If that’s so, you should be able to provide a citation. — Wayfarer

Quran 30:30 (Ar-Rum): So be steadfast in faith in all uprightness ˹O Prophet˺—the natural Way of Allah which He has instilled in ˹all˺ people. Let there be no change in this creation of Allah. That is the Straight Way, but most people do not know.

So why bring Islam into it? why not just stick to biology? — Wayfarer

Because the idea that religion is biologically innate comes from there. It is standard Islamic doctrine.

Do Muslims believe that it’s biological firmware? Or doesn’t it matter whether they believe it? — Wayfarer

I use the term "firmware" metaphorically here. It's a bit like the software embedded in specialized devices, such as your phone's camera, but obviously implemented in a completely different technology.

We do not control or even properly understand this technology because we did not design it.

The Quran does not contain its implementation details. If it did, we would probably not understand it anyway.

Do you think Muslims would agree that ‘fitrah’ is a biological drive? — Wayfarer

The term "fitrah" in Islam refers to all behavior that is innate. So, where else does it come from, if not from our biological firmware?

We are not a completely blank slate:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct

Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behaviour, containing innate (inborn) elements.

Humans are, however, incredibly flexible. We are able to override a lot of innate behaviors while animals cannot.

For example, people may be able to modify a stimulated fixed action pattern by consciously recognizing the point of its activation and simply stop doing it, whereas animals without a sufficiently strong volitional capacity may not be able to disengage from their fixed action patterns, once activated.

This flexibility is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Humans are beyond any doubt the species that is the most prone to corruption, depravity, and degeneracy.

It doesn’t need to be invalidated. It’s simply irrelevant, even if it is the case. — Wayfarer

It is irrelevant until it isn't anymore.

Spolsky's law: All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky.

The organic-chemistry composition of the stomach is mostly irrelevant but not completely.

The innate inclinations of humanity, its biological firmware, is actually even less irrelevant. A lot of human behavior is determined at the biological level.

But I don’t know if on that basis you could say that language is biological feature — Wayfarer

Yes, I believe that language is a biological feature that is part of the biologically preprogrammed firmware of humans. Otherwise, there would be humans in history or throughout the world that do not use language.

studying it through the perspective biology would be more suitable than through, say, linguistics or anthropology. — Wayfarer

That would be in my opinion unsuitable. For example, every stomach is ultimately built from atoms. That does not mean that you should address a stomach ache by means of theories in nuclear physics. But then again, this does not invalidate the observation that every stomach consists of atoms at some deeper level of observation detail.

But why do you think that maps against biology? — Wayfarer

Whenever a behavior is universal throughout history and throughout the world, it can only be biological. Otherwise, there would be or have been numerous societies in the past and/or throughout the world that did not have it. Every society that has ever existed, had a religion.

It always contains two things:

(1) a way of praying to the divine
(2) a set of rules not to break

If it is biological, then it is preprogrammed in one way or another into our biological firmware ("fitrah").

But then again, humanity is very flexible and adaptable. We are often able to overrule our own biological inclinations. Therefore, I believe that people are fundamentally religious but can also easily be trained not to be.

I hold that religion actually has a foundation discoverable in the essential conditions of our existence. — Constance

According to Islamic doctrine, religion is built into our preprogrammed biological firmware, called "fitrah" in Islam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitra

Humanity is, however, overly flexible.

It is trivially easy to deprave and degenerate humans away from their innate biological firmware. There is a lot of power to be had in doing so.

Therefore, the need eventually arose for religious scripture to appear which contains a copy in human language of the biologically preprogrammed rules that humans should not break and that government should never overrule. That is why during his investiture ceremony the new king was always forced to kneel to religion in order to be crowned. He had to acknowledge the supremacy of God's law.

If there are no tensions or even conflict between the political overlord and religion, then it is not a true religion. The more the political overlord complains about a particular religion, the more it is doing its main job, which is to constrain the political overlord, and therefore the more truthful it is. If religion is never an impediment to the expansion of state power, then it is a false religion.

