There's Nothing More Practical Than a Good Theory

Speaker A [00:00:01]:
Welcome to the Cabrera Lab podcast.

Speaker B [00:00:05]:
Hey.

Speaker A [00:00:05]:
Hello.

Speaker B [00:00:06]:
How are you?

Speaker A [00:00:07]:
Kicking butt.

Speaker B [00:00:08]:
I too am kicking butt today. So we're in good shape to have a podcast because we're both kicking butt.

Speaker A [00:00:13]:
Nice.

Speaker B [00:00:13]:
All right, so listen, there's this sort of age old debate across the disciplines, but in particular the other day I was listening to, I don't know, I think it's like a YouTube video of a conference talk and somebody was arguing about pragmatism, and the person was saying that if you're really a pragmatist, that pragmatism doesn't really need theory. 
That it's just that you can make a lot of decisions. Not with any theoretical underpinning or. I don't know, I just thought theory versus practice pragmatism. Like we should talk about that because it's an interesting ongoing conversation that keeps coming up.

Speaker A [00:00:52]:
I mean, the biggest, the first part is, by and large, writ large, people don't understand what theory is.

Speaker B [00:01:00]:
Okay.

Speaker A [00:01:01]:
If you, if you listen to the way the word theory is used in casual conversation, if it's used at all.

Speaker B [00:01:07]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:01:08]:
They'll say, well, oh, that's just a theory that, you know, I have a theory on this or something. You know, people use it very loosely as a word.

Speaker B [00:01:16]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:01:17]:
And I think it's really important for people to understand the difference between a guess, an opinion, a hypothesis, a theory. Yeah, those are, those couldn't be more different. Right. So a theory, probably the most important aspect of a theory means that it has accumulated evidence. 
So a theory is a hypothesis that has accumulated evidence so much so that it becomes a theory. So a theory is like the gold standard of, of science. A theory is like really something you should take seriously if it's an actual theory. Now the problem is a lot of people call things theories that aren't theories.

Speaker B [00:02:07]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:02:07]:
But if something's an actual theory in science, it means that it's like the real deal. Like you should definitely practice based on.

Speaker B [00:02:16]:
It, Meaning it's been tested, it's been really empirically looked at, validated or rejected.

Speaker A [00:02:25]:
Yes.

Speaker B [00:02:25]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:02:25]:
Well, it's. It wouldn't be a theory if it wasn't rejected. If it was rejected.

Speaker B [00:02:29]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:02:30]:
In other words, if something is truly a theory. Now that, that doesn't help people with the, with the problem that sometimes people call things theories when they're not theories. Right, Right.

Speaker B [00:02:40]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:02:41]:
But if something is legitimately a scientific theory, it is by definition something that is supported by an accumulation of evidence. Like not just one evidence, a bunch of evidence.

Speaker B [00:02:54]:
So, like proven it's proven.

Speaker A [00:02:57]:
Scientists don't use the word proven, but to the, to the general public, it's effectively proven. Yeah.

Speaker B [00:03:03]:
So like the theory of evolution.

Speaker A [00:03:05]:
Yeah.

Speaker B [00:03:06]:
When the theory of, like gravity.

Speaker A [00:03:08]:
Of relativity. Yeah. Gravity. Those are all theories. Yeah.

Speaker B [00:03:12]:
So if, if you think of it that way, then when I say I have a theory about the dog. Well, I don't actually have a.

Speaker A [00:03:19]:
You have an opinion.

Speaker B [00:03:19]:
I have an opinion. Or a guess.

Speaker A [00:03:21]:
Or you have an opinion or a guess. If that thing is testable, meaning there's some way to actually verify it, then you're starting into the realm of a hypothesis. But an opinion doesn't have to be testable. I can have any opinion I want. I can say I can have an opinion that your shirt is purple. That's my opinion. Or blue or pink or whatever. I can have any opinion that I want.

Speaker B [00:03:49]:
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker A [00:03:50]:
And what, what a lot of people in academia, not in science, but in academia, when they are talking, a lot of times they're talking opinion.

