I mostly agree with Hacker, contra Ed.

It’s not that math is useless. Obviously the opposite is true. However, most of the claimed broad-based intellectual uplift from teaching higher-level math is completely false. Most skills in any field do not transfer — this is well-supported by research. So the supposed improvements in rigor and critical thinking that “naturally” follow from math instruction actually do not exist. (In fact, learning to think more logically just serves to reinforce existing prejudices most of the time.)

I’m terrible at operational math and always will be. Something in my brain is completely and irreparably broken in that respect.

But my partner is actually good at math, but hated her math instruction with a passion. She has a minor in math and quickly understands how to do things that I literally will never be able to do. (Having tried some things for thousands of hours that she can do in minutes, yep, ’tis true.)

However, back to that hatred. Yes, some things need to be learned by rote. This is the way of many things in life. However, none of her math instruction taught her anything at all about the world, about how to learn, how or why any part of it was useful, or how to even in principle to apply any of it to the actual world. Ever.

And she didn’t go to some second-rate university, either. This is typical and defended by those who have also suffered such a torturous matriculation as any large investment often is. A former friend of mine argued (after suffering through a similar program) that it was basically impossible to teach math in any way less punishing than that until the PhD level or beyond.

Which is obvious bullshit but sunk costs, etc.

I’m ambulating all over here, but my point is that math for most people is actually completely useless and as taught is actively harmful.

So, mostly, I support Hacker’s ideas. If math were not taught like some sort of death camp, I might have a different opinion.

And of course math is used as a proxy IQ test — I’d support just giving IQ tests as it’s more honest. And that would also benefit me because I absolutely kill non-math-based IQ tests and that would open more fields to me and to people like me.

But anything beyond long division is completely worthless to 98% of people. Always will be.

I saw some people complaining about a huge deus ex machina in the first portion of Season 6, episode 9 (start of the half-season) for the Walking Dead.

But it was a deus ex machina that rather than coming out of nowhere was an entire mini-plot point a few episodes back. So not deus ex machina at all!

The show has exceeded the IQs and memories of those who watch it is the main problem. It was so sloppy and mediocre to bad at first, and now it’s so careful and consistent. A joy to watch, even if it has exceeded the intelligence of many of its viewers and reviewers.

“A black man with the same IQ, education, experience, and so on as a white man is predicted to earn about 14.3% less, and the difference is very statistically significant.”

–Introductory Econometrics, 2nd Edition by Jeffrey M. Wooldridge (textbook I’m currently reading)

I’ve seen more and more of this denial of the reality of diabetes on fat acceptance blogs:

There ain’t even a word for that kind of dumb-ass.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, that is poorly covered by science as it is cross-discipline and that is frowned upon these days.

And I have no credentials so even if my ideas are 100% right, no one will care. So that leaves me free to do what the hell I want, just as I like it.

But what I’ve been pondering is the complexity gap, as I’ve been calling it. There is an idea pervasive in science that more information leads to better predictive ability. This seems obviously true, right? Yes? Well, but is it? (And there is follow-on that everything can be measured and has a mathematical solution, even if just in principle.)

Just because something seems true means nothing; it actually has to be true.

But there are and always will be enormous complexity gaps in reality. Computer science majors will probably know what I am getting at right away without me having to spell it out, but that’s one of the problems: many scientists I’ve met (save a few like a friend of mine) know almost nothing about any other field!

For problems of certain n complexity, adding even a billion or a trillion, etc., times the information will not change your predictive ability at all. (Computer scientists are probably laughing now; others might be puzzled.)

For certain phenomena, more information might actually lead to worse results.

More information is better than not having it, but it doesn’t magically lead to the truth falling out.