Well, this is a philosophy site, so people here do understand why in the university math is studied, even if the applications to engineering etc. are different. — ssu

My own personal interest is also pure math rather than applied math. However, it has to be somehow relevant. The subjects I end up investigating are ultimately still inspired by practical use. For example, zero-knowledge arguments. If you dig under the hood, you end up investigating the properties of Weil and Tate pairings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weil_pairing

In mathematics, the Weil pairing is a pairing (bilinear form, though with multiplicative notation) on the points of order dividing n of an elliptic curve E, taking values in nth roots of unity. More generally there is a similar Weil pairing between points of order n of an abelian variety and its dual. It was introduced by André Weil (1940) for Jacobians of curves, who gave an abstract algebraic definition; the corresponding results for elliptic functions were known, and can be expressed simply by use of the Weierstrass sigma function.

The most interesting materials in the field are actually written by people like Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. In order to implement zero-knowledge proofs in the Ethereum blockchain, he also ended up figuring out pairings:

https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/exploring-elliptic-curve-pairings-c73c1864e627

Exploring Elliptic Curve Pairings

Trigger warning: math.

One of the key cryptographic primitives behind various constructions, including deterministic threshold signatures, zk-SNARKs and other simpler forms of zero-knowledge proofs is the elliptic curve pairing.

Vitalik's articles on the subject are much better than what you could ever find at any university.

A bit like Bill Gates (Microsoft) or Steve Jobs (Apple), Vitalik had to stop wasting his time and drop out of his university undergraduate in order to do something more important:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin

He dropped out of university in 2014 when he was awarded with a grant of US$100,000 (equivalent to $128,704 in 2023)[19] from the Thiel Fellowship, a scholarship created by venture capitalist Peter Thiel and went to work on Ethereum full-time.

Hence, Vitalik is not just some credentialist postdoc idiot. The Ethereum market cap is now well over $400 billion. It is exactly because he really uses elliptic curve pairings, which is pure math, that he is much better at explaining the subject than anybody in the academia.

Vitalik has absolutely no university degree whatsoever but he wipes the floor in terms of knowledge with anybody who does. Credentialists are simply born idiots. Have always been. Will always be.

The worst thing you can do for the personality and mentality of any individual, is to give him a piece of paper that says that he now knows everything better than everybody else. I spit, pee, and shit on these people.

The academia claim that they lack practical experience but that they would somehow still be good at teaching theoretical subjects such as pure math. In reality, they aren't good at that either. The truth is that they are actually good for nothing.

The concert pianist actually intends to solve a problem. So does the athlete.

What problem does the math graduate intend to solve except for teaching math?

Concerning my academic background in a branch of applied math, if it were still relevant after decades, it would mean that I wouldn't have done anything meaningful in the meanwhile.

If a degree matters after your first job, it simply means that your first job did not matter.

My stints in pure math came much later. Sometimes because I was looking under the hood of the software I was using. Sometimes just out of interest.

For example, I did my first foray in abstract algebra by looking under the hood of elliptic-curve cryptography. In fact, you understand abstract algebra much better if you have first been exposed to subjects like ECDSA and Shnorr signatures. The other way around is not true.

You have a credentialist view on knowledge. That is typical for teaching associates at university. They think that credentialism matters. Well, they have to, because their hourly rate clearly does not matter. The academia are full of postdocs and other idiots who think they know but who in reality have nothing to show for. Furthermore, the relevant math is elsewhere. They really do not understand, not even to save themselves from drowning, which areas in pure math power technology. That is why they are stuck in areas that are irrelevant.

Oh, goodie! The six people who still understand some aspect of 'manual' programming can teach it to their children, set up dynasties and rule the world — Vera Mont

Again wrong!

All the relevant software is free and open source. There is nothing hidden. It's all there for everyone to look at.

The question is rather: Why would you even look at it?

Well, you would need a problem to solve. That is the only legitimate reason to pick up any knowledge. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time.

So, how do you find a problem to solve?

Simple. Find someone who is even willing to pay you real money for solving the problem. That problem must be somehow real. Why else are they even willing to part with real dollars?

You will quickly discover that other people have similar problems and that they are also willing to pay real money for you to do that. It is always an entire market.

So, instead of looking at the curriculum of a university degree, instead look at what problems are mentioned in job adverts. Pick one. Figure out how much time it would take to give a meaningful response to the job adverts. It rarely takes more than a few months.

If they require credentials that take years to acquire, skip that job. They are clearly full of bullshit, and their scammy job advert is just the tip of the iceberg. You would be entering an overregulated market in which ability to solve problems takes a back seat on regulatory credentials and other nonsense. It is not a real job. Instead, you will be spending your days filling out meaningless paperwork.

