You never know if learning calculus will make you discover new things that you might like to pursue. Also, you never know if you will need it or not apriori. By that logic, you shouldn't learn anything until you need it, wich I think would be a disaster.
> You never know if learning calculus will make you discover new things that you might like to pursue.
Just as you will never know what you might have discovered if you used the time you spent learning calculus learning something else instead, of course. There is no magic formula to life.
> you shouldn't learn anything until you need it
Impossible. Simply existing as a functioning human means you are going to be constantly learning something. Not everything you learn will be useful, but that's also true of calculus. Not everyone finds it useful in the end either. You never know what will end up being useful, but you also can't learn everything.
The great thing about the curious mind is that you tend to be naturally drawn towards the things that are most useful for you. Those born most likely to do something with calculus already voluntarily choose to learn about it. You don't have to make them. The stereotypical druggy who has no interest in anything but getting high, who suddenly has his life turned around because you force him to learn calculus, is little more than Hollywood fantasy.
This framing doesn't fit my experience. Most kids, left to their own devices, would not learn arithmetic.
I know few adults that were forced to learn something as kids that regret learning it. Conversely I know tons of adults that, as a kid talked their parents out of being forced to learn something and as an adult seriously regret it.
I think it's hard to have the kind of meta-skills as a child, it's kind of hit and miss. (Ie discovery, learn what to learn, how to learn, make learning pleasant). As an example, music is one thing that works best if parents, siblings and friends are into it and you can do it together or if it's somehow ambiently present most of the time. But if it's something that you only go to lessons for, decided by someone else, that you don't enjoy etc - then it's often like pouring water into a dry well. Yet those mechanical even if less enthusiastic skills can then be useful later, if the inspiration comes, with a new social circle etc. Or similar with sports. In some families, it's more "present" in an ambient way. When waiting for something outside, the kids have some hockey sticks and a tennis ball lying around and just start playing, maybe with adults who also find it fun. Or talking with the family about the news in an analytical way: that person leads that party and they have these values, while that other person drives these other things. If you have these available then different kids are exposed to things and can pick up things they are more inclined to. I've read lots of mathematician and scientists' stories how Martin Gardner's problem books drew them in to the field. So parents exposed them but didn't force. And their exceptional inclination did a lot of work.
> Most kids, left to their own devices, would not learn arithmetic.
Unlikely. Too many things in life depend on arithmetic. Most people will learn things when they must.
What is more likely is that kids won't learn arithmetic before they need it and therefore may theoretically miss out on the aforementioned discoveries that are overlooked when one doesn't already have a foundation in arithmetic. However, most people never have such discoveries anyway. Those who do tend to be the type that would learn something like arithmetic just for fun.
> I know few adults that were forced to learn something as kids that regret learning it.
As a once child, if I didn't want to learn something, I didn't. Forcing someone to sit in a classroom where a subject is being taught, for example, is not the same as actually learning the material. So this is an obvious truism. Those who didn't want to learn something never did.
> Unlikely. Too many things in life depend on arithmetic. Most people will learn things when they must.
Yes but arithmetic is actually not intuitive at all, and you can certainly grow up to not know it. There's a lot of people who once grew up not knowing how to read, because they didn't go to school.
Children are still children, they very famously make poor decisions. Yes, not all children, but most. We have to mold and steer them, because for humans we come into this world as basically blank slates. We're not like other animals, ready to roll. We require decades of careful curation.
"for humans we come into this world as basically blank slates."
Can you source this? I thought we were pretty much expressions of our particular genetics and the biological human substrate we all inhabit. This is very much not a 'blank slate'. Every time I've tried to look into or steelman the blank-slate I can never come across hard science that backs up the assertion that we are all 'blank slates'.
Blank-slate seems to be more of a liberal idea then a scientific one.
Blank-slate as compared to most other mammals, who are often born with knowledge of how to walk, feed, or even hunt. These skills usually come pretty quickly, most mammals have their young on their own within a year. Humans can’t even walk for a year. Many other mammals walk on their first day.
We also have case studies that if humans are not taught language then they won’t, and can’t, speak. Genie comes to mind.
Genie could't speak because she was deprived of exposure to normal human interaction, not because of lack of being taught. It is apparent you've never been around a child because otherwise you'd have quickly recnoized that most of them do speak before anyone tries to teach them how.
I’ve obviously been around children, and I do qualify speaking to children as “teaching them how to speak”.
If you speak math problems to your child you are… wait for it… teaching them arithmetic. That’s what teaching is.
