XiXiDu comments on What bothers you about Less Wrong? - Less Wrong

18 Post author: Will_Newsome 19 May 2011 10:23AM

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Comment author: David_Gerard 08 June 2011 10:13:16AM *  0 points [-]

A lot of it is due to education, a difference of interest, and a little more ease when it comes to symbol manipulation [...] but little has to do with insurmountable hardware limitations.

I wonder if that makes a difference in practical terms. There's all sorts of potential in one's genes, but one has the body, brain and personal history one ends up with.

What I mean is no longer feeling like the smartest person in the room and quite definitely having to put in effort to keep up.

I haven't heard of any evidence that would suggest that there are human beings who can't understand linear algebra.

I first encountered humans who couldn't understand basic arithmetic at university, in the bit of first-year psychology where they try to bludgeon basic statistics into people's heads. People who were clearly intelligent in other regards and not failures at life, who nevertheless literally had trouble adding two numbers with a result in the thirties. I'm still boggling 25 years later, but I was there and saw it ...

Comment author: XiXiDu 08 June 2011 11:36:29AM *  4 points [-]

first encountered humans who couldn't understand basic arithmetic at university

When I first saw a fraction, e.g. 1/4, I had real trouble to accept that it equals .25. I was like, "Uhm, why?"...when other people are like, "Okay, then by induction 2/4=.5"...it's not that I don't understand, but do not accept. Only when I learnt that .25 is a base-10 place-value notation, which really is an implicit fraction, with the denominator being a power of ten, I was beginning to accept that it works (it took a lot more actually, like understanding the concept of prime factorization etc.). Which might be a kind of stupidity, but not something that would prevent me from ever understanding mathematics.

The concept of a function is another example:

  • f:X->Y (Uhm, what?)
  • f(x) : X -> Y (Uhm, what?)
  • f(x) = x+1 (Hmm.)
  • f(1) = 1+1 (Okay.)
  • y = f(x) (Hmm.)
  • (x, y)
  • (x, f(x))
  • (1,2) (Aha, okay.)
  • (x,y) is an element of R (Hmm.)
  • R is a binary relation (Uhm, what?)
  • x is R-related to y (Oh.)
  • xRy
  • R(x,y) (Aha...)
  • R = (X, Y, G)
  • G is a subset of the Cartesian product X × Y (Uhm, what?)

...so it goes. My guess is that many people appear stupid because their psyche can't handle apparent self-evidence very well.

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