Re: Psychology questions psychuking

sdwebb91984 <*sdwebb91984_at_sdwebb91984.yahoo.invalid*> · Thu, 01 Aug 2002 15:39:52 -0000

I have to agree with you on that. Besides, it's not like Freud is
obscure in the first place. If a team is truly well-balanced they
should be able to get about 90% of the common Freud questions barring
some bizarre-ass question writing. From a phyiscs standpoint, we still
ask questions about Newtonian physics even though Relativity pretty
much has replaced it in accuracy. The point is, people still know
Newtonian physics, it's more accessible to non-physics majors than
questions about General Relativity. Euclidean geometry is effectively
dead, but it's still asked in high school ALL THE TIME. Same deal with
Freud. I probably know infinitely more about Freud than some newer
psychologist or school of psychology or what have you. It's an
accessibility thing. And tying this in to what somebody else said
(sorry, don't remember your name), if you want to get more teams on
the tour, you're going to have to have some highly accessible
questions for them.

Now I'm not proposing breaking out the worksheets of high school days
of old, in fact I'm militantly opposed to the very concept of a
worksheet. But if you want to get more schools to form teams, you're
going to have to hand them a bone. I'm sure all of us played that high
school team that got thrown together at the last minute, has never
even SEEN a buzzer much less played the game. Getting new schools to
join the college circuit would probably be very similar to this.
They're just starting out, and they don't know the kind of information
that's available, unless they blindly get some hard core player on
their team that's willing to do the research and who (almost out of
necessity) played in high school, and played WELL in high school.

Granted, things like the national and regional tournaments should
never be dumbed down, because the point of those tournaments is to let
the cream float to the top. But Freud questions have their place as
being highly accessible to novice teams. Questions like that are
needed to entice new teams to join the circuit. It's like giving them
their first shot of heroine for free, or something like that.

Stephen