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Everyone crying "calculator" about ChatGPT has me convinced that ChatGPT is bad for your education. Learning to do mental math as a child sucked, but now that I

Everyone crying "calculator" about ChatGPT has me convinced that ChatGPT is bad for your education. Learning to do mental math as a child sucked, but now that I can do it, my brain is so much more free to think about stuff that matters. There's no intervening step of "let me pull out a calculator to see what that is," I just know the answer. The thoughts can just flow freely.

ben_w 2y ago
That's true for every skill that comes fluently. We've only got limited time, which skills really matter? I'd say yes to basic arithmetic; but I can't really use my own experience as a software developer who started off in video games to justify why a normal person needs to understand trigonometry and triangle formulas, any more than I can justify why they need to study Shakespeare and Alfred Tennyson over e.g. Terry Pratchett and Leonard Cohen — "I find it intellectually stimulating" is perhaps necessary, but certainly not sufficient, given there's more to learn than we can fit in a lifetime.
- skydhash 2y ago
  Because they give you flexibility. One does not need to master everything, if you have a wide and stable foundation, your options become more numerous later in life. And expertise is a pyramid, so the more diverse your basic skills are, the farther you can reach.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  Literacy is important. Understanding Shakespeare and/or Tennyson is as much a part of that as is Pratchett. You will read Pratchett on your own, though, and you probably won't go reaching for the Shakespeare, so you might as well get some forced exposure. Understanding rhetoric is a very underappreciated skill, but an important one.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Reading isn't studying — that most won't read Shakespeare means studying the deeper meanings of the ingredients in the witches' brew in Macbeth is pointless and forced exposure is as much a waste of time as Roman numerals or Latin — do it on your own time as a hobby, don't make it mandatory. Conversely, understanding the deeper meanings behind the stuff people do read, perhaps Pratchett, is valuable — the use of speciesism between Dwarfs and Trolls used as a substitute for racism, etc. It's not like rhetoric stopped with old classics; therefore it is better to learn how it works in newspapers or viral memes, as if you keep to Tenyson you're just going to pattern match it to 1800s writing style.
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      On rhetoric: you learn rhetoric by writing more than reading. That's why they make you write about books: it is practice for writing with evidence since the evidence to back up your ideas is contained only in the pages of the book (children are idiots and the book is a replacement for knowledge). While you're doing this exercise, you might as well get exposure to a variety of different books to learn about the culture and history of the world you live in. Modern writers including Pratchett make lots of references to this canon. Some people also learn that they enjoy Shakespeare in school, and they would never read a play like that otherwise.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        And those books should be modern and relevant. That modern writers reference old works is true, but so too did Shakespeare, and we don't reference his cultural ancestors to understand his works. > Some people also learn that they enjoy Shakespeare in school, and they would never read a play like that otherwise That fine, but it's not the job of school. If it was, we'd also have mandatory watching of foreign language horror films.
        pclmulqdq 2y ago