Speaker B [00:04:00]:
Yes.

Speaker A [00:04:00]:
And they're pretending that it's theory.

Speaker B [00:04:03]:
Right. And they're doing that to have credibility. They're using the word to be credible.

Speaker A [00:04:08]:
Yeah. And whether or not they intend to or not, sometimes they very clearly intend to, and sometimes they, they just aren't paying attention. It's a rhetorical technique to try to get credibility.

Speaker B [00:04:21]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:04:22]:
It's, it's, it's manipulative, you know, so we're, we're talking about things as if they are credible science when they are, in fact, somebody's opinion. And this happens a lot in the field of systems thinking.

Speaker B [00:04:37]:
Why so much in the field of systems thinking, do you think?

Speaker A [00:04:40]:
Well, I think it happens a lot in, in, in all fields where, where the maturity of the field isn't there yet. Right.

Speaker B [00:04:51]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:04:52]:
Physics has the benefit of, of it has longevity and maturity. And also part of that longevity and maturity is because it is simpler. The, the things that they're studying are simpler. I know that sounds weird to people because in high school, when you take physics, it's hard. It doesn't seem simpler.

Speaker B [00:05:13]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:05:13]:
In high school, when you take chemistry, I don't know, history, it's easier. Or if you take sociology in high school or college, it's perceived to be an easier course.

Speaker B [00:05:26]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:05:26]:
And so we don't think of that as being the harder thing, as being simpler. But if you think about the things that physicists study and the phenomena that chemists study, those phenomena are much more, Are much simpler as systems.

Speaker B [00:05:43]:
Are they simpler because they're observable and they're known or what makes them simpler?

Speaker A [00:05:49]:
They're simpler because. No, I mean, in a technical sense, they're simpler in that they don't have as many degrees of freedom. They don't have as many variables involved. They don't have as many, they don't have things that have agency or tremendous amount of the degree to which those things have agency. So for example, literally as soon as you enter organic, you know, biological species into the mix.

Speaker B [00:06:18]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:06:18]:
The complexity just goes through the roof. Right. And in fact, even in physics and, and chemistry, when you, when you know there's a thing called a three body problem or a two body problem, as soon as you go above three body, three things, the complexity involved just goes through the roof. 
And then if you then add that those three things have some semblance of, you know, awareness or consciousness or, or agency or choice, then the, the number of variables just goes up and then the number of interactions. It's just things get much more complex.

Speaker B [00:06:55]:
Interesting. So you were talking about systems thinking as a field has a tendency to have less theory, almost no theory, and more sort of opinion.

Speaker A [00:07:08]:
Opinion, what a lot of people call published papers. I feel for folks when they try to come to these things and try to sift through and understand the wheat from the chaff and separate the wheat from the chaff in some of these academic disciplines, especially some that are relatively new and, or relatively studying relatively complex things. Right. Not unimportant things. Right. I mean, like happiness is an incredibly important thing to study.

Speaker B [00:07:44]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:07:45]:
Why are people happy or not happy? Right. That doesn't make it an easy thing to study. Right. Empathy, an incredibly important thing to study, doesn't make it easy to study. It's very complex. First of all, it's complex because of all the things I mentioned. But second, it's complex because it's predominantly invisible. I mean, if I can imagine, if I can look at a molecule and I can actually see the molecule under a microscope.

Speaker B [00:08:12]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:08:13]:
Well, gosh, that, that takes half the battle out of it. I can see the thing.

Speaker B [00:08:19]:
You can observe it.

Speaker A [00:08:20]:
It can observe it. It's not as easy to observe empathy.

Speaker B [00:08:25]:
No.

Speaker A [00:08:25]:
So studying it is just harder. It's harder. It's more complex to study empathy than it is to study molecules in the same way that it's more complex to study interactions than it is to study sheep.

Speaker B [00:08:39]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:08:40]:
You know, it's more complex to study marriage than it is to study husbands.

Speaker B [00:08:47]:
Right, right.

