
The Innumeracy of Intellectuals (2008) - Thrymr
http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2008/07/26/the-innumeracy-of-intellectual/
======
cperciva
I don't mind the innumeracy of so many liberal arts intellectuals... as long
as they stick to liberal arts. Alas, they do not.

A short time ago, I was involved in debate over instituting a new affirmative
action program at my university. "We're failing this group terribly! We must
do something about this!" came the rallying cry.

I responded with university admissions statistics, high school graduation
statistics, and census statistics, showing that the largest reason behind our
apparent lack of members of that group was that we were an urban institution
which drew students mostly from the local area, and members of that group
lived mostly in rural areas where the population as a whole tended to attend
more rural institutions. (Canada has far more of a trend towards attending
"nearby" post-secondary institutions than the US does.)

I was accused of trying to confuse the issue "by introducing numbers and
percentages", and the admissions policy was adopted.

~~~
simonsarris
Is there a good reason to think this is not either a curious outlier or
strawman? Is that situation alone actually good reason to demand people "stick
to the liberal arts"? Or is there something else here among your reasoning?

For the record, I have a degree in CS _and_ Philosophy, so its awfully tough
to "stick to the liberal arts".

~~~
cperciva
That was the most blatant example, but I see members of the university Senate
voting for what they "know" over what they have evidence for on a regular
basis.

(And the philosophers aren't the problem... although that might be partly
because our philosophy department is quite strong on logic.)

~~~
Vargas
I see most people in our democracy voting for what they "know" over what they
have evidence for.

~~~
cperciva
Of course, but it would be nice to think that university professors are more
intelligent than the general population.

~~~
slurgfest
Better-read with good probability, better-educated with good probability. But
no specific reason for them to be more intelligent, because there is no
process to make that especially likely.

It is a job one gets by deciding to do it, sticking to it, paying one's dues
over a long period, cultivating connections, building a personal brand. Like
so many other jobs...

Professors should be respected in direct proportion to their actually
demonstrated knowledge, and only in the fields where that knowledge has been
demonstrated... other than this we should not respect them more than teachers
of high school or elementary school, who usually have greater expertise and
dedication in teaching.

------
_delirium
This is a bit of a curious post. I'm not sure the antidote to people being
proud of ignorance in science/math (which is a problem) is to be proud of
ignorance in the humanities (which is also a problem). I mean, if you'd rather
go boozing than read Bertrand Russell, that's a choice you're free to make,
but I wouldn't be proud of it. I guess I don't know much about the history of
classical music myself, but mostly because one can't study everything, and it
isn't currently near the top of my reading list (though the fact that both
Douglas Hofstadter and David Cope constantly mention J.S. Bach makes it
somewhat relevant to my AI interests).

I also don't generally think as scientists we can afford to be ignorant of the
humanities in general, though many people can afford to ignore parts. There is
a lot of physics that suffers from "bad metaphysics" precisely because of its
practitioners reinventing metaphysics, in the guise of "interpretations" of
physics, when they are unaware of obvious problems that arise, which even a
small amount of reading would've made them aware of. And there's a lot of work
in artificial intelligence that makes more sense with a humanities background.

Oddly this seems to be a recent phenomenon. Early 20th century physicists were
_very_ well-read in philosophy, and their interpretations are accordingly
sophisticated and rarely run into novice problems. Same with mathematicians;
it's hard to even separate whether someone like Frege was a mathematician or
philosopher. Some is unavoidable due to increasing specialization, but if
anything that would seem to call for more humility, not extra arrogance that
we know how to solve the philosophical problems that we don't time to study in
as much depth as Einstein/Planck/Bohr/etc. did...

I'd trace some of it (on both sides) to a general academic tendency to want to
rationalize why the fields you didn't specialize in and don't know about
aren't that important to know about. There's an only half-joke that academics
always want to reduce every field to their own: to an economist everything is
analyzable with economic tools, to a sociologist everything is culture, to a
physicist everything is physics and its minor epiphenomena, to a philosopher
everything is philosophy plus implementation details, to a dynamical systems
theorist everything is just instantiations of dynamical systems, etc.

~~~
crusso
_Early 20th century physicists were very well-read in philosophy_

Philosophy's usefulness to Science died off in the early 20th century for a
reason.

Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson commented upon this very issue in
their Poetry of Science talk. Very insightful:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RExQFZzHXQ&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RExQFZzHXQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=3767s)

~~~
philwelch
I do not think that's true. Are you familiar with the idea that scientific
theories have to be falsifiable? That was formulated by Karl Popper in the
mid-20th century.

If anything, the rise of analytic philosophy and the introduction of greater
logical rigor to philosophy in the early 20th century made it relevant again
after a largely fruitless 19th century. Go ahead and ask a scientist whether
Popper or Hegel is more useful.

