6 ms·

I never understood how the knowledge of the capitals of states or countries is useful in any way. It's meaningless. It can be easily looked up, if you need that

by rorrr2 13y ago

I never understood how the knowledge of the capitals of states or countries is useful in any way. It's meaningless. It can be easily looked up, if you need that information. I can't even imagine a practical scenario when one would need to know it.

lgieron 13y ago
It's hard to function in the world without some rudimentary knowledge of it. As for practical scenario, imagine your boss wants to send you to a conference in Paris, and you answer back with "Where?".
- rorrr2 13y ago
  1) What does this have to do with knowing Paris is a capital? 2) What's the big deal? I'm sure most people don't know the capital of Mongolia or Canada or Switzerland or Slovenia or Croatia. And these aren't even African countries. 3) What's the practical limitation here? Are you unable to travel to cities that you didn't know the names of 10 minutes before you found them on Google maps?
  - TuringTest 13y ago
    If you think the only purpose of knowing the names of world cities is finding them in maps to travel there, you will be utterly incompetent at basic comprehension of 1) history, 2) real (not theoretical) economics, 3) sociology, 4) reading the International section of a newspaper. Forming an understanding of those topics requires connecting the dots between various stories you read about them at different places, and for that it's essential to know at least the vague relative positions of regions where their major cities reside.
    - alextingle 13y ago
      Surely it would be better to learn history, economics, sociology and to read the international section of a newspaper than to memorise cities? Knowledge of capitals and so forth is incidentally acquired by doing those other things.
      - TuringTest 13y ago
        Why does it have to be either/or? A systematic approach guarantees that you have seen each capital city at least once.
        mkr-hn 13y ago
        Why are the capitals so important? Maybe I want to travel to Kyoto or Makati instead of Tokyo or Manila. I can see the value in knowing the countries and a little about them, but capitals aren't the entirety of a country, and knowing about them won't tell you much about the country as a whole. I can learn about the capitals if I ever plan to go there.
        TuringTest 13y ago
        Capitals are the most important part of a country (by definition). What little information could you learn about a country before knowing its capital?
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        mkr-hn 13y ago
        Is Washington DC more important than NYC or any city in Silicon Valley? I'm not convinced that capitals are the most important city. You can talk about the culture, economy, and history of a country without ever talking about the capital. Capitals are usually (not always) where the government sits, but that's only a small part of what you can learn about a country.
        TuringTest 13y ago
        It surely has a lot of influence on economy, history (culture is a different thing in a country-continent like the USA, but most countries are the size of a state, not the Union). Is * important to understand the state of *? Texas City^H^H Austin of Texas Los Angeles^H^H Sacramento of California Anchorage^H^H Juneau of Alaska -- Edited to fix the initial bad example. -- Screw it, USA states have their capitals assigned to the weirdest cities instead of the largest ones. No wonder that you don't understand why capitals are important to normal countries.
    - rorrr2 13y ago
      > If you think the only purpose of knowing the names of world cities Stop beating that strawman. I never said anything about knowing a city name. I was arguing about knowing what's the capital of what.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Raphmedia 13y ago