You see, you don't need nine years to learn how to be a family doctor and hand out medical prescriptions to elderly patients. You'll just become a pawn in the hands of the government-orchestrated pharmaceutical mafia. If it takes years to merely join at the lowest level, it is always a scam. Don't spend your life ripping off other people and getting ripped off yourself.

Sounds as if you are arguing for an intellectually impoverished populace, and I wonder why? — wonderer1

They already are intellectually impoverished. They just don't know it.

In fact, university graduates are being placed in the worst situation possible. The university makes them believe that they know, but in fact, they know absolutely nothing of value.

Why would you even learn if you think that you know it all already? You can even prove that you know it all. Isn't that what your academic credential is for?

So, now you need to face potential employers. They perfectly well know that you don't know. They also know that you are convinced that you know, even though you don't. So, you still feel entitled. You think that you deserve the world, essentially for being useless and ignorant.

Instead of spending years regurgitating irrelevant trivia, do a 3-month boot camp. Employers will be more interested in hiring you.

And how can you pick the correct toll, if you don't know the arithmetical and algebraic procedures themselves? By at least learning to do them yourself, you understand them. — ssu

That would be the same question as how do you choose an encryption algorithm if you can't encrypt/decrypt manually?

I don't know anybody who actually can.

I can pretty much guarantee that almost nobody who uses libsodium can manually carry out any operation in xchacha20:

https://doc.libsodium.org/secret-key_cryptography/encrypted-messages

In fact, it is never seen as a requirement.

There are, of course, people like Daniel Bernstein who specialize in the knowledge of the level below libsodium but they are outnumbered 1 to 10000 by the people who just use libsodium.

The problem is that there's simply too much math to study at a slow pace. — ssu

You have to make choices.

But then again, you can only make those choices when faced with real-life problems to solve. Hence, it is the problem at hand that chooses what you should learn.

All other math is irrelevant in your particular context. It's too much anyway. Seriously, why even waste your time on that? In order to achieve what exactly?

No school on earth teaches you how to use libsodium. No university teaches you how xchacha20 works. They would not even be able to. Universities don't even teach you anything that is even remotely relevant in that respect. In fact, I spent most of my career -- I am semi-retired now -- picking up knowledge and using it, that no school or university ever even remotely mentions.

So yes, I used a lot of underlying math, hidden in programs and software libraries, some of which I somewhat investigated under the hood. It is totally unrelated to what universities teach. Universities are clearly not even aware of the existence of this kind of math.

Hence, if you are interested in relevant mathematics, you are wasting your time studying it at university, because in my decades-long experience, pretty much everything they do at university, is irrelevant to modern technology. These people cannot choose what to study and what not, simply because they don't use it themselves. They somehow believe that what they do, is meaningful, but it simply isn't.

Maybe true, but it could also be that most people aren’t interested in the jobs that education helps with attaining, and so for the majority it is not that helpful. What would you propose? — Igitur

"Child labor". Like it used to be.

Harold Lowe was one of the officers on the Titanic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lowe

Harold Lowe was born in Llanrhos, Caernarvonshire, Wales, on 21 November 1882, the fourth of eight children, born to George Edward Lowe and Emma Harriette Quick. His father had ambitions for him to be apprenticed to a successful Liverpool businessman, but Harold Lowe was determined to go to sea. At 14, he ran away from his home in Barmouth where he had attended school and joined the Merchant Navy, serving along the West African Coast. Lowe started as a ship's boy aboard the Welsh coastal schooners as he worked to attain his certifications. In 1906, he passed his certification and gained his second mate's certificate, then in 1908, he attained his first mate's certificate.

Teach your brats to cook, to grow food, to work wood and metal. And how to get along with the neighbours, which is by having all these useful skills that can help them stay alive. The machines are no longer your friends. — unenlightened

We used to be hunter-gatherers. So, don't grow food. Hunt it instead.

There is just one problem with this view. There was a reason why we started growing food instead of hunting it. This planet was able to support less than a million hunter-gatherers. We are 8 billion now.

Mutatis mutandis, our current head count of 8 billion does not allow us to get rid of the machines. If we do that, we need to get rid of billions of people too. Who volunteers to leave first? Not me.

S0. A nation of innumerate illiterates who can't find North on a compass just need to be trained in which buttons to push. Maybe a chimp can instruct them.
I'm just lucky not to have any future! — Vera Mont

Wrong again.

Software needs to be maintained. If nobody knows how it works anymore, the software is simply dead. These people need to know how to do it manually. If you don't know how to do it manually -- excruciatingly and step by step -- you can't touch one line in the software either.