~~~
pfedor
It's not like before Popper scientists didn't know they had to design
experiments to test their theories. Popper himself, from what I read of him,
considered his work more useful as a way to tell apart real science from fake
science (he gives Marxism as an example of the latter), than as anything that
could help real scientists do their jobs.

In chapter 7 of "Dreams of a Final Theory", Steven Weinberg argues that
philosophy has been mostly useless or even harmful for physicists, and
whatever positive effects some philosophical theories might have had, had to
do with undoing the harm done by other philosophical theories.

Weinberg is not hostile towards philosophy, he has warm words for it and says
he enjoys reading certain philosophers, he just acknowledges that philosophy
is not at all helpful in doing science. Exact quote: "I know of _no_ _one_ who
has participated actively in the advance of physics in the postwar period
whose research has been significantly helped by the work of philosophers."
(Weinberg considers this surprising, and contrasts it with mathematics, which
is extremely useful even though there is no reason why it should be.)

~~~
philwelch
I'll agree that philosophy doesn't really help one _do_ science, but it does
justify why it's worthwhile to do science, and real science at that.

------
barrkel
The problem is that mathematics and the sciences are useful, while the
humanities are largely about social signalling. One may be proud to be
ignorant of mathematics precisely because it is useful; being ignorant of it
indicates you have sufficient wealth in other areas that you don't need to get
your hands dirty, as it were. And on the other hand, being ignorant of
something like classical music is looked down upon precisely because it marks
you out as not a member of the group.

~~~
zeteo
Precisely. Maybe the best way to make math "cool" is to reclaim for it that
status of "completely useless but fun knowledge" that Hardy was so proud about
in his Apology.

~~~
jinfiesto
Math _is_ cool, and at least to me is lots of fun. The problem, at least at my
university is that all of the lower division math classes have been
commandeered by the engineering programs. I enjoy doing a substantial amount
of recreational math in my spare time. Unfortunately, the classwork at the
lower-levels (basically the calc sequence) basically involves regurgitating
formulae over contrived physical problems. At its best, Math can be an
extremely entertaining way to spend an evening, or a rainy day; It's at least
as much fun as writing or reading poetry, or reading a good novel.

------
jdleesmiller
A related anecdote: I saw mathematician Andrew Dilnot [1] at a Mathematica
users conference a couple years ago, and he asked the audience how many times
the size of the world economy had doubled since 1900, given that it had grown
at about 5% per year. The audience guesses were in the 2-4 range, but he
pointed out that the rule of 72 gives 110/(72/5) ~= 7.6. "Don't feel bad," he
said, "last week I gave this talk to the council of European finance
ministers, and they did no better!" (I may not have remembered the numbers
exactly, but they were something like that.)

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Dilnot>

~~~
Locke1689
Your calculation is way off. You forget that the rule of 72 is how long it
takes for the money to double. Thus, the final calculation is 2^7.6 which is,
as any good computer scientist knows, a little less than 256

~~~
Tycho
Huh? At 5% growth per annum, the economy takes 70/5=14 years to double (I
prefer the rule of 70). 112 years since 1900, so that's enough time for the
economy to double 112/14=8 times.

~~~
adrianN
The economy grew by a factor of 1.05^112 = 236. Which is close enough to his
number to assume that he missed the "doubling" part of the question. 236 is
about 7-8 doublings.

~~~
Locke1689
Woops, yeah, I thought it asked how many times larger the economy was, not how
many times it doubled (which, btw, seems like a weird way to phrase the
question to me).

------
evincarofautumn
Perhaps the sciences are just harder to pretend to care about. I don’t mean
that derisively—it’s just that the arts are very approachable because you
don’t need to _understand_ everything in order to _appreciate_ it.

I’m a designer at heart, but my work is firmly in the hard sciences. I’m
excited about what I do, and it shows. _That’s_ what gets people
interested—ferocity, passion.

You have to be able to describe your work in accessible terms, so that other
people can appreciate it without having to understand it in depth. Not all
people _want_ to understand everything—it’s hard work. Work that we hackers
can take for granted because, by our nature, we enjoy it.