Speaker A [00:08:47]:
Because the marriage is kind of a husband. I can go, there's a Husband. There's a husband because there's so many interactions like marriage. Like, where is it? Where's a marriage?

Speaker B [00:08:55]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:08:56]:
How do you find it? How do you isolate it? How do you measure it?

Speaker B [00:08:59]:
It's an invisible.

Speaker A [00:08:59]:
You can't even see it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we all know it exists. We all know that it's a relational thing. We all know that it has certain components. But how do you see it? You know, you're starting off with a much more difficult problem because it's not even. It's barely visibly observable. Right. So you can observe it. You can sit like Jane Goodall and watch married people. You can observe it, but you can't see it.

Speaker B [00:09:29]:
Yeah, right.

Speaker A [00:09:31]:
You can't touch it. Well, I can touch, you know.

Speaker B [00:09:36]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:09:36]:
A slime molt. I can touch pond, you know, I can go and sit next to a pond and study the pond ecology.

Speaker B [00:09:44]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:09:44]:
I can't see the relationships that are happening. That's a little more difficult.

Speaker B [00:09:48]:
So in systems thinking or I mean, does that. Does that follow then, that mechanical systems versus organic systems, socio technical systems. Is that why. Is that possibly one of the reasons that you see more opinion than you do theory in the field, Is it that these systems are involving humans and interactions and.

Speaker A [00:10:08]:
Yeah, I mean, it's a complex thing with the. Why. Why do we see more. But yes, I mean, generally speaking, they're more complex. Right. Those kinds of disciplines, the social disciplines, the social sciences are more complex. There are certainly things in those sciences that are less complex and that we study quite well. Like in sociology, we are quite good at network theory, but that's because we can the nodes and we can count the relationships. We can literally say, does this person know this person? And at that simple level, we can do a lot with network theory, but at a more complex level, we don't know what's happening in the relationships. At a more kind of, you know, does it. Does this person really like this person or are they just.

Speaker B [00:10:55]:
I mean, we know there's a relationship.

Speaker A [00:10:56]:
We know there is a relationship, but we don't know the details at the marriage level or at the friendship level. You know, that's a lot. If you're trying to study are people friends? And friends is determined. The construct of friends is determined on whether you're connected on Facebook. Well, that's a much easier thing to count.

Speaker B [00:11:16]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:11:17]:
Then do. Are they friends? You know, like, do they like each other? Do they trust each other? Do they. Are they vulnerable with each other? Are they, you know, do they even see Each other? Do they even see each other in person? Do they. You know, are they fond of each other? Would they. Would they support each other? All that kind of stuff? Well, that's. That's a lot harder to determine.

Speaker B [00:11:37]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:11:37]:
In a lot of disciplines, systems thinking included, it's more complex. It's younger. The field itself is younger than sort of some of these older fields. It draws less technical people, so less people that get into the. The technica of it. You know, those are some of the reasons. There's other reasons that have to do with cultural norms in science and things like that.

Speaker B [00:12:01]:
But I mean, it gets back to what I was thinking about earlier is, you know, we were. One time we were signing up for a conference. It was a systems thinking conference, one of the first ones I went to. And I remember when I signed up or registered for the conference, it had a checkbox. Are you a theorist? Are you a practitioner? Are you a student? 
And it's. Oh, I mean, you know, you and I have talked about theory and practice. It always strikes me when people sort of say you're. You're either a theorist or a practitioner, but you're never both. Or that they're not related. Like the whole idea of pragmatism doesn't require any theory.

Speaker A [00:12:34]:
Yeah, there couldn't be more bullshit than that. Well, yeah, that couldn't be a more bullshit statement.

Speaker B [00:12:40]:
Technical term.

Speaker A [00:12:41]:
Kurt Loewen was famous for saying there's nothing more practical than a good theory. And, and again, if you think theory is an opinion or theory is, you know, you know, a guess, or theory is a hypothesis, well, then that's not what theory means. There is nothing more practical than a good theory. 
And the reason for that is a good theory is reality. It's the closest thing we have to reality, period. It's the closest thing that science has to reality. It's the closest thing that science has to proven. We don't. Again, we don't use the word proven, but that's. If we did, that would be the closest thing that.