  To which he answer "the capital of France" and everyone keep going. If I tell you that you need to go to Sucre for a meeting, do you know where that is? Probably not. You will google it, spend 5 seconds on the internet and boom, you know where it is. Putting countless hours to learn all of them is useless. This is time that could be spent learning things that are important in the modern world. The computers aren't going away. You will never have to search for the name of a town in a dictionary or encyclopedia for hours anymore. It's a 5 seconds tasks.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Without looking it up, I would guess a city named after Juan Mariscal Sucre (or is it the other way around?) must be in either Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, or Bolivia. I would probably guess Ecuador on a hunch but that's probably wrong as their former currency was the Sucre and it would be funny to have a city named the same.
    - jeltz 13y ago
      > Juan Mariscal Sucre Actually he was called Antonio José, not Juan, and the capital of Bolivia is indeed named after him.
  - hobs 13y ago
    While everyone thinks "What an idiot." While you are 100% right that you dont NEED to know that Paris is the capital of France, displaying that ignorance for all to see is just bad form. While your analogy makes sense (bolivian capital no one knows about), knowing that Paris is the capital of France is incidental knowledge when you spend any time looking at western history for the last several hundred years.
    - Raphmedia 13y ago
      The fact that you remember that Paris is the capital of France has nothing to do with what you learnt during high school. You know it, because it is general knowledge. You saw it in the movies. You had a phone call from someone living there. Only someone living in a cave would not know where or what Paris is, hence why you would call him an idiot. However, the capital of an area that isn't in the media very of ten? You won't remember them. "Quick, what is the capital of Cambodia? No idea? You surely must be an idiot! Let's fire you!" Nobody will ever say that. If I tell someone that they must go to Ankara for a meeting, I would pretty much expect them to answer with "where?" Having general knowledge is important. Knowing the main capitals of the world is important too. Spending hours and hours to learn all of the obscure ones and commit it to memory in a world where you can say "Ok Glasses, Ankara is the capital of which country?" is useless.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  Smarter questions would be about accommodation or travel - reveals the rough distance without pointing out you don't know where it is.
- outworlder 13y ago
  Yes, by the time you are an adult, you're expected to have some rudimentary understanding of geography and the arbitrary names humans assigned to places. I have a hard time imagining that someone would not know where Paris is by the time he reaches adult age. Not all learning is done at schools, you know. Here's the thing: we have such things as maps. There are still occasions today (I'm almost 33) in which I am unsure where's a particular location. So I look it up. Next time it comes up, I won't have to. I do not know the name of the capitals of most African countries. There are some small countries which I have probably forgotten about. But, if in doubt, I can research the damn things. That's different from memorizing the multiplication tables.
- pseut 13y ago
  From memory, please list the states for which its state capital is one of the three most important cities. Hell, you can google it if you want. Good luck!
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > It's hard to function in the world without some rudimentary knowledge of it. True. > As for practical scenario, imagine your boss wants to send you to a conference in Paris, and you answer back with "Where?". That's actually what I would ask if my boss wanted to send me to a conference in "Paris" without any further information (presuming that there wasn't additional context to disambiguate the reference), since there's like a dozen cities with that name in the US, some in Canada, one in Kirabati, and, oh, yeah, a big one in France.
GFischer 13y ago
I think it helps to get a sense of the world - though browsing through an atlas, and getting broader lessons is much better than just memorizing state/country capitals. I loved browsing atlases as a kid, and ended up visiting close to a third of the countries in the world (ok, so I cheated and went to Europe :P ), so YMMV. PD: I still want to see the remaining two-thirds of the world :)
- rorrr2 13y ago
  Knowing locations of some major cities is useful, I agree. Knowing which of them are capitals isn't, especially of the US states where capital assignments are very random.

