And sometimes teaching Fourth Grade makes you stupid as well.

There is more at work in the universe than Information and Facts — and “subjective opinion” as some are fond of taunting is not always a state of degraded Information and Facts.

That latter Risk Insight is what your former professor was probably trying to get on the table with the discourse on “hegemony and validation.” Perhaps the class silence amounted to resisting the rush to hegemonic dismissal followed by the absence of experience thinking otherwise about the challenge.

“That’s b.s.” is one of the foremost intellectual hegemonic memes in America; we are the worse for it — as your young students will soon enough discover (are you teaching them to code yet on their personal tablets?).

In the course of my lifetime that meme has, gone from sweaty usage in men’s locker rooms to public discourse. Now there’s hegemony — validation is not even required. We have a whole raft of supposed candidates for high public office who’s deepest thinking seems to amount to: “What the other side says in b.s.”

“Anyone can do that…” is another hegemonic meme; fourth graders can be excused for not yet having discovered any difference between Jackson Pollock (not his wealthy admirers — the artist himself) and his no doubt countless imaginary imitators. He will still have been the first mover after all those second try efforts.

In the world of hazardous-event investigations, where I’ve spent a couple of decades working, the self-validating opinion memes like the two noted above are viewed cautiously as they often betray Hindsight Bias — a particularly nefarious form of self-validation in which Information and Facts are pruned to fit the viewers preconceived notion.

Just saying.