Dear Black Boxes

Todd M. Gureckis · May 20, 2021 · 1 minute to read

Dear Black Boxes,

Thanks for an interesting semester. I enjoyed talking at you for 15+ weeks trying to explain the basics of Python, data science, and experiment design. It has been a rough year for all of us. However as I look back at our time together there are several things I will cherish.

I will never forget how, despite intermittent begging, over time everyone decided to turn their video off except one student. I don't place blame. I started turning my video off too by the end. We all evolved into Cartesian minds disconnected from our bodies. Pure beings of thoughts and words meeting in the ether to learn about regression.

I'll never forget the dynamic where I made a joke and one person wrote "haha" in the chat room but everyone was otherwise an unchanging black box. I've used that gag myself while sitting in a seminar I was barely able to pay attention to: "haha" .

One class I saw two of the boxes that had video at least smirked after the joke about Bayesians versus Frequentists. However, as we learned in the lecture about correlation versus causation I can't be sure they weren't just texting each other about something else.

When I said "Hello. Is this thing on?" Did you laugh? Did you roll your eyes? I can only imagine the look on your face watching me talk excitedly to an inert, expressionless object (my computer screen). I've seen those crazy people on the streets of New York City, seeming talking to themselves on Bluetooth headsets with their cell phones in their pockets.

Sometimes I stared deep into the dark (literally) reaches of your soul, your black box. I imagined where you might be? A mansion on a beach? A cramped apartment someplace in the world? Working from your childhood bedroom you thought you successfully escaped in order to attend college? I imagined if you were awake or asleep. I wondered what you thought about this entirely weird situation? Did you realize that I was ask to get the job done and that I was trying with no definition of what "doing it right" could even be?

And where was I? My office? My apartment? Was I feeding my 2 year old breakfast at the same time as talking about t-tests? Was I also reading the news at the same time?

Please, don't confuse sympathy for a complaint. As I write you, I'm here peeking out myself from the black box in a Zoom seminar.

Stay safe, healthy, and blank,
Prof Gureckis

May 20, 2021 · teaching, pandemic, zoom