Brinens and Things

[Mathematical Association of America; Wayback] (by Paul Lockhart; h/t nonanalogue)

I'm trying to figure out why this article bothers me, and then he keeps on putting words that are *almost* mine into the mouth of a punching bag and claiming to have debunked them, and I'm just left sputtering "but, but! lining things up into satisfying patterns! optimisation and making things *right*! the joy/flow of executing a procedure you are deeply familiar with and know will achieve your goal! the comfort of knowing that a method of achieving your goal exists even during times when you're struggling to reach it! that lovely feeling you get when you get a new math textbook and take a peek at the last chapter, and think 'within the next six months, I'm going to *understand* all of that jargon that flew over my head just now: I am going to take this new thing and grasp it, and I will be *more* than I am now'! *compound interest*, goddammit!!"

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He seems to *really* not want to be rounded off to just an instance of the relatively common theory-of-mind failure "my vocation is the Objective Best vocation and y'all are missing out on (possibly maliciously deprived of) how fucking amazing it is", but I still wonder how much of what's going on here is that [the kind of math he's singing the praises of] is simply the kind *he* likes best.

My discourse-o-meter pings this post as "moderate: post publicly on a non-viral medium". I think this is because the person immediately before me in the reblog chain is likely to respond well, but OP is probably hostile (and 28k notes is not *quite* enough to be confident that they've stopped paying attention).

[cw: discourse, ableism, arguably racism]


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