Speaker B [00:13:20]:
Well, maybe we have.

Speaker A [00:13:21]:
So what is more practical than knowing how reality works?

Speaker B [00:13:26]:
Maybe for the audience sake, it might be helpful if instead of saying proven, you say the best approximation of reality that we have at this moment. Right. So a theory is.

Speaker A [00:13:37]:
It's the truest things that we have.

Speaker B [00:13:39]:
In terms of approximating the reality of whatever it is you're measuring or studying or.

Speaker A [00:13:46]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, like, sometimes you'll hear people say, oh, well, evolution, it's just a theory. You're like, what what does that mean? That's so crazy. But you're like, no. Yes. Evolution is a theory. And not just a theory. It's the reason that tomatoes look the way they do in the grocery store. Like, they're like. It couldn't get any more pragmatic. Like, you would not have the tomatoes that you get in the grocery store or the oranges or the 20 different kinds of apples. 
You wouldn't have apples that are this big. You wouldn't have tomatoes that are tasteless and this big. You wouldn't have all that kind of stuff. Right. There's some negatives, but the reason we have that is because of evolution. Our understanding of evolution, our understanding of genetics. That's why we have that. Our understanding of breeding.

Speaker B [00:14:33]:
What if you said, oh, relativity, it's.

Speaker A [00:14:36]:
Just a theory, then you wouldn't get, you know, rockets. And you wouldn't. You wouldn't. We wouldn't have any successful stuff happening in. In. We wouldn't have, you know, I mean, that's what. I mean. You. There's. There's just certain things that relativity makes possible.

Speaker B [00:14:54]:
Yes.

Speaker A [00:14:54]:
There's certain things that evolution and genetics makes possible. There's certain things that these theories make possible. And without them, you wouldn't be able to calculate certain things. You wouldn't be able to. You just. There's a bunch of stuff you wouldn't be able to do.

Speaker B [00:15:10]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:15:10]:
So it's wildly pragmatic.

Speaker B [00:15:13]:
Well, then that counter.

Speaker A [00:15:14]:
And by the way, you know, coming up with a theory that doesn't do anything in reality, it's hard to even imagine what that would look like, but. Because you wouldn't get any accumulated evidence if it wasn't based in reality. Right, right. So practice is reality. So, you know, on the flip side of the coin. So that's why practice, practitioners, and practice shouldn't misunderstand theory because it's like absolutely the most important thing to them. And by the way, theorists should not. I mean, I don't know why a theorist would ever do that, because the theorist is really interested in how does reality work. Yeah.

Speaker B [00:15:52]:
But I do think in academia in particular, you know, I came up, through translational research and all that there is this very interesting separation of theory and practice, and then it's considered to be an enormous skill to bridge them, which is interesting if you think about it, because.

Speaker A [00:16:10]:
But again, that's because people are coming up with theories. You don't come up with a theory. You come up with a framework. You come up with a model, you come up with a hypothesis. And then evidence either accumulates for those things or it doesn't. And if it does, then that thing becomes a theory. It is the act of accumulated evidence that turns something into a theory.

Speaker B [00:16:40]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:16:40]:
It's not the act of thinking it, it's the act of accumulation of evidence that turns it into a theory.

Speaker B [00:16:47]:
Yes, I agree with that. But I think even taking that further, even a theory that is a viable theory, as you're saying your definition of theory, I still think there's a tendency to have, for example, the theorist camp kind of pooh poos practitioners, and that practitioner camp kind of pooh poohs theorists as being not practical. So I guess what I'm wondering is why is that the case? And how do we get people to see what you just said, which is there's nothing more practical than a good theory. And how do we create that bridge sort of naturally rather than believing that we have to physically do that?

