I'm old and you are not. That's good thing.
I turned 64 this year and have been on the receiving end of scams and offers related to social security, dementia and Medicare for weeks now. I'm also getting offered senior discounts without asking. None of that has bothered me as much as getting dismissed because I'm no longer in my 30s (which bothered me as much when I was in my 20s). Today, however I had a revelation and I'm feeling much better about my age. I was doing a session with the marketing team for a small business back by telephone and was in the process of breaking down their preconceived notions about communication when the youngest member of the team asked me, "How do you know this is what our customers are thinking?" "Because I've been doing this for 40 years," I replied. "Oh." She replied. Then one of the business owners, well into his 70s asks, "Wait a minute. You said you've been doing this fo r 40 years. How old are you?" "I'm 64....
"In talking about science, whether to the public or to students, we scientists often assume that they share with us a common idea of science. In my experience that is often not the case. To oversimplify, scientists think of science both as a process for discovering properties of nature and as the resulting body of knowledge, whereas most people seem to think of science, or perhaps scientists, as an authority that provides some information -- just one more story among the many that they use to help make sense of their world." -- Helen Quinn, theoretical particle physicist, SLAC
ReplyDelete(In other words, most humans are post-modernist. They can't grasp logical deduction or induction from assembly of facts, and only understand the mythological adoption of stories and narratives from voices of authority. Who could have guessed the attendee at a tea party could be a po-mo in disguise?)