's just finally seen the windmills for windmills. The miracle of consciosness lost it's splendor, giving way to a gross, bland gray blob with a sign on it saying "better than nothing." Clearly this person is lying to you, because he's actually saying something. It's just something about what he's saying and nothing else. It's a self-contained structure that he's trying to apply to the rest of life in search of some final complexity, some final understanding. Or rather some final solace in that he doesn't understand.

"I know nothing save the fact of my ignorance" quoth socrates. And he must have held that thought too long and clawed it's eyes until he was sqeaking it out before the laughter of a crowd that already knew. But the unexamined life is not worth living! Thanks einstein, we didn't know that, can you please let us get back to playing pretend? Fuck, he won't shut up. Here, drink this, that's better, on with it and tell me how I may live.

If a genie popped out of a bottle right now and held a gun to my head and asked what your one wish was before he blew your head off just after, what would it be? Except it could only be something you could have yourself accomplished given the proper dedication. After this he will travel to an alternate universe where he didn't ask you, 70 years in the future in the form of disease and ask you again and compare and contrast. Then a bigger genie asks the genie the same question.

Hi

Just to clarify, although the title of the blog seems like it could be sarcastic, I would like to emphasize that it is not. I am actually not a shark disguised as a human being, that would be impossible and ridiculous. Why, if I were a shark, how would I be able to type? Sharks have fins, silly, not these convenient human fingers.