Poor Mojo Newswire

While intellectuals being bad at math is a problem, I'm constantly amazed at the number of "regular" people who can't use a measuring tape, figure out their bills, balance a checkbook, or multiply a recipie. I always wonder how they make it through life without starving to death or at least cutting off their own hand in some sort of bandsaw.

But then again, NASA f---ed up the metric/standard conversion on that MARS rover a few years back so we can lump the supposed intellectuals into the category of people who should certainly have bankrupt or accidentally eletrocuted themselves by now. :)

"Intellectuals" is a terrible term here, as is the concept of the "humanities" professor. The article is just fearmongering on the concept of difference. People specialize. It's not radical or dangerous or new. People learn what they need to learn in order to survive in their niche. It's how we get culture. All culture. It's the definition OF culture, and it is the thing that most other animals don't do. The only problem is the anxiety, demonstrated in this article, that comes with specialization. Differences breed ignorance, ignorance breeds fear. We can't throw out the differences, and so we can't eliminate ignorance. The only thing we can do is teach everyone to recognize their fears and come to terms with them. Fear is the only flaw in this system. Ignorance and difference, despite what we may wish, are FEATURES of human culture, not BUGS.

(*Disclosure* I did not RTFA apart from Alan's excerpt.)

Nonetheless, I'm calling bullshit on this article.

1) The VAST majority of hard-science/math folks I've known (doctors, engineers, etc.) have gone through periods of being vocally proud of their ignorance of art and disdain for its value (often these periods encompas most of their professional lives). The whole argument encapsulated in the excerpt begs the question: It's no shocker that folks who don't enjoy math end up going into fields that de-accentuate math skills, nor that folks who excel with numbers but are a little intimidated by art go into fields where their strengths are assets. I mean, d'uh. There are no midgets playing pro-b-ball because the game hinges on getting a ball through A HOOP NEAR THE CEILING, not because we, as a culture, coddle the shocking deficit of basketball competence amongst American little people. As Fritz implied, this is the Division of Labors, and it is what makes modern economic systems go 'round.

2) People don't get fucked by their credit cards because they are bad at math; they get fucked because they are bad at reading (often deceptive) legal jargon, and then get netted by baldly deceptive (yet legal) lending practices. Lawyers, as a group, are notoriously bad at math, but are great at helping you avoid getting fucked in a contract. Again, this has to do with specialization. And, anecdotally, some of the folks I've known who've most fucked themselves on credit were *great* at math; it's not that they misunderstood the math behind the loan, it was that they misunderstood their own hubris.

3) What's wrong with a tenured humanities professor openly admitting, without shame, that he's no good at something that has little to no impact on his job performance? Hard science folks frequently admit to me, without shame, that they're "just no good at grammar," and then pay me to edit their work. And, my previous career entirely hinged on the fact that, for the most part, people are crummy at teaching their teenagers anything (and will readily admit it). I, myself, am no good at diagnosing disease; that's why I pay a doctor to do it. And, again, our nation isn't teetering on the brink of health-collapse because we aren't all medical doctors. We're in poor shape because we've been so fatigued by the constant barrage of spin and deceit that we no longer have the energy to call bullshit when necessary. Fortunately, I'm on vacation, and just had a cup of tea, and so am well prepared to do the bullshit-calling for you, America.

{smooches!}
dave-o . . .

As a soon to be humanities professor (I start my first semester of teaching in three weeks...oh fine, to be perfectly honest, I'll just be a graduate assistant this semester, but once December rolls around I'll be professor kilian) I'll just say that I didn't take college algebra. I took honors trig as a junior in high school and got a B, so I'm fairly certain I would have passed college algebra, but since I didn't NEED to take it to graduate I took the lowest possible math I could. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying that as I knew my future didn't contain a whole of high level math I didn't see the point of taking a course that was more difficult than I needed to take. If I had to do it over again would I take a higher math...no. Look, I can add fractions and balance my check book, so as far as I'm concerned, I don't need any more math.

And I agree Fritz, what the hell does "intellectuals" mean? I'm about to finish two masters degrees but I wouldn't really consider myself an "intellectual." I enjoy shows like MXC and Iron Chef too much to be considered an intellectual, I think.

And here's a question. Does the author bring up the fact that maths/science people tend to have as little aptitude for constructing sentences? I met a guy a couple years ago who had a phd in physics. He was some dude from Boston (that'll be important in a minute). He was telling me he had submitted a paper to a some journal like four times because, although the editor of the journal said that his numbers were good (that is, the experiment he ran and statistical analysis he presented of his results), he kept getting rejected because his writing was so poor. On the last rejection the editor asked point blank if english was the guy's native language.

The term "intellectuals" to me had such a broad definition that I didn't initally think it applied to humanities professor types. Re-reading the article that does seem to be the intent so I amend my comments. I state here and for the record that intellectuals whose chosen profession involves math should be good at it. You see, I work with the geekiest math geeks outside of China. These math geeks often struggle with simple arithmatic because the schools never did a good job of teaching those fundamentals at an early stage. So although they can tell me the probability that a certain algorythm will produce a truly random result, they suck at estimating the cost of a tank of gas.

That's who I had in mind with my original comment.

Leave it to me to over analyze and completely lose sight of the author's intent. GO ME! :)

Hugs and High Fives All Around!