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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   38610 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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At some point I hope to make an effortpost about innumeracy, and how people who work with numbers are grossly overestimating the ability of the average person. This old Unz post really stuck with me. The example Level 3 question is literally read a table and pick the smallest number in the appropriate row. Back in 2012 less than half of 15-16 year olds in the USA were able to answer a Level 3 question correctly. I'm a numbers guy, and I really struggle to imagine the perspective of someone unable to do that. And that's half the American population (perhaps a little less, as some people could learn with age)!

wanyeburkett's thread you linked makes a similar/related point. patio11 has some good insights. There's also a good discussion to be had about whether giving these innumerate people an LLM that can understand numbers and complex processes for them is good solution or if that would just encourage more complexity.

While I find Patrick Mackenzie’s writing very insightful sometimes, he also really makes me question if I am as competent in English as I think so. Sometimes I just really can’t parse the guys sentences

The example Level 3 question is literally read a table and pick the smallest number in the appropriate row. Back in 2012 less than half of 15-16 year olds in the USA were able to answer a Level 3 question correctly.

I straight up don't believe the figures for the number of people correctly solving those PISA questions given by that Unz post. If half of US adults didn't agree on which numbers were bigger than others I think there'd be much bigger societal problems than the ones America currently has to deal with.

I have no opinion whether Anatoly Karlin is correct or not, but what sort of problems are you imagining?

How about multiple levels of Verizon customer support not being able to tell the difference between 0.002 dollars and 0.002 cents? The discussion somehow reminded me of this ancient saga: https://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html

Decimals upend people's naïve understanding that "more digits equals bigger number". My 6 year old still gets that confused sometimes.

That's actually a really helpful perspective for me. Funny enough, I had the following conversation with my 6 year old this morning:

Son: I like your new tattoo. Kids like tattoos.
Me: Well this is a permanent tattoo. You can only get temporary tattoos until you're 18.
Son: I'll do that! Will you drive me?
Me: When you're 18, you can drive yourself.
Son: I could drive?
Me: Yes, but you'll need your own car, and they're expensive.
Son: How much does a car cost?
Me: $10,000. You'll have to save up!
Son: I'm going to count my money now. gets his cash box where he keeps his allowance, and spends the next 5 minutes counting out the $45 he has in there

He has no concept of the difference in scale between the $10,000 and the $45 he has. He was counting it, and if he got to $10,000 then he would get a car. He didn't this time, so he needs to keep saving. I find his focus, sincerity, and innocence sweet for a 6 year old. I'd find that level of numeracy terrifying in a 16 year old, but apparently that's where half of all Americans are. "My 6 year old's understanding of numbers" is a theory of mind I can grasp.

That story and analogy reminds me of something a coworker of mine once said while we were talking about some random recent news about a lottery winner who went bankrupt. His theory was that, for the lottery winner in question, the millions of dollars she got was equivalent to infinite money. She had no sense that even 7 or 8 figures can disappear, and disappear quickly if you throw around 6 and 7 figures here and there with abandon, because in her mind, no amount of spending could affect the infinite money that she had. It didn't occur to me at the time that that's similar to how a 6 year old might think of numbers and money, but it does sound about right. And I'd expect more people who think like this to be common in the population of regular lottery ticket buyers.

First Law of Munchkinism: Any finite number can be reduced to zero.

I work in the gambling industry, and having seen more than my fair share of 'man deposits $1k, runs it up to $1.5M, ends up in the negatives' I think it's a fundamental truism that the sort of person who gambles sufficiently to win the lottery tends to be the sort of person who is going to be then gamble that money.

This goes for venture capital and the like.

Also in the above case I'd probably expect it'd be more a product of taxes/ongoing costs of shiny new things/investment ideas than strictly burning a huge lottery jackpot on 'lifestyle expenses'

I'm sure that 1) this guy lost a big chunk to taxes and 2) made some bad investments, but I think he also had some relatives he didn't know he had hitting him up to get bailed out/have their college paid for, and he just said yes every time because he had no concept of an eight figure amount of money not being infinite.

I agree that it was probably not Maseratis and strippers doing most of the damage.

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