You see, the specialized knowledge is massively important to some people. However, shoving it down the throat of everyone else, is not the solution. They first need to learn how to use the software.

But then again, after using the software for years, there are always people who want to know more, and who want to know how it works and why it works. That is how I spent years developing small toy compilers and interpreters, because I wanted to know what my compiler or script engine was doing under the hood. That allowed me to read the source code of the tools I was using. That brought me to learning the computer-science math with regards to compiler construction.

You see, it is absolutely wrong to start the journey there. Just learn to use the tool first. Only if it truly piques your interest, it makes sense to look under the hood. Computer science graduates may learn some of it, but they learn it at the wrong time in their lives. They learn it at a point at which it simply does not matter to them. That is why they suck at it.

Also, teaching someone how to make an app wouldn’t be the same as teaching them how apps work. — Igitur

Someone with a degree in swimmology has read a lot of books about swimming, but he does not necessarily swim himself. That does not matter, because he can teach swimmology!

The “starting point” would be higher education. — Igitur

It used to be high school. Now, they delay it to higher education. But then again, if higher education were such a fantastic starting point, then why do so many of its graduates end up slinging coffee at Starbucks? The proof is always in the pudding, isn't it?

I was mainly saying the baseline education
was necessary for students who wish to go into jobs that have to do with them. Kind of like a way of introducing a lot of jobs that need to be done, but otherwise might not. (Like math related ones.) — Igitur

In fact, there are no math-related jobs. There is only math-containing software. There simply is no job where you have to manually compute math results. These students do not learn how to build such software. They also do not learn how to use such software. Instead, they learn how to fail at being themselves the software.

talking mostly about experimental fields of science here — Igitur

That's just another scam. The government spends money on "scientific research". Next, when there is scientific progress somewhere, the government is quick to claim credit for it, and then wants some more money for "scientific research".

There is an interesting German woman, Sabine Hossenfelder, who spent decades in scientific research and who explains in excruciating detail how the scam works. One of her videos:

What's Going Wrong in Particle Physics? (This is why I lost faith in science.)

They may come up anyway, but this education system probably either helps them learn about such subjects or helps more students to explore possibilities that they might not have without education. — Igitur

You cannot make progress inside the system, because that will almost always be shut down. Every innovation is in one way or another a threat to existing interests. That is why all progress is made outside the system. Example: cryptocurrencies. They dangerously threaten the monopoly of the banking system and associated government power and control. That is why they could never have emerged out of the academia or even the corporate world. The powers that be would have immediately nipped it in the bud. Same for the medical industry. Don't cure a disease that currently makes the pharmaceutical mafia billions already by not curing it.

We might still need a few doctors and architects — Vera Mont

In practice, there are no "architects". In practice, there are only users of architect software. So, either you build the machine, or else you use the machine, because in all other cases, you are trying to be the machine. The last bit, is what architects learn at university. Employers want users with years of experience with the software that they happen to use, while the people who graduate from universities are trying themselves to be the software. That is why they are unemployed when they graduate.

Concerning doctors, the entire medical industry is actually a gigantic scam. Quite a few people became more aware of that during the past scamdemic. Doctors do not learn at university what to prescribe to the patients. They learn that from the pharmaceutical mafia. It is one of the most regulated professions and therefore the profession that tops the list in terms of mafia behavior. If things go on like this, they will manage to bankrupt every modern western country -- if something else does not bankrupt them first. (There is a long list of situations that are busy bankrupting the West, such as the banking system, and so on).

Good. So that's where all the 14-year-olds should be going when they drop out of school. — Vera Mont

I can only talk from my own experience. It is just one example of how things work in practice. The labor market consists of an almost infinite myriad of different jobs, of which I only know 0.1%.

Personally, I did not learn anything in school between the ages of 14 and 18 that was later on helpful in any way. In fact, I did not learn anything at university either that turned out to be useful. I guess that 14-year-olds instinctively sense this.

Therefore, I can understand why a 14-year-old feels like dropping out. In fact, dropping out is actually not the problem. The real problem is that they need to do something else instead. Something that does make sense.

That is where the system fails, and by design so.

With all the child labor laws, it is illegal to hire a 14-year-old. So, he cannot become an apprentice with someone who can teach him something useful. Society has simply outlawed the solution. The government does not solve problems. Instead, the government pretty much always makes the problem unsolvable.