        > And those books should be modern and relevant. What makes Pratchett more "relevant" than Shakespeare? I would posit to you that the same order of magnitude of people (or more) read and watch Shakespeare plays by choice as read Pratchett books. Let alone modern adaptations like West Side Story. I get that you prefer the one, but not everybody does. English classes also have you read lots of other more recent and more modern works. It's not exclusively Shakespeare. I remember, for example, Death of a Salesman, 1984, and Slaughterhouse-Five being part of my high school's English curriculum. Lord of the Rings is apparently in several English curricula now. Comedies of all kinds (from Aristophanes to Pratchett) usually take a backseat to tragedies, bildungsromane, and other more "serious" genres in English classes because they tend to be much less timeless and much more current in terms of their themes and references. > That modern writers reference old works is true, but so too did Shakespeare, and we don't reference his cultural ancestors to understand his works. Schools do generally have you read ancient writers, often including Greek comedies and tragedies, and some have you read medieval British literature and those references do, in fact, come up. It's possible that you did not fully enjoy Shakespeare if you did not get that context. > That fine, but it's not the job of school. If it was, we'd also have mandatory watching of foreign language horror films. Believe it or not, if you take advanced French classes, you're going to watch a lot of French films and listen to a lot of French music for school! Since most students in English-speaking schools spend a lot more time studying English than French, they read a lot more English literature than French.
- Jensson 2y ago
  > I can't really use my own experience as a software developer who started off in video games to justify why a normal person needs to understand trigonometry and triangle formulas We live in a 3d world, every human has to reason about geometry many times in their lives and trigonometry is the most useful and easiest of geometry math. Same reason we learn about volumes etc, everyone learns cos, sin, tan, its just 3 things it doesn't take a lot to learn that.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    And yet, outside my hobbies of "being a massive nerd", I've not needed the maths of trigonometry for at least a decade. Outside hobbies and having worked as a game developer, I can't recall a single time I've needed them. I suspect most learn them for a test them forget them forever. Now, statistics, percentages, and compound interest, those are things people would do better to know, as those are the tools of advertising and money and are unavoidable in modern life.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      > statistics, percentages, and compound interest, those are things people would do better to know They do teach those in middle school before they teach trigonometry, so that is already covered. > And yet, outside my hobbies of "being a massive nerd", I've not needed the maths of trigonometry for at least a decade. Lots of people craft things or work with schematics in some way, not just highly educated people, to them having the basics around angles is often very useful. People like mechanics, carpenters etc, that sort of math is useful to solve so many basic everyday problems in more handy jobs.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        > They do teach those in middle school before they teach trigonometry, so that is already covered. Not well enough, or people wouldn't get fooled so often. > People like mechanics, carpenters etc, that sort of math is useful to solve so many basic everyday problems in more handy jobs. And for 90% of the world, they're not. Put those things into those schools.
SoftTalker 2y ago
This is true of all memorized facts. It enables thinking at a higher level. “Why should I learn multiplication when I have a calculator on my phone” ignores this. The more you have memorized the more nimble your thinking is. If you have a large vocabulary you can effortlessly express yourself with precision while others are thumbing through a thesaurus (or these days asking an AI to “rewrite”). If you know the history of something you can have more interesting perspective and conversations about it. There is almost no situation where the person with a lot of memorized knowledge is at a disadvantage to the person who needs to look everything up or rely on tools to do the work.
- skydhash 2y ago
  True. I have friends that have refused to learn algorithms and instead insisted that they only needed to master $FRAMEWORK. Then they got stumped by any problems that can not be solved by $LIBRARY, spending days on it with no result. Yes, it takes time, but learning is exponential, and overtime, the pace will increase greatly.