by rorrr2 13y ago

lgieron 13y ago

It's hard to function in the world without some rudimentary knowledge of it. As for practical scenario, imagine your boss wants to send you to a conference in Paris, and you answer back with "Where?".

rorrr2 13y ago
1) What does this have to do with knowing Paris is a capital? 2) What's the big deal? I'm sure most people don't know the capital of Mongolia or Canada or Switzerland or Slovenia or Croatia. And these aren't even African countries. 3) What's the practical limitation here? Are you unable to travel to cities that you didn't know the names of 10 minutes before you found them on Google maps?
- TuringTest 13y ago
  If you think the only purpose of knowing the names of world cities is finding them in maps to travel there, you will be utterly incompetent at basic comprehension of 1) history, 2) real (not theoretical) economics, 3) sociology, 4) reading the International section of a newspaper. Forming an understanding of those topics requires connecting the dots between various stories you read about them at different places, and for that it's essential to know at least the vague relative positions of regions where their major cities reside.
  - alextingle 13y ago
    Surely it would be better to learn history, economics, sociology and to read the international section of a newspaper than to memorise cities? Knowledge of capitals and so forth is incidentally acquired by doing those other things.
    - TuringTest 13y ago
      Why does it have to be either/or? A systematic approach guarantees that you have seen each capital city at least once.
      - mkr-hn 13y ago
        Why are the capitals so important? Maybe I want to travel to Kyoto or Makati instead of Tokyo or Manila. I can see the value in knowing the countries and a little about them, but capitals aren't the entirety of a country, and knowing about them won't tell you much about the country as a whole. I can learn about the capitals if I ever plan to go there.
        TuringTest 13y ago
        Capitals are the most important part of a country (by definition). What little information could you learn about a country before knowing its capital?
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        mkr-hn 13y ago
        Is Washington DC more important than NYC or any city in Silicon Valley? I'm not convinced that capitals are the most important city. You can talk about the culture, economy, and history of a country without ever talking about the capital. Capitals are usually (not always) where the government sits, but that's only a small part of what you can learn about a country.
        TuringTest 13y ago
        It surely has a lot of influence on economy, history (culture is a different thing in a country-continent like the USA, but most countries are the size of a state, not the Union). Is * important to understand the state of *? Texas City^H^H Austin of Texas Los Angeles^H^H Sacramento of California Anchorage^H^H Juneau of Alaska -- Edited to fix the initial bad example. -- Screw it, USA states have their capitals assigned to the weirdest cities instead of the largest ones. No wonder that you don't understand why capitals are important to normal countries.
  - rorrr2 13y ago
    > If you think the only purpose of knowing the names of world cities Stop beating that strawman. I never said anything about knowing a city name. I was arguing about knowing what's the capital of what.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
Raphmedia 13y ago
To which he answer "the capital of France" and everyone keep going. If I tell you that you need to go to Sucre for a meeting, do you know where that is? Probably not. You will google it, spend 5 seconds on the internet and boom, you know where it is. Putting countless hours to learn all of them is useless. This is time that could be spent learning things that are important in the modern world. The computers aren't going away. You will never have to search for the name of a town in a dictionary or encyclopedia for hours anymore. It's a 5 seconds tasks.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Without looking it up, I would guess a city named after Juan Mariscal Sucre (or is it the other way around?) must be in either Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, or Bolivia. I would probably guess Ecuador on a hunch but that's probably wrong as their former currency was the Sucre and it would be funny to have a city named the same.
  - jeltz 13y ago
    > Juan Mariscal Sucre Actually he was called Antonio José, not Juan, and the capital of Bolivia is indeed named after him.
- hobs 13y ago
  While everyone thinks "What an idiot." While you are 100% right that you dont NEED to know that Paris is the capital of France, displaying that ignorance for all to see is just bad form. While your analogy makes sense (bolivian capital no one knows about), knowing that Paris is the capital of France is incidental knowledge when you spend any time looking at western history for the last several hundred years.
  - Raphmedia 13y ago
    The fact that you remember that Paris is the capital of France has nothing to do with what you learnt during high school. You know it, because it is general knowledge. You saw it in the movies. You had a phone call from someone living there. Only someone living in a cave would not know where or what Paris is, hence why you would call him an idiot. However, the capital of an area that isn't in the media very of ten? You won't remember them. "Quick, what is the capital of Cambodia? No idea? You surely must be an idiot! Let's fire you!" Nobody will ever say that. If I tell someone that they must go to Ankara for a meeting, I would pretty much expect them to answer with "where?" Having general knowledge is important. Knowing the main capitals of the world is important too. Spending hours and hours to learn all of the obscure ones and commit it to memory in a world where you can say "Ok Glasses, Ankara is the capital of which country?" is useless.
6d0debc071 13y ago
Smarter questions would be about accommodation or travel - reveals the rough distance without pointing out you don't know where it is.
outworlder 13y ago
Yes, by the time you are an adult, you're expected to have some rudimentary understanding of geography and the arbitrary names humans assigned to places. I have a hard time imagining that someone would not know where Paris is by the time he reaches adult age. Not all learning is done at schools, you know. Here's the thing: we have such things as maps. There are still occasions today (I'm almost 33) in which I am unsure where's a particular location. So I look it up. Next time it comes up, I won't have to. I do not know the name of the capitals of most African countries. There are some small countries which I have probably forgotten about. But, if in doubt, I can research the damn things. That's different from memorizing the multiplication tables.
pseut 13y ago
From memory, please list the states for which its state capital is one of the three most important cities. Hell, you can google it if you want. Good luck!
dragonwriter 13y ago
> It's hard to function in the world without some rudimentary knowledge of it. True. > As for practical scenario, imagine your boss wants to send you to a conference in Paris, and you answer back with "Where?". That's actually what I would ask if my boss wanted to send me to a conference in "Paris" without any further information (presuming that there wasn't additional context to disambiguate the reference), since there's like a dozen cities with that name in the US, some in Canada, one in Kirabati, and, oh, yeah, a big one in France.

GFischer 13y ago

I think it helps to get a sense of the world - though browsing through an atlas, and getting broader lessons is much better than just memorizing state/country capitals. I loved browsing atlases as a kid, and ended up visiting close to a third of the countries in the world (ok, so I cheated and went to Europe :P ), so YMMV. PD: I still want to see the remaining two-thirds of the world :)

rorrr2 13y ago
Knowing locations of some major cities is useful, I agree. Knowing which of them are capitals isn't, especially of the US states where capital assignments are very random.