Before around 1850 (before the school system was introduced), there were no "drop outs". There were no demotivated youngsters who felt useless and lost. At the age of 12, you could join the crew of a sail ship and travel the world. Look for example at the fifth officer of the Titanic, Harold Lowe:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lowe

Harold Lowe was born in Llanrhos, Caernarvonshire, Wales, on 21 November 1882, the fourth of eight children, born to George Edward Lowe and Emma Harriette Quick. His father had ambitions for him to be apprenticed to a successful Liverpool businessman, but Harold Lowe was determined to go to sea. At 14, he ran away from his home in Barmouth where he had attended school and joined the Merchant Navy, serving along the West African Coast. Lowe started as a ship's boy aboard the Welsh coastal schooners as he worked to attain his certifications. In 1906, he passed his certification and gained his second mate's certificate, then in 1908, he attained his first mate's certificate.

This system worked much better. Today, Harold Lowe would be a directionless dropout because nowadays nobody can take him on as an apprentice.

The current system is objectively worse than what they had back then.

Education is an attempt to teach students the basics of how things work — Igitur

No, it doesn't. For example, if you want to figure out how to write a mobile app, no school will ever help you. I don't say that anybody should learn this, though. But then again, take whatever real-life example of how something works, and you will quickly understand that the school is totally ignorant of how it works. So, how can they teach it?

You can’t have a specialized path for every student — Igitur

Not true. You definitely can.

For example, the best way to get into software engineering, is to do a 3-month bootcamp. There is no need for 6 years like in high school. I would say that the only way to get people started in their career is a specialized path for every student. It is possible and it is being done already.

It takes two months to train a truck driver and to get the license, if that is what the student wants to do.

It’s hard to know what a person will do, and you can’t have everyone decide at an early age, when education starts. — Igitur

Well, he still has to start somewhere. Not having any starting point at all, is not the solution either.

Therefore, it’s necessary to teach a baseline in many topics and then later allow options for specialized learning. — Igitur

Not true. Baseline generalities do not prepare for anything at all. We already know that. That is why youth unemployment is a reality nowadays.

Current education does this fine. — Igitur

No, current education is pretty much a complete failure. I am surprised that any graduate finds any job at all. If it goes on like this, they will all end up slinging coffee at Starbucks. That is the true career for which they are being prepared.

the knowledge of basic math must be taught — Igitur

No, because Starbucks et alii do not require it. The cash till can perfectly handle all arithmetic. The cash till is a computer. Starbucks will not allow its staff to do any math. Again, either you build the machine, or else you use the machine, because in all other cases, you are trying to be the machine.

Pretty soon, with increasing automation, there won't be (m)any jobs for adults, either. The 'modern world' is a fragile and volatile thing. Why assume it will continue as it is? — Vera Mont

After a few decades of making money by writing software, I can guarantee to you that the claim that "AI will replace all jobs" is complete bullshit. I really don't know why the mainstream media are pushing that stupid narrative. Maybe because some people will believe it anyway?

Actually, I usually do understand why the media push a particular bullshit narrative. There are so many, and their motivation is usually very transparent. In the case of the AI nonsense, however, I do not even see what they are trying to achieve by making people believe it !?

If you are competing for a job with another person, and the other person isn't an HS graduate and you are, isn't that going to be a significant advantage for you? — RogueAI

Only if that is the only requirement (which it never is because a HS diploma does not reflect any ability to solve any particular problem). Ok, let's take an example and let's look at the following job:

https://www.indeed.com/q-react-js-jobs.html?vjk=5d7f26153585e268

REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE & SKILL SETS

5+ years of experience in Software Programming or Engineering
Proficient with software programming languages such as JavaScript, Java, Python, C++, or Node.js
Experience with full stack development, deployment, and support of web and mobile applications
Experienced with native, react native, hybrid, PWA, and/or mobile-responsive apps
Experienced with development and implementation of APIs, microservice contracts, data structures and interfaces, along with other relevant tools and technologies
Knowledge of Jira, Confluence, and other ALM tools
Comfort and confident in ambiguity, is resourceful, and willing to problem solve around the ‘how’ of execution work
Understanding of how to deliver work iteratively and push goals to the finish line using agile methodologies
Works collaboratively across internal and external product, design, development and QA teams

EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE

Bachelor's degree (B.A. or B.S.) in IT, Software Engineering, Computer Science, or related fields preferred; and/or 5 years related experience in demonstrated mobile application, web application and/or software development.