Speaker A [00:17:27]:
Yeah, I mean, in order to look for patterns across multiple practical domains, multiple practical situations. So you might have like something happens over here in practice, this domain. You know, this is a situation. 
This is a bunch of situations that happen in the real world. And what a, what a theory is going to try to do, if this is the theory, is kind of look at the pattern across all these and sort of look at how can I explain all these different things that are happening in this world, in this pragmatic practical world. And what is the pattern that connects them? 
Right. What is the pattern across them? And then I'm going to come up with something that says what the pattern that connects them is. And that thing can feel kind of abstract because you're thinking, oh, this is A and this is B and this is C and this is D and A is not B is not C is not D. So those are different situations. But actually there's a pattern across them. So if you're thinking about leadership, which is a very complex realm that we don't fully understand, but you know, leader A is not leader B is not leader C is not leader D. 
And when you look at leader A, you go, what's leader A doing? Oh, they're like, this B is totally different than A and C is totally different than A and B. And so you just go, God, there's just no way to know what good leadership is. And then somebody goes, wait a minute, is A different than B? You know, maybe the surface level actions are different, but the underlying pattern of their behavior and the pattern of the reaction that it creates to that behavior is very Very similar to B. And if you start to see that underlying structure, that underlying pattern, then you can start to come up with a model that describes that. And then once you come up with a model, you can test the model. And then once people, a bunch of people test that model, then that thing becomes. 
If tested and if you get an accumulation of evidence, you get. You get reality. You know, you get. You get a theory that is based on reality.

Speaker B [00:19:56]:
Does that mean that.

Speaker A [00:19:57]:
But that's very different from another method, which is. I'm Joe Schmo, and I look for 10 minutes or 10 years on this thing, and I go, I think it's this. I think. I think what's happening is, is, you know, X equals pdq.

Speaker B [00:20:13]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:20:14]:
And. And you go, oh, you know, okay, it's true. X equals pdq. No evidence, no nothing. That is not called the theory. That's called Joe's opinion. Right? Here's Joe. Yeah, and here's Joe's opinion. And everybody has them. Everybody has opinions.

Speaker B [00:20:32]:
I see.

Speaker A [00:20:32]:
Because it hasn't been tested. That's not very pragmatic. That's just Joe's opinion. That's Joe's opinion. His anecdotal experience of what leadership is. This episode is sponsored by Training Camp, the ultimate online spot for building the mental fitness that drives personal and professional change and success. At Training Camp, you'll have access to the science and practice of thinking with personalized thinking assessments, tiered training, and best of all, practice that improves skill. Go to cabrera lab.org to learn more. And now back to the episode.

Speaker B [00:21:12]:
Does that mean then when you talk about pragmatism or pragmatics, that sort of lives at the surface level and doesn't actually see the hidden patterns and structures underneath? Is that a fair statement or no?

Speaker A [00:21:24]:
I think people that are really excellent practitioner. I mean, there's a reason why a lot of people that come from the practice world, eventually, they. They're thinking about it so much and they're watching it, and they have so much experience that they eventually go, I really want to go study this. I want to go figure out what are the underlying patterns, because nobody's figured it out yet. And then they go. And they're the ones that oftentimes create theories.

Speaker B [00:21:48]:
I see.

Speaker A [00:21:48]:
To create things that get tested enough to be theories.

Speaker B [00:21:52]:
And should we as academics be really trying to understand the difference between theory and practice, but also push ourselves to see the patterns and actually build that bridge? Right, Yeah.

Speaker A [00:22:04]:
I mean, you know this because you're. You're actually trained in this. So, but the relationship between theory and practice, a lot of times is this thing called translational research. And, and the reason that translational research is so important is because theory and practice is so important. 
And a lot of times when somebody's come up with a theory and it's been tested and it's been, you know, accumulation of evidence has occurred, you really want the practical world to know about it because we, we now know that to be mostly true, you know, but, you know, the practical world has its head in the details of what's going on and, you know, isn't studying the, you know, whatever abstract level of it. And so you need kind of a translatory or translator to sort of say, hey, when we. 
When we say F equals ma, here's what it means in reality. Here's what that looks like in reality. The problem is when we go evolutionary theory and the practitioners, meaning the general public, in this case, let's say, they say, well, what's evolutionary theory? And we go, well, it means we came from monkeys. And you go, I don't think we came from monkeys. And then you have a big argument about that. We. Well, evolutionary theory doesn't say that.

