
Pay Mothers and Tie Increases to Child's Math Skills - silexia
https://joelx.com/pay-mothers-and-tie-increases-to-childs-math-skills/15561/
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p0llard
I can only hope that this is some poor attempt at satire? This is some of the
most obscenely technocratic nonsense I have ever seen in my life.

There are so many things wrong here I don't even know where to start.

> Math is the most valuable tool we have as humans for understanding the world
> around us and for improving life for all of us. It was math that brought us
> out of the Dark Ages

This is ahistoric rubbish; the dark ages didn't exist, and even if they did, I
have never seen anyone try to claim that mathematics was the beacon of
enlightenment that dragged humanity out of the darkness.

> We want to strongly incentivize mothers to train their children in math. No
> one – not schools, not other relatives, nor the government – is better
> placed to start training a child in math than their own mother who
> understands them best and can do it from the youngest possible age.

Being a mother in no way qualifies you as a teacher ready to "train their
children in math"; what does this even mean anyway? Teach them arithmetic?
We're reasonably good at that as a society already. Bring them up on a diet of
ZFC and category theory? This is unlikely to work out well, ask the French.

These are of course minor points compared to the huge, glaring issue that the
author clearly has no knowledge of child development whatsoever; "lack of
mathematical talent" at the age of 5 in no way determines ability, at all.

The notion of giving some kind of "performance bonus" to mothers for the
mathematical talent of their children is absurd, since they have no impact on
any innate talent whatsoever; I dread to think what kind of an impact this
would have when the proposed bonus is high enough to put them in the 99th
centile of income.

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mepiethree
Watching the video at the end of the article, I'm pretty sure it is satire.
His wife just shakes her head and saying "no" the entire time he says his
idea, so then he just plays with his kids and calls them mathematicians for
the last minute.

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blairbeckwith
If it’s not satire, it’s at least sad. That video made me feel sorry for the
mother.

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quantified
Ah yes. The goal is to cover every square inch of every known planet with
pulsing human flesh, and if it means we wipe out everything else and just
harvest vats of yeast to eat, hey God told some of us to do it a long time ago
(apparently). Thank goodness people don’t care that you once could see animals
and stars in the outdoors, or hear birds sing. We’ll pack in more tightly with
Netflix to keep us on the couch.

Pay is already tied somewhat to math skills in life anyway. The math that
leads to allocating resources optimally and growing them when possible is only
useful when combined with impulse control. Otherwise you blow your income on
cigarettes and Doordash.

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zepto
Weird and vaguely eugenic.

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bbmario
Vaguely? That's polite.

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Gunax
Can't happen. It would instantly be racist--it turns out the people with kids
who can do math are the kinds of people who did not need the money. An instant
wealth transfer to the well-off.

It is interesting as a thought experiment only.

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throwawayhhakdl
> Math is the most valuable tool we have as humans for understanding the world
> around us and for improving life for all of us. It was math that brought us
> out of the Dark Ages

Wouldn’t literacy be what brought us out of the dark ages, by definition?

I would strongly support living wages being paid to stay at home parents. Or
even working parents. Restricting it to mothers seems stupidly short sighted.

We have tax cuts for this but it’s not nearly enough.

Tying it to math is... dumb.