First remark: you don't learn any of the following in high school:

- development and implementation of APIs, microservice contracts, data structures and interfaces, along with other relevant tools and technologies
- native, react native, hybrid, PWA, and/or mobile-responsive apps
- development and implementation of APIs, microservice contracts, data structures and interfaces, along with other relevant tools and technologies

You do not even learn this at university. Universities don't teach it. They would not even be able to teach it. So, a candidate can have a masters degree from MIT or Stanford or even a Ph.D, but he will still not qualify for the job. Seriously, this company won't hire that candidate. Hence, you won't be competing with any graduate from any level, because they are simply not qualified for the job.

So, how do you learn it?

Well, I always had to learn this kind of things by googling for something like "tutorial react native", and then start from there. I've had to do that a lot of times in my career.

The people who would compete with someone like me for this job, are people who have used these technologies in their previous job. They actually stand a much better chance at getting the job, but they are probably not applying for the job, because they get called by recruitment companies who offer them jobs, just like they used to call me when I was still working. So, they do not have to look for jobs. So, they are unlikely to apply.

Does this employer really care about your university degree? Probably not. Almost surely not.

I have a degree, but nobody has ever asked me about it. I am semi-retired now. So, nowadays I don't need to deal with this kind of things anymore, but I can guarantee to you that you are better off with a 3-month bootcamp in "react native" than with a Ph.D in computer science:

https://www.udemy.com/course/complete-react-native-mobile-development-zero-to-mastery-with-hooks/

Complete React Native Bootcamp (with Hooks) Master React Native for iOS and Android Mobile App Development using JavaScript. Build a modern e-commerce mobile app!

So, no, in my experience, having a high school degree won't make any difference. You are not competing on that basis. You really don't need one. You are competing in the area of having practical hands-on experience in a subject that no school has ever taught or will ever teach.

By the way, "react native" may be popular today, but I can guarantee that a few years from now, it will be something else.

there's been a shift towards conceptually understanding of math concepts, instead of just rote memorization. — RogueAI

What strikes me, is that they still test students while imposing the following conditions:

- you cannot use a calculator
- you cannot use your books
- you cannot use google search

Students learn exactly the opposite of what makes you productive in a professional environment.

If you can find a solution by using a piece of software (such as a calculator) or by using a search engine, but you don't, you are considered to be highly unproductive. You won't be able to compete with people who are good at doing exactly the opposite.

In that sense, schools mostly teach students how to be unproductive in a professional environment. The students do not learn concepts, especially not the concept of doing whatever it reasonably takes to figure out the solution, because in fact, this is not allowed.

But then again, if the students are simply allowed to use a tool such as wolfram alpha, then it would become patently clear that they are not learning concepts at all. They are in fact not learning anything that a machine cannot do better than them. On the contrary, all they are learning is to try to be the machine, but miserably fail. That is the main reason why a high school diploma is completely worthless in the labor market. University degrees are rapidly going in the same direction, for exactly the same reasons.

Okay. Let's dispense with education altogether and puts kids right to work on real-life problems as soon as they turn six. — Vera Mont

They used to start working at around fourteen.

Back then, there was no problem of youth unemployment. Employers were perfectly fine to hire apprentices. Nowadays, it is illegal. Around the globe, child labor laws prevent teenagers from working. It proves again that there is no problem in the world that the government won't make worse.

If someone is interested in academic subjects, he will undoubtedly find his way to youtube and start viewing introductory material. If they are not interested, then why would they have to learn it?

There are not that many jobs in the modern world that are suitable for children between six and fourteen. In the past, they could help out with subsistence farming, but that option is not available for most families. But then again, even today there are still lots of jobs could be done by a fourteen-year old.

Everybody will automatically learn how to use the simplest version of the computer, which is the mobile phone. In fact, children learn by themselves how to use it, long before they graduate from primary school. That is also how most jobs will end up using computers (by using apps on a mobile phone).

Trains the mind in the significance, functions and manipulation of numbers, of quantitative relationships and proportions. — Vera Mont

Learning to formalize a real-world problem into a mathematical model is indeed more meaningful. Next, you can give it to a computation engine to solve. However, that is not mathematics. That is an activity downstream from mathematics. As soon as the problem has any real-world semantics, it is not mathematics but something else:

In the philosophy of mathematics, formalism is the view that holds that statements of mathematics and logic can be considered to be statements about the consequences of the manipulation of strings (alphanumeric sequences of symbols, usually as equations) using established manipulation rules. A central idea of formalism "is that mathematics is not a body of propositions representing an abstract sector of reality.

