I'd rather read the prompt

Forcing people to do these things supposedly results in a better, more competitive society. But does it really? Would you rather have someone on your team who did math because it let them solve problems efficiently, or did math because it’s the trick to get the right answer?

Writing is in a similar boat as math now. We’ll have to decide whether we want to force future generations to write against their will.

I was forced to study history against my will. The tests were awful trivia. I hated history for nearly a decade before rediscovering that I love it.

History doesn’t have much economical value. Math does. Writing does. But is forcing students to do these things the best way to extract that value? Or is it just the tradition we inherited and replicate just because our parents did?

I agree with the broader point of the article in principle. We should be writing to edify ourselves and take education seriously because of how deep interaction with the subject matter will transform us.

But in reality, the mindset the author cites is more common. Most accounting majors probably don't have a deep passion for GAAP, but they believe accounting degrees get good jobs.

And when your degree is utilitarian like that, it just becomes a problem of minimizing time spent to obtain the reward.

To actually teach this, you do something like this:

"Here's a little dummy robot arm made out of Tinkertoys. There are three angular joints, a rotating base, a shoulder, and an elbow. Each one has a protractor so you can see the angle.

1. Figure out where the end of the arm will be based on those three angles. Those are Euler angles in action. This isn't too hard.

2. Figure out what the angles should be to touch a specific point on the table. For this robot geometry, there's a simple solution, for which look up "two link kinematics". You don't have to derive it, just be able to work out how to get the arm where you want it. Is the solution unambiguous? (Hint: there may be more than one solution, but not a large number.)

3. Extra credit. Add another link to the robot, a wrist. Now figure out what the angles should be to touch a specific point on the table. Three joints are a lot harder than two joints. There are infinitely many solutions. Look up "N-link kinematics". Come up with a simple solution that works, but don't try too hard to make it optimal. That's for the optimal controls course.

This will give some real understanding of the problems of doing this.

https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1andqk8/gemini...