Speaker B [00:23:25]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:23:26]:
Evolutionary theory. So that's a mistranslation.

Speaker B [00:23:29]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:23:30]:
Evolutionary theory says that monkeys and us had a common ancestor.

Speaker B [00:23:34]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:23:35]:
Who's no longer on the planet. That species is gone. Yeah, that's what evolutionary theory says. But people take it as, you know. You mean, you know, there was a monkey and then I became a human out of the monkey. I don't think that's what happened. You know, and you're like, neither does Darwin.

Speaker B [00:23:54]:
Right. So it seems to me that part of the challenges is actually in not misinforming the public. I mean, I do know in conversation over and over again, people say, I have a theory about this, I have a theory about that.

Speaker A [00:24:08]:
Oh, my God.

Speaker B [00:24:09]:
So that's one of the challenges. I think one of the other challenges is, I don't know how we do it, but getting people to see the real, necessary connection between theory and practice. Yes, because. Yeah, because otherwise you get statements like a pragmatist doesn't actually need to know anything about theory.

Speaker A [00:24:26]:
If there is a theory in the realm that they're in, they definitely do. That'd be about the only thing that they definitely should know. Now, that doesn't mean that that thing is primed to be known. That's a different problem in science. We should work more on making sure that the public gets the benefit of science. Right. And part of that is translating it well so that the public can understand the science. Right.

Speaker B [00:24:54]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:24:54]:
Evolutionary theory is a great case of that because, you know, most of the arguments that are made against evolutionary theory are just abominations of their straw men of the theory of the theory. There's, you know, the idea of a straw man versus a steel man.

Speaker B [00:25:09]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:25:09]:
A straw man is like, I take your argument. We do this to each. To. We humans do this to other people.

Speaker B [00:25:15]:
Not you and me.

Speaker A [00:25:16]:
No, not me. Humans do this to other humans all the time. So the person goes, well, I think this. And you go, you think that, you know, all puppies are ugly. You know, and you're like, I didn't say all puppies are ugly.

Speaker B [00:25:29]:
But now you're arguing. Right.

Speaker A [00:25:32]:
So that's called a straw man. Right?

Speaker B [00:25:34]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:25:34]:
You know, what you want to do is deal with the steel man, the man, the thing behind the theory that is a real representation of the theory, not a fictitious, like, you know, scarecrow. Scarecrow of. Of the. Made out of straw of the theory. So we have to get better at translating thus into practitioner, language or practice domain, the importance of those theories, because, frankly, everything else really isn't important.

Speaker B [00:26:10]:
Okay, let's slow down there.

Speaker A [00:26:11]:
Everything else is just. Is just like anecdotal experience.

Speaker B [00:26:15]:
Oh, I see what you mean.

Speaker A [00:26:16]:
I'm not saying anecdotal experience isn't important. I'm just saying, like, it's not something that I would, like, bet the farm on. Right, Right. Just because Joe down the hall says this is the way to do it, I wouldn't, like, bet the farm on that. Yeah, but I'd bet the farm on gravity. I'd bet the farm on relativity. I'd bet the farm on evolution.

Speaker B [00:26:36]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:26:36]:
You know, those are theories.

Speaker B [00:26:38]:
I mean, but I also think you said it's about making sure that we take the responsibility to translate theories into practice. And I think it's also a wider context. I mean, you and I talk about this a lot, a wider context of just general education, of the like, for example, the difference between a hypothesis, a test, a theory, you know, all of those different components of what people have different meanings for, and they associate it with science. Right. Like, I think there's a huge context.

Speaker A [00:27:10]:
In which even the notion of science, like, we have such a huge misunderstanding of science. And science is one of our, if not the most important way of knowing that we've ever invented.

Speaker B [00:27:23]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:27:24]:
It's the most important way that we've ever invented of knowing things, and we've confused it almost entirely with Academia, which is a political, cultural, social, human system that is basically, I mean it's, it's quite literally no different in all of its complexity than politics or.