According to formalism, the truths expressed in logic and mathematics are not about numbers, sets, or triangles or any other coextensive subject matter — in fact, they aren't "about" anything at all. — Mathematical formalism

There is nothing wrong with training people in using a spreadsheet or other computation engines. However, that is not an exercise in mathematics in any shape or fashion. It could be one in accounting, or engineering, or any other downstream discipline, but not one in mathematics.

In fact, you do not learn to use mathematics by studying mathematics. You must learn that elsewhere.

It's not the memorizing that matters; it's the understanding of how they were derived and why they are valid. — Vera Mont

And this is tested by the education system by asking the student to repeat the proof from memory. That does not require understanding. That merely requires rote memorization.

While everyone needs arithmetic to navigate life successfully, few people need mathematics. But they won't know who they are until after they're introduced to the concepts. — Vera Mont

They won't know who they are until they are confronted with a real-life problem that they need to solve and that requires them. Hence, only exposure to real-life problems will make people learn what they need. Therefore, the legitimate starting point is not the concepts or the tools. The legitimate starting point is a problem that you need to solve. no matter what. Next, you try to figure out what concepts and tools could help you doing that. It is of no use to learn concepts or tools unless you are going to actually use them. This can only be guaranteed when you start from the problem to solve and not from arbitrary tools that could possible be useful in solving some future nondescript problem.

Therefore, every secondary school students should be given a basic education in maths and science. — Vera Mont

I don't think so. In practice, it merely leads to memorizing concepts that the student will never use. In my opinion, it is a waste of time. If you some day you really need it, you can learn it then and there. Employers do not value it either. If they did, youth unemployment would not be a thing.

This waste of time is not without consequences. Around the globe, hundreds of millions of young people graduate from secondary schools every year. There is no job that they will be hired for that requires anything they have learned in high school. Starbucks will hire them, but they will also happily hire someone who did not graduate from high school at all. For most of them, it would even be better to get something like a truck driving license instead of a high school diploma, which only takes a month or two, instead of six years. Still, they will much more easily find a job and make a much better living that their high-school peers.

Learning something that you may possibly some day need, has turned out to be a losing strategy. Instead, get straight into a professional environment, and try to solve the problem at hand. Only then, learn what you need to solve it.

Socialism, i.e. collective ownership of the means of production, is merely an instrument. You would still need to determine what the goal is.

Furthermore, mere government ownership of the economy does in itself not guarantee that everyone has an income. It only guarantees that customers have nowhere else to go, if they don't like existing supply.

There are many forms of socialism:

Marxist socialism (internationalist goals), National socialism (racial goals), Trade-union socialism (better known as fascism), social democracy (which is rather a form of capitalism).

You would still need to figure out a way to get people to work in the context of universal basic income. Most people only work because they have to. Without a production of goods and services to buy, money is essentially worthless.

Housing cost would also be even more inflationary than today. Renters would use their universal basic income to outbid each other. So, the money would probably largely end up in the pockets of landlords. It would also have a strong pull effect on illegal immigration.

Universal basic income is so inflationary that it won't be able to cover the cost of living.

I would like to ask the interlocuter, what role does education have in society and perhaps more importantly in our daily lives? — Shawn

A first issue is that there is no problem in the world that the government won't make worse.

Education has largely stopped teaching and has switched to mostly indoctrinating.

Just like the true purpose of education in the Soviet Union was to firmly stomp the manifesto of the communist party into the minds of young impressionable children, nowadays, education in the West has its own not-so-hidden woke agenda.

The education system is based on the false idea that society has the right to impose its views -- no matter how misguided -- onto someone else's children. The most visible second-order consequence of that approach is that fewer and fewer people actually want children. The education system is indeed self-defeating. The longer the system lasts, the more destructive the effect that it has on the nuclear family, on the social fabric, on society, and therefore the stronger the tendency for society to collapse.

There is obviously no need to do anything about a problem that is clearly solving itself. I have children but not in the West. Therefore, my own recommendation is to let it rot.

There are many different, incompatible, mathematical systems. — Michael

Could you give me an example of two incompatible mathematical systems? There is a lot of research in inconsistent mathematics, but I am not sure that this is what you mean?