Arithmetic is not something that just naturally exists in the world, it’s a purely human construct. It does have to be taught in one way or another, otherwise people won’t know it. And, unlike language, I seriously doubt parents are just speaking arithmetic randomly in conversation that often. Your kid most definitely will not just “pick up” arithmetic.
In fact, I doubt a kid would even pick up language if you never spoke to them directly, and instead they just heard bits in passing between adults.
> If you speak math problems to your child you are… wait for it… teaching them arithmetic. That’s what teaching is.
Exposure to something and being taught something are usually recognized as being quite different, but it is clear now that you just want to play a game of semantics, so we can put and end to that.
> I doubt a kid would even pick up language if you never spoke to them directly, and instead they just heard bits in passing between adults.
Kids not being able pick up on language by listening to a recording of adults speaking about some random thing is supported by the research so there is likely some validity to the latter half of your claim, with some assumptions about what you mean about "heard in passing", but the research also strongly suggests that kids can pick up on language if those adults are surrounded by additional context. For example, if adults in the same room were talking about a visible object in front of them then the research suggests that the child would be able to pick up the language even when not directly spoken to.
> Yes but arithmetic is actually not intuitive at all, and you can certainly grow up to not know it.
If you are in a situation where you don't need it, sure, but if you don't need it then who cares? I get the nebulous "but what about the discoveries you are missing out on", but the type of people who wouldn't learn something like arithmetic for fun also never find discoveries anyway, and never would even if you could force feed them all the knowledge of the world. That argument really doesn't apply to most people.
> Children are still children, they very famously make poor decisions.
Not quite. What children are most famous for is that they won't learn until they want to. Poor decisions, implying that they could have made good decisions if only they would have listened, are the outcome of them not learning even when you tried.
> We have to mold and steer them
There are deadbeats in the world, sure, but for the most part that just naturally happens at least up until they hit the rebellious teen years. Kids want to be by your side, watching, learning. We wouldn't have made it as a species if this didn't occur automatically. Like I said before, you cannot exist without learning things constantly.
Most kids don't want to learn that eating nothing but candy and drinking sodapop is bad for you. You have to force them to eat their veggies. By force = don't allow them the candy and sodapop.
Most kids would never go to school if not forced. They'd play video games or watch youtube.
There are 0.7 billion adults that can't read. 40% of adults in 1st world countries can't do arithmetic.
So, no, there is no evidence people will not learn without being made to learn. There are only anecdotes that some children get lucky and learn things on their own. That's not the norm and there is ample data to back that up.
> 40% of adults in 1st world countries can't do arithmetic.
Including whomever wrote the article.
"Suppose, a litre of cola costs US$3.15. If you buy one third of a litre of cola, how much would you pay?"
As cola has a large size-indpedenent cost, I would reasonably expect to need to pay more than the claimed $1.05 if 1 L is $3.15. Moreover, the marginal utility of 1 L isn't 3x more than the smaller container. There is no need to have that much soda when an appropriately scaled option is available. Based on real-world prices I could find (YMMV), 1 L of cola sells for $1.99, while a can (355 mL; about as close to 1/3 of 1 L as we find for actual sale) sells for $1.69, echoing that $1.05 is not a realistic price to pay on the open market. Most importantly, in actual practice I'd pay nothing for cola and order water instead.
And he is supposedly a lecturer in Economics and Social Statistics at a fairly well respected school. Goes to show, again, that the kids won't learn unless they want to. Forcing teaching upon someone plain doesn't work. Never has, never will. Incentivizing one to want to learn can work, but that's something else entirely and not at all what we're talking about.
Not possible. They are part of the chaebol [1], meaning they are essentially part of the South Korean government. They can't really fail as long as the country exists. There's an old joke that South Korea isn't really a country, but five families/companies pretending to be one and there's some truth to this.
It is possible because South Korea does not have control in other states.
Even if chaebol is powerful they still heavily depend on export profits. They can't help themselves if EU/USA consumers and governments take this scandal seriously.
Remember the story about the South Korean female president or whatever their title is being a brainwashed puppet of a radical feminist cult and thus had to abdicate as this came out? I don't remember how many years ago that was, but it's not like their education prevented the situation.
One theory that might help you visualize an alternative is that the big bang was basically two 3D universes (floating in higher-dimensional space) slapping against each other really hard. That creates an explosion everywhere even if everywhere is quite big or even infinite.
