Dr. Michael Kilgard

But the times table, is that really important?

Memorizing how multiplication works?

Or should you spend your time with all the states, 50 states and all their state capitals?

I don't have an answer.

I'm not here to tell you that I know what the right thing to do is.

I don't know all the state capitals.

My children do.

Is that useful?

I don't know whether that's going to come out valuable.

And that's one of the exciting things about life.

You don't know what's going to be helpful.

Maybe playing a lot of video games is going to turn out to be really helpful.

I can't have to have enough humility.

I think certainly one of the things I know you've experienced as a scientist is just the incredible humility that comes from recognizing this thing is way more complicated than how I'm thinking about it.

It just is.

We start there.

We know that.

And we're okay with that.

We make our best model, our best explanation we've got, the explanation that fits the data we have now, that's as simple as possible.

And the reason we choose the simplest one is it's the easiest to prove wrong when it's inevitably wrong.