However, the structure is useless without rules of application, so we proceed toward axioms of geometry, and rules of categorizing, to provide rules of application. The rules of application are still a part of the formal system, and there is no proper "formalist" separation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Classical Euclidean geometry is arguable not "real" mathematics. As Kant pointed out, it is incredibly married to sensory input, to the point that it is not pure reason. The truly mathematical version of geometry, is algebraic geometry. It revolves exclusively around dealing the roots of multivariate polynomials, which is entirely about string manipulation and does not require any visual input. The fact that Euclidean geometry has too much meaning and does not fit the formalist narrative, points out a problem with Euclidean geometry and not with the formalist ontology. If it is not possible to interpret it as meaningless string manipulation, then it is not real mathematics.

In no way can mathematics completely escape application, without it becoming something other (a useless bunch of symbols) than mathematics. So the inverse of your statement is actually the truth. With absolutely no application, mathematics would be absolutely nothing. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is exactly the essence of the formalist view:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_(philosophy_of_mathematics)

In the philosophy of mathematics, formalism is the view that holds that statements of mathematics and logic can be considered to be statements about the consequences of the manipulation of strings (alphanumeric sequences of symbols, usually as equations) using established manipulation rules. A central idea of formalism "is that mathematics is not a body of propositions representing an abstract sector of reality.

According to formalism, the truths expressed in logic and mathematics are not about numbers, sets, or triangles or any other coextensive subject matter — in fact, they aren't "about" anything at all.

In its anti-realist take, mathematics is indeed "about nothing". In its realist take, mathematics is about an abstract, Platonic universe that is completely divorced from the physical universe. In both cases, any downstream application of mathematics is completely irrelevant to mathematics itself. That is a feature and not a bug.

Correct. Kurt Godel said yes. David Hilbert said no. They both have arguments that are equally convincing. I consider the problem to be undecidable.

Applied mathematics is actually not mathematics.

As soon as it is about correspondence with the physical universe, it is about the use of mathematical language and other notions in physics, chemistry, engineering, or something else, in order to maintain consistency in the ideas being expressed.

Mathematics proper seeks to establish the correspondence between an abstraction and a Platonic universe -- when interpreted according to realism -- or between an abstraction and another abstraction -- when interpreted according to anti-realism. Mathematics proper is never about the physical universe.

In fact, I have also come to accept the alternative formalist view.

Since N can also be described as a set-theoretical construct, it is just another symbolic abstraction.

Let's not be mistaken. The Platonic ontology is very attractive. However, there is also no denying the formalist ontology: in the end, it is also just string manipulation. You do not need to see more in it. That is not mandatory at all.

So, if you want to accept N as a mathematically realist Platonic abstraction, it works. However, I have no counterargument to the idea that N can also be viewed as just abstract nonsense. I have no other choice than to accept that viewpoint as equally legitimate.

PA does not define N.

N is defined as a set-theoretical construct while PA is an axiomatic theory constructed as such that all its theorems turn out to be true in N but also in somewhat similar nonstandard models.

Actually, I have to agree to that.

Formalism is a very consistent idea.

Model theory can indeed be viewed as the correspondence between an axiomatic fiction and a set-theoretical one.

No matter how compelling the Platonic view, the formalist view always seems to be able to match and counter it.

While category theory is indeed "general abstract nonsense", model theory is the correspondence between two general forms of abstract nonsense.

Ok, I think that I finally have learned my lesson now. I will never try to defeat formalism again. Seriously, this was my last attempt.

I certainly do not believe that mathematics revolves around the correspondence with the physical universe. By "correspondentist", I actually mean: correspondence with a particular designated preexisting abstract Platonic world, such as the natural numbers.

Mathematical realism is about the independent existence of such Platonic universes.

If these Platonic universes do not even exist, why try to investigate the correspondence with a particular theory? It only makes sense if they do exist, independent of mathematics or any other theory.

Model theory truly believes that the natural numbers exist independently from mathematics or any of its theories.

Look for example at the relationship between Peano Arithmetic theory (PA) and the natural numbers (N).

PA does not create N.

N exists independently from PA. In model theory, PA is merely deemed to correctly describe N, while N is deemed to interpret PA.

So, N is a preexisting abstraction. The truth about N, called "true arithmetic", is also deemed to exist independently of any mathematical theory.

How else would you understand this approach, besides "correspondentist"?