I hate some airline polices as much as anyone, and it is absolutely terrible to loose a meeting, family reunion, cruise ship vacation, etc. for something like this, but it is way worse to die. If airlines compensated with whatever money you think you deserve, the tickets would cost way more than they already are.
Shit happens. You are not entitled to compensation for everything shitty that happens in the world.
> You are not entitled to compensation for everything shitty that happens in the world.
This is true, but not relevant here?
If you pay for a service, and you don't get that service, are you implying that you should just be SOL?
If the plane has an issue, and the pilot rightfully lands it for safety concerns, but the paying passengers don't get where they are going, that sounds like the airline's problem to me, not the passengers' problem.
At the very minimum the passenger should be refunded for their ticket, because they didn't get what they paid for.
There are already too many negative consequences in the world of commercial transactions that the end-consumer gets saddled with simply because they don't have the leverage, money or time to fight for redress.
I'm always puzzled how ordinary Wikipedia pages make the front page. There must be some rare planetary alignment that gets so many people to upvote something that is plain and ordinary.
To be clear, this isn't about azulejos specifically. I'm just talking about the pattern in general, whatever the topic.
HN is aggressively moderated. Certain types of stories which are popular on other social medias get limited or zero frontpage time on this site. That allows for niche curiosity stuff to bubble up.
The current government of Mexico sells itself as a left leaning party. But it has been destroying or capturing every institution we had built to support our democracy, the separation of powers and the rule of law. From the judicial branch, the electoral institute, the transparency institute and many more.
As a left leaning guy, none of these actions are inherently not-left-leaning which seems to be your assertion. Left and right and middle can all capture institutions if left unchecked which is the case in Mexico.
I mean she passed a plan for universal basic healthcare. I'd say that's clearly left-leaning (even if a bit milquetoast). Her Abrazos, no balazos approach to crime and anti-war stances are also pretty left-leaning. I think she's clearly a left-wing figure but is moderated by trying to toe the line between US foreign policy and leftwing populism
Those are left-leaning only if you do not the details. Please consider that this government has a fantastic propaganda machine.
For example, We already had a Universal Basic Healthcare called Seguro Popular. Which was destroyed in 2018 by this regime on a tantrum which left millions without coverage. We went from 9% uncovered to 26% uncovered. They are still trying to figure out how to fix that.
Seguro Popular was a neoliberal scheme to allow private clinics to overtake public hospitals. It's ultimate goal was to move towards public-private insurance models. The opposite of a "left-leaning" policy
Besides I'm not arguing over the success or even merits of her policies. I'm simply pointing out that she's clearly and obviously seen a left-leaning candidate. I don't think that's whatsoever a controversial take. It's certainly how her party has always been seen.
I will preface my comment by saying I'm in no way trying to attack you personally or discredit your opinion based on your foreigner status, but she is not left-leaning. The plan for universal basic healthcare is a rehash of a program that already existed and was cancelled by her antecesor (and mentor). Abrazos, no balazos is also a policy from her ancestor which has resulted (to no avail) in the highest numbers of killings and missing people. Paradoxically, the country has become more militarized, with the Army taking many more responsibilities such as managing borders, trains and airports. The Federal Police got abolished by a National Guard that has since integrated into the Army command structure, no longer a civil force. Previous administration was also against renewables and the trend is still there. It's all populism and propaganda. The judicial power was captured and dismantled along with all serious institutions, and yes, even right wing governments can do it, typically one associates left leaning governments towards separation of powers.
Thank you. Not to go against site rules and veer into meta-discussion on other posters but it strikes me as very odd that a foreigner is just repeating govt propaganda to people who live here.
I did not at all comment on the efficacy or even merits of her programs. I was simply pointing out that she is widely considered a leftwing politician. Obviously there are some exceptions like you but like obviously the Morena party is the leftwing party. It's the party that at least says it's gonna do leftwing things. It's the party that celebrates itself for electing the first transgender congresswoman and explicitly includes gender and sexuality commitments in its platform documents. It's the party that explicitly talks about funding social welfare. It's the party that aligns with labor unions.
You can argue whether or not they live up to those ideals but I think it's unquestionable that it's widely viewed as the leftwing party. Just like PAN is obviously conservative.
If lifting 8.3 million Mexican people out of poverty is "populism" then maybe we need more of that.
And I don't think the corruption claim is warranted. Her "Abrazos, no balazos" ("hugs, not guns") approach to dealing with gangs is taken as evidence of her being in cahoots with them but the data shows that it's clearly working. Homicides have dropped by almost half from a year ago! And other crimes have followed the same trajectory.
