ChristianKl comments on LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance - Less Wrong

58 [deleted] 25 November 2012 11:33PM

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Comment author: ChristianKl 26 November 2012 02:31:56PM 3 points [-]

Given how much people use the skills they learned during math homework later in life I think it would be fair to argue that cooking and cleaning skills are more valuable for the majority of people.

Comment author: DaFranker 26 November 2012 06:58:17PM *  7 points [-]

The only skills I ever learned during math homework were:

"How do I rephrase this question so that the answer becomes retrospectively obvious?"

"I don't know where to even start; let's try something that's been useful before to see if I can break down the problem and identify a path towards the solution."

I might not quite be an unbiased, population-representative sample, but given how much I use these skills versus how much I use my cooking skills (about half an hour per month, on average), and the respective impacts they have on my life, I think it would be fair to argue that what I learned while doing math homework would be far more valuable for the majority of people.

The key turning point being that not all people learn the above from math homework - not all people learn the above at all.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 November 2012 06:32:09PM 0 points [-]

"How do I rephrase this question so that the answer becomes retrospectively obvious?"

I don't think I've ever thought explicitly like that before encountering Less Wrong.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 November 2012 06:30:46PM 1 point [-]

What pretty much everybody (including me) complained about http://xkcd.com/1050/.