Speaker B [00:27:48]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:27:49]:
Office politics or anything else. Like academia and academicians and the publisher Paris Game. Yeah, it's its own thing that does not necessarily have to do with science. Sometimes science is co located with it.

Speaker B [00:28:07]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:28:08]:
But you know, there's science happening, lots of remarkable science happening in academia and not in academia.

Speaker B [00:28:18]:
Yes, I also, and there's also all.

Speaker A [00:28:20]:
Kinds of crazy shenanigans going on inside of academia that shouldn't be like, shouldn't taint our love of science.

Speaker B [00:28:30]:
Well, I think the first thing is distinguishing between the two.

Speaker A [00:28:33]:
Just understand them as being different.

Speaker B [00:28:35]:
I also think, you know, and this struck me As a young PhD student many years ago, I was always baffled by why academics did not write their ideas to be understood. Right. Like there's this thing, there's this, there was this trend, at least when I was a student, where people really wrote. Academic writing was very dense, it was very hard to understand and it almost seemed purposeful. And I think part of it is we have to get over our egos. 
I don't think the smartest person in the room has the least understandable piece of written work. I think actually the smarter people in the room have all of that in their minds, but have a way of actually communicating it to be understood. That to me is a smart person because then I'm adding to the knowledge outside of myself.

Speaker A [00:29:27]:
Yeah. I think there's two reasons for that. One is in science sometimes you're getting more detailed and more technical and so you're making more distinctions, you're parsing fine grained distinctions. Just like a surgeon is making very fine grain, you know, cuts or whatever. That's a surgeon's different than like somebody cutting up meat with a cleaver. You know, those are different levels, different grain analysis. 
So there is, there is a reasonable amount of technical language. And that's not just in science. I mean, that's in engineering. That's it. Go to business, go in the military, and think of all the acronyms and technical language they use in all these different areas. If you walked into a room that you were unfamiliar with and they were working at a high level in whatever area, not just science, they would be using a whole host of terminology that you would have no idea what they were saying.

Speaker B [00:30:27]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:30:28]:
In business, in military, in engineering and in. And in science. The other side is there absolutely is a, there has been and is a culture of Writing in ways that are not for the reader. They're not for. They're not easily understood.

Speaker B [00:30:49]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:30:49]:
And I would even go so far as to say that in certain sciences or certain academic disciplines, rather, you know, it. It becomes almost. You create an impenetrable wall of words because maybe underneath those words, there's really nothing there. And so you have to create the illusion that this thing. Oh, it's not that there's nothing there. 
It's just. I can't. Me, silly me, can't understand it. And then. And then, you know, the reader just thinks, oh, this is like above my head. When really it's actually just not a cloud of cloudiness and. And words play. That means absolutely nothing.

Speaker B [00:31:34]:
It's like a moat to protect that person's expertise.

Speaker A [00:31:38]:
Exactly.

Speaker B [00:31:38]:
Right. Because I want to be the expert in something. I don't think it's impossible. I do think the culture of academia can change. I do think the public's understanding of the value of what science is and the value of it can change.

Speaker A [00:31:54]:
Yeah. I think the most important thing is the general public pays to know things. Right. They pay with their tax dollars.

Speaker B [00:32:05]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:32:06]:
So they pay for science. So science owes them good explanations.

Speaker B [00:32:15]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:32:16]:
Good usable explanations. There's the edifice of academia, and I should probably draw that differently. Right. So. Because science is happening inside and outside of academia. So, you know, maybe it's like this. Right?

Speaker B [00:32:29]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:32:29]:
Like I said, science is happening outside of academia, science is happening inside of academia, but science is not the same as academia.

Speaker B [00:32:37]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:32:38]:
And a scientist is not the same as an academic.

Speaker B [00:32:41]:
Right, right.

Speaker A [00:32:41]:
The public should make that distinction. It's really important that they. When they see a gross example of. Of irresponsible quote unquote science, they should distinguish between, oh, is that academic shenanigans or is that science?