ben_w 2y ago

That's true for every skill that comes fluently. We've only got limited time, which skills really matter? I'd say yes to basic arithmetic; but I can't really use my own experience as a software developer who started off in video games to justify why a normal person needs to understand trigonometry and triangle formulas, any more than I can justify why they need to study Shakespeare and Alfred Tennyson over e.g. Terry Pratchett and Leonard Cohen — "I find it intellectually stimulating" is perhaps necessary, but certainly not sufficient, given there's more to learn than we can fit in a lifetime.

skydhash 2y ago
Because they give you flexibility. One does not need to master everything, if you have a wide and stable foundation, your options become more numerous later in life. And expertise is a pyramid, so the more diverse your basic skills are, the farther you can reach.
pclmulqdq 2y ago
Literacy is important. Understanding Shakespeare and/or Tennyson is as much a part of that as is Pratchett. You will read Pratchett on your own, though, and you probably won't go reaching for the Shakespeare, so you might as well get some forced exposure. Understanding rhetoric is a very underappreciated skill, but an important one.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Reading isn't studying — that most won't read Shakespeare means studying the deeper meanings of the ingredients in the witches' brew in Macbeth is pointless and forced exposure is as much a waste of time as Roman numerals or Latin — do it on your own time as a hobby, don't make it mandatory. Conversely, understanding the deeper meanings behind the stuff people do read, perhaps Pratchett, is valuable — the use of speciesism between Dwarfs and Trolls used as a substitute for racism, etc. It's not like rhetoric stopped with old classics; therefore it is better to learn how it works in newspapers or viral memes, as if you keep to Tenyson you're just going to pattern match it to 1800s writing style.
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    On rhetoric: you learn rhetoric by writing more than reading. That's why they make you write about books: it is practice for writing with evidence since the evidence to back up your ideas is contained only in the pages of the book (children are idiots and the book is a replacement for knowledge). While you're doing this exercise, you might as well get exposure to a variety of different books to learn about the culture and history of the world you live in. Modern writers including Pratchett make lots of references to this canon. Some people also learn that they enjoy Shakespeare in school, and they would never read a play like that otherwise.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      And those books should be modern and relevant. That modern writers reference old works is true, but so too did Shakespeare, and we don't reference his cultural ancestors to understand his works. > Some people also learn that they enjoy Shakespeare in school, and they would never read a play like that otherwise That fine, but it's not the job of school. If it was, we'd also have mandatory watching of foreign language horror films.
      - pclmulqdq 2y ago
        > And those books should be modern and relevant. What makes Pratchett more "relevant" than Shakespeare? I would posit to you that the same order of magnitude of people (or more) read and watch Shakespeare plays by choice as read Pratchett books. Let alone modern adaptations like West Side Story. I get that you prefer the one, but not everybody does. English classes also have you read lots of other more recent and more modern works. It's not exclusively Shakespeare. I remember, for example, Death of a Salesman, 1984, and Slaughterhouse-Five being part of my high school's English curriculum. Lord of the Rings is apparently in several English curricula now. Comedies of all kinds (from Aristophanes to Pratchett) usually take a backseat to tragedies, bildungsromane, and other more "serious" genres in English classes because they tend to be much less timeless and much more current in terms of their themes and references. > That modern writers reference old works is true, but so too did Shakespeare, and we don't reference his cultural ancestors to understand his works. Schools do generally have you read ancient writers, often including Greek comedies and tragedies, and some have you read medieval British literature and those references do, in fact, come up. It's possible that you did not fully enjoy Shakespeare if you did not get that context. > That fine, but it's not the job of school. If it was, we'd also have mandatory watching of foreign language horror films. Believe it or not, if you take advanced French classes, you're going to watch a lot of French films and listen to a lot of French music for school! Since most students in English-speaking schools spend a lot more time studying English than French, they read a lot more English literature than French.
Jensson 2y ago
> I can't really use my own experience as a software developer who started off in video games to justify why a normal person needs to understand trigonometry and triangle formulas We live in a 3d world, every human has to reason about geometry many times in their lives and trigonometry is the most useful and easiest of geometry math. Same reason we learn about volumes etc, everyone learns cos, sin, tan, its just 3 things it doesn't take a lot to learn that.
- ben_w 2y ago
  And yet, outside my hobbies of "being a massive nerd", I've not needed the maths of trigonometry for at least a decade. Outside hobbies and having worked as a game developer, I can't recall a single time I've needed them. I suspect most learn them for a test them forget them forever. Now, statistics, percentages, and compound interest, those are things people would do better to know, as those are the tools of advertising and money and are unavoidable in modern life.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > statistics, percentages, and compound interest, those are things people would do better to know They do teach those in middle school before they teach trigonometry, so that is already covered. > And yet, outside my hobbies of "being a massive nerd", I've not needed the maths of trigonometry for at least a decade. Lots of people craft things or work with schematics in some way, not just highly educated people, to them having the basics around angles is often very useful. People like mechanics, carpenters etc, that sort of math is useful to solve so many basic everyday problems in more handy jobs.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      > They do teach those in middle school before they teach trigonometry, so that is already covered. Not well enough, or people wouldn't get fooled so often. > People like mechanics, carpenters etc, that sort of math is useful to solve so many basic everyday problems in more handy jobs. And for 90% of the world, they're not. Put those things into those schools.

SoftTalker 2y ago

This is true of all memorized facts. It enables thinking at a higher level. “Why should I learn multiplication when I have a calculator on my phone” ignores this. The more you have memorized the more nimble your thinking is. If you have a large vocabulary you can effortlessly express yourself with precision while others are thumbing through a thesaurus (or these days asking an AI to “rewrite”). If you know the history of something you can have more interesting perspective and conversations about it. There is almost no situation where the person with a lot of memorized knowledge is at a disadvantage to the person who needs to look everything up or rely on tools to do the work.

skydhash 2y ago
True. I have friends that have refused to learn algorithms and instead insisted that they only needed to master $FRAMEWORK. Then they got stumped by any problems that can not be solved by $LIBRARY, spending days on it with no result. Yes, it takes time, but learning is exponential, and overtime, the pace will increase greatly.