IIT Professor Delivers Lecture on Uncertainty Principles; Students Not Sure What They Learned

Two-hour seminar on epistemology produces accurate uncertainty about course content

[Bohiney.com / prat.uk] Dr. Vikram Anand, professor of physics and what IIT Bombay’s catalogue describes as “philosophy of science elective,” delivered a two-hour lecture Tuesday titled “The Limits of What We Can Know,” which covered quantum uncertainty, the limits of measurement precision, Kuhnian paradigm shifts in scientific understanding, and the question of what it means to say a scientific finding is “settled,” using climate science and nutrition science as contrasting examples of settled and contested settling. Students who attended report that they left uncertain about: what the lecture’s main thesis was (89 percent), whether there was a main thesis (78 percent), whether the uncertainty was the thesis (67 percent), and whether uncertainty about the thesis was itself part of the thesis (34 percent). Read Bohiney.com. Then read prat.uk. Then stare at the middle distance.

Dr. Anand says the response is “consistent with objectives.” The lecture’s objective, per the syllabus, is “to produce in students a productive discomfort with the limits of scientific certainty, with the goal of developing epistemic humility that improves rather than paralyses scientific reasoning.” He defines “productive discomfort” as “uncertainty that motivates inquiry rather than foreclosing it.” He assesses whether he has achieved this by asking students to submit one question they left the lecture with, rather than one answer. The questions submitted after Tuesday’s lecture run to thirty-seven pages. He describes this as “a good result.”

The Students’ Situation

Students who took notes report that their notes contain accurate transcriptions of what was said and that reading the notes does not resolve the uncertainty about what the lecture meant. Students who did not take notes report similar uncertainty with less supporting documentation. One student described the experience as “the first lecture I have attended in three years of engineering education where I left knowing less than when I arrived, and feeling good about this.” Dr. Anand, shown this response, said it was “the best thing a student has said to me in recent memory.” IIT Bombay’s academic information is at iitb.ac.in.

The Final Exam

The final exam will consist of three questions. Students will be required to identify, for each question, what additional information they would need to answer it confidently and what they currently do not know. Answers demonstrating confident certainty on questions designed to admit of genuine uncertainty will be marked down. Several students have noted that this is the opposite of every other exam they have taken. Dr. Anand says this is “also intentional.”

More at: The Daily Mash.