What is it like to understand advanced mathematics?
post by morganism · 2016-08-14T23:14:51.335Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 5 commentsContents
Intellectuals Are Freaks None 5 comments
a Quora answer that is pretty interesting.
"But the quantitative and logical techniques you sharpen as a mathematician allow you to take many shortcuts that make learning other fields easier"
https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-understand-advanced-mathematics/answers/873950?srid=p6KQ&share=1
and another
Intellectuals Are Freaks
the pool from which scholars, writers, and policy experts is drawn is already a small one. It is even more exclusive in practice, because the children of the rich and affluent are over-represented among those who go to college.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/005352-intellectuals-are-freaks/
he-he
http://www.joelkotkin.com/content/001258-today%E2%80%99s-tech-oligarchs-are-worse-robber-barons
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comment by buybuydandavis · 2016-08-15T00:47:19.911Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What is it like to understand advanced mathematics?
Mathematics is our language for understanding quantitative relationships. Most people are simply illiterate in that language, and are basically reduced to magical thinking where quantitative relationships are concerned. They just don't have the concepts to deal with the problem domain, so they use the inapplicable concepts they do have instead.
Replies from: morganism↑ comment by morganism · 2016-08-15T05:57:13.060Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
i like the way they use simpler systems, and known concepts to leverage up into more complex understanding. this seems to me the basis of "education", a structure to teach people how to build upon things they have learned, and especially understood, to walk boldly into the unknown, and believing they have a chance to understand.
Still and all, if you learn that you know less the more you learn, it contributes to the sense of awe in the universe. Humility is a great feedback mech.