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To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

quantamagazine.org

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Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give anyone (not just inmates) a computer and they are much more likely to become good Candy Crush players, Facebook users, and Buzzfeed readers than good programmers.

What if they have an computer with no games and no internet. As to your response... Should inmates be deprived of all distractions, especially trivial ones? How often do you BuzzFeed or candy crush or Facebook?

I would assume they would being writing. That would likely be the first step most would take. After that their abilities in mathematics, or just a general interest in problem solving would take them pretty far (barring games and internet)

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#32
post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

I disagree. I find math much more interesting. Philosophy is vague. It's all guesses and interpretation, with the exception perhaps of pure logic. I like the purity of math. It's all a matter of preference.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#33
post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

I agree, but there is a lot of value in approaching Philosophy from a mathematical context (both as a student and as a philosopher- c.f. Russel, Wittgenstein, et al had backgrounds in mathematics and left a huge mark on the subject).

I was a math major for much of my undergraduate career, but by my junior year I realized that I was actually only interested in the philosophy behind it. In fact, I had little interest in my freshman Philosophy 101 course, though after studying math, I realized that I would have loved to study philosophy more. As a freshman, I was enamored by math as it was this ivory tower of abstract truth.

I loved learning about what math could say and how the notation worked and the notion of formal proof etc. but slogging through proofs was abhorrent after awhile and I dropped the program. I had come to understand that math was actually just the same sort of discourse as "soft" philosophy, just formalized. Learning about counterexamples to math as a "closed system of reasoning"[0] (Godel's theorems, constructive mathematics, etc.) simultaneously ruined my perception of the nobility of math and spurred my interest in philosophy (specifically analytic philosophy and philosophy of language) and cognitive science. That's where the real "unsolvable" or "interesting" problems lay (e.g. the mind-body problem).

I would highly recommend anyone who is intellectually curious to learn and understand formal mathematics for the purposes of understand philosophy, but also to recognize when to quit (if ever!).

[0] - I may be butchering these terms, but I hope the meaning is clear

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#34
post #27
post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

> and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. I guess we'll just have to completely disagree on that.

How do you even get a job as a philosopher?

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#35
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on this? I'm curious what you mean. My only exposure to philosophy was an intro course in college.

What is the philosophy behind arrow functions in JavaScript? Should I just use them blindly, or should I understand why this exists and why/when I should use it? What problem does it solve? Why?! In my opinion every article about some aspect of programming should begin what an explanation of the philosophy behind it's development. Why does this exist? What problem does it solve? When should it be used/not used?

sounds a lot like being a grad student.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#36
post #15
post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

Could you expand on this? I'm curious what you mean. My only exposure to philosophy was an intro course in college.

The way I see it, most subjects in school focus on teaching you what to think. Philosophy focuses more on how to think.

That's obviously not true in all cases (there are plenty of dogmatic philosophies) but in my opinion it's much more common for people to teach things like math, biology, history, etc. as a series of objective, memorized facts and formulas. Doing that with philosophy is far more difficult because so much of it is subjective and relies on criticism and analysis. In that regard, learning philosophy serves as a foundation for learning all other subjects, or learning anything in life, for that matter.

I also personally believe there's more beauty in great philosophy than in any poem or song. There are plenty of Socratic dialogues, stoic passages, and political pamphlets that still give me chills when I read them.

Chapter VI in this short book of dialogues, for example: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17490/17490-h/17490-h.htm

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give anyone (not just inmates) a computer and they are much more likely to become good Candy Crush players, Facebook users, and Buzzfeed readers than good programmers.

without internet or games maybe. could be a linux install with no desktop, and a book about python.

They'll learn how to install Xorg and import a WebKit library so they can browse Facebook.

Re: To Live Your Best Life, Do Mathematics

#40
post #8

Based on all the supposed benefits of doing math, it sounds like people would be better off studying philosophy. Same benefits but a much broader appeal, and far more applicable to most people's everyday lives. When I finally "discovered" philosophy in college, I was angry that we hadn't been exposed to it at all in middle or high school. Instead, I'd been forced to waste years on things like math, biology, etc. that…

I disagree. I find math much more interesting. Philosophy is vague. It's all guesses and interpretation, with the exception perhaps of pure logic. I like the purity of math. It's all a matter of preference.

I feel as though math and philosophy are both logic but with differing acceptable conventions of well-definedness (insert https://xkcd.com/435/)
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