I’m not a physics student, but I absolutely feel I should have been able to generate more than one hypothesis here! I have definitely enjoyed watching science videos that talk about really cool ceramics that get used in building spacecraft, which can be glowing red-hot and nevertheless safe to touch because of how non-conductive they are. So it’s not like I wasn’t aware of the possibility that some materials have weird properties here. It’s just that I generated a single hypothesis—the instructor flipped the plate around—and was super-satisfied with being correct.
And maybe I get Bayes points for being correct, since “the instructor flipped the plate around” is the right answer (assuming it’s a real story) and “the instructor went to all the trouble of constructing a two-sided plate out of really weird materials purely in order to fuck with his physics students” is a wrong answer. But where I think I went wrong is feeling derisive towards the silly incorrect physics students who say things like “maybe something weird is happening with heat conduction?” and feeling superior to them because they were just guessing the teacher’s password. When, actually, “something weird is going on relating to conduction” is a thought which could have led to me generating and considering more than one hypothesis.
I’m not a physics student, but I absolutely feel I should have been able to generate more than one hypothesis here! I have definitely enjoyed watching science videos that talk about really cool ceramics that get used in building spacecraft, which can be glowing red-hot and nevertheless safe to touch because of how non-conductive they are. So it’s not like I wasn’t aware of the possibility that some materials have weird properties here. It’s just that I generated a single hypothesis—the instructor flipped the plate around—and was super-satisfied with being correct.
And maybe I get Bayes points for being correct, since “the instructor flipped the plate around” is the right answer (assuming it’s a real story) and “the instructor went to all the trouble of constructing a two-sided plate out of really weird materials purely in order to fuck with his physics students” is a wrong answer. But where I think I went wrong is feeling derisive towards the silly incorrect physics students who say things like “maybe something weird is happening with heat conduction?” and feeling superior to them because they were just guessing the teacher’s password. When, actually, “something weird is going on relating to conduction” is a thought which could have led to me generating and considering more than one hypothesis.