~~~
_delirium
That's probably true for some parts of science, but I think the general public
pays at least as much attention to science as to art, when something catches
its attention. How many people who don't know the first thing about particle
physics were tweeting about the Higgs Boson? Probably more than the number who
tweet about Damien Hirst! Astronomers are good at getting public attention and
cultivating a sense of "astronomy appreciation" among laypeople as well.

~~~
DanBC
I think that's worrying - people don't have the language to begin to
understand the Higgs boson.

Not just that they don't know what a boson is, but they don't really know what
particles are, or what energy is, or what mass is. And so when you need to
explain what the Higgs Boson is you need to give the simple lies we tell
people when we explain physics

I live in the UK. BBC Radio 4 has a "flagship" news and current affairs
programme called 'Today'.[1] Science is routinely handled as if the audience
are idiots, while arts are given free range to be reasonably esoteric.

[1] Today website (<http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/default.stm>)

------
hsmyers
I was lucky enough to spend a fair amount of time in college with a senior
citizen who was aiming for a fine arts degree in painting. As in most
colleges, this does not require algebra which she thought was a shame as she
had been home schooled and had a thorough background in mathematics as was
expected of a young lady of her class and social standing. That 'woke' me up
to the decline in education standards in the second half of the 20th century.
Not only in this country but around the world. If you think I'm wrong, just
compare the textbooks available now with what was available in say 1910! Would
you even be allowed to use a text book by Hilbert? I doubt it. I will grant
you that she was exceptional and typically excelled in any endeavor she chose
---she was I believe the first American woman to be allowed a role on stage at
the Abbey Theatre in Dublin as an example. Decline and Fall are us I guess...

~~~
neutronicus
You're comparing educational standards for the wealthy to educational
standards for _everyone_.

~~~
ef4
By 1910 universal compulsory education was already in full swing in many
places. Take Massachusetts, for example. If you examine the textbooks being
used in Massachusetts at that time you'll see the same phenomenon -- they're
much more advanced than modern textbooks. And they were not just for the rich,
Massachusetts already had compulsory education.

And by the same argument: where are today's equivalent textbooks for the rich?
Our wealth gap is as big as ever, yet I see no books even for the rich that
are so advanced.

~~~
abecedarius
I'd be curious to see an example.

I seem to recall a 19th-C. MIT entrance exam as comparable to or maybe behind
what my better high-school classmates learned.

------
ColinWright
You want to see "The Two Cultures" by C P Snow:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures>

<http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=CP+Snow+cultures>

~~~
unimpressive
Part of the problem is seeing Math/Science and The humanities as opposites or
opposed to each other.[0] Human knowledge mostly likes to spit in our face
when we attempt to label it.[1]

[0]:
[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497891/Renaissance...](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/497891/Renaissance-
man)

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertwingularity>

------
SagelyGuru
Being an intellectual ought to be primarily a matter of attitude of respect
towards knowledge of all kinds and, above all, a strong curiosity and interest
in learning.

Thus what is particularly sad is not the fact that some subject or another is
avoided and ignored by (intellectually) lazy people but that such people,
proud of their ignorance, nowadays pass for intellectuals.

'My subject is more important than yours, so I am not going to waste time
learning from you' is just a post-justification for being a dullard and a
bigot.

------
mangler
Yeah, the next time you go to your local yoga class and the local bleached
bimbo starts babbling on about quantum physics (for some reason, a favourite
subject), ask them if they can solve a quadratic equation. Guess what, they
can't. But that is not a reason to desist! The quantum physics banter lives
on...

So, learn from these smart people. Fake it and bask in it!

------
kingkawn
There's also social signaling occurring when he includes boozing in his list
of reasons he has chosen to remain ignorant of arts and music.

------
pessimizer
Case in point:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-
algebra-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/is-algebra-
necessary.html?pagewanted=all)

I find it a bit sad how he thinks that people should be taught long division,
which is what we have calculators for, but algebra is a step too far. The only
reason I think people should be taught arithmetic is so that they understand
algebra. After algebra, Calculus I for people who want to actually be
knowledgeable about the world around them (No heavy series and no
multivariate), and then I don't care what they do, because I trust that they
understand how the world works.

Instead, Hacker suggests that we drill those future artists and writers on
duplicating the functions of a calculator for 12 years, and then throw them
into the voting booth. Bleah.

------
rickmb
_"our economy is teetering because people can’t hack the math needed to
understand how big a loan they can afford"_

That is not so much caused by a lack of math as it is a surplus of delusional
optimism. No amount of math will ever beat that. Not only is it a bad example,
I can't think of any better examples, and apparently neither can the author.

It may be that my utter incompetence in math makes me less than objective, but
I fail to see any convincing argument in the entire article.