Speaker B [00:32:59]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:32:59]:
If you make that distinction, it can make things a lot easier to sort of not lose faith in this absolutely remarkable tool that we've created called science.

Speaker B [00:33:10]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:33:11]:
Which is absolutely. I mean, it's literally like, you know, knowledge. Real knowledge about the real universe and not just crazy things. Not just like big esoteric things about the universe. Which is cool too.

Speaker B [00:33:24]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:33:24]:
But. But like really pragmatic things about the universe. Things that make. Things that make everything run.

Speaker B [00:33:32]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:33:32]:
Things that make it so you can be, you know, have a phone and communicate to your loved ones and.

Speaker B [00:33:37]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:33:38]:
So this thing, science, boy, it is a national treasure. It's an, you know, it is a. It is a. It is something we do not want to conflate and Lose faith in it's so important. And we scientists have to get better at making sure the public understands the science. And the public deserves to understand the science because they paid for it.

Speaker B [00:34:02]:
Well, it's not just because. I mean, yes, they paid for it, but also, I mean in terms of our outcomes as a society, as a country, the more educated.

Speaker A [00:34:12]:
Totally. Yeah.

Speaker B [00:34:13]:
I don't mean formally educated.

Speaker A [00:34:15]:
Yeah.

Speaker B [00:34:16]:
The more we know, the more we know, more learned. I don't mean formal education.

Speaker A [00:34:21]:
Absolutely. They're not always correlated. Learned and education level may be very far from each other. Again, another really important distinction to make is level of education is not the same as learned or knowledgeable. Those could be the same or they could be very, very different.

Speaker B [00:34:41]:
I think we need to do a podcast just on distinction. Societal widespread distinction errors like.

Speaker A [00:34:48]:
Yeah.

Speaker B [00:34:49]:
Where we conflate.

Speaker A [00:34:50]:
Conflation. Conflation is something that's very important. And distinction, identity, other is is and is is not list move, which is one of the moves that we talk about is, is a very, very effective tool to say, wait a minute, like, is learned or knowledgeable the same as educated? Is education the place we go to learn sometimes and sometimes it's not.

Speaker B [00:35:18]:
Right.

Speaker A [00:35:19]:
Right. You know, the meaning, the schools and the buildings and all that stuff is, is that the only place we can learn out? Most of our learning happens outside of those places. And does it. If we have letters after our name or if we have, you know, degrees of XYZ types, does that mean we're learned and knowledgeable or does it just mean we got more formal education?

Speaker B [00:35:46]:
Well, are they the same and had the opportunity, you know, you know, whatever. I think about that a lot.

Speaker A [00:35:51]:
Absolutely.

Speaker B [00:35:52]:
You know, I meet people all the time that are incredibly sharp and just didn't have the means or the opportunity for sure. Go and get a formal education. So, you know, back to where we started. Yeah, I think we should really think more and maybe we should write a paper on theory versus practice. Because it's not theory versus practice.

Speaker A [00:36:09]:
It really isn't. It's. They're hand in glove or two sides of the same coin is probably the best way to think about it. Like, you can't have a coin that has one side and doesn't have the other. You know, like, I mean, I guess, I guess if it was just like two dimensional, you could. But that's too much. But, but we understood, you know. Yeah, you can't, you can't.

Speaker B [00:36:32]:
You need one to have the other.

Speaker A [00:36:33]:
You need one to have the other. And, and theory and practice are like, they're. They're like they're lovers. They love each other. They should love each other. They should be best friends. They should not be separate hand in hand, hand in hands, walking down the street. And translational research is a really important, important field that, because of that translatory nature. 
And it goes both ways. Right. The practitioners have to communicate, hey, we're really having this problem, like, how? What. What could be some of the solutions? We think. We've been watching what's happening, and we think it's this. How would we test that so that we can find out if what we think has validity?

Speaker B [00:37:16]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:37:16]:
How would we go about testing that? And that's the beautiful love relationship between theory and practice. There's nothing more practical than a good theory.

Speaker B [00:37:29]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:37:29]:
All right, that's a wrap.