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I just left a comment on a different thread about detached from reality a lot of tech workers are, and then here I find a guy being like "but rugged calculators
by ToucanLoucan 2y ago
I just left a comment on a different thread about detached from reality a lot of tech workers are, and then here I find a guy being like "but rugged calculators are a thing, why do you need to do math in your head?"
Tell me you have never built a thing[1] in your entire life that was more complex than an IKEA bookshelf without telling me that challenge: I do hobby projects all the time and I couldn't even tell you how many mental-math problems I do per hour while doing so. It's a LOT. Depending what I'm making I might well spend more time doing math in my head and on paper than I do actually putting tools to materials to build the thing.
[1]: by this I mean actually building. With your hands.
- QuercusMax 2y agoI never said you don't need to do math in your head. I said that the argument "calculators are fragile, so you have to do math in your head" doesn't hold water. You're arguing something different, which I tend to agree with.
- nerdponx 2y agoHell even installing shelves in my closet had me doing trigonometry on a scrap of printer paper to figure out how close I could space together the shelves and still be able to get the boards through the door frame. Calculation is one of the core skills of human cognition and is correspondingly foundational for just about all of human enterprise. Not doing it means limiting your ability to participate in said enterprise.