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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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I’ve met some very high verbal IQ people who are terrible at math and I’m extremely unconvinced it’s actually genetic or unchangeable. I think it’s usually that they displayed great verbal ability at a young age, didn’t care about math, then never really cared to learn because they could always coast on their writing/verbal ability. If they truly needed it they could probably quickly become competent with a few hours a day of high-intensity tutoring for a short period.

I think it’s usually that they displayed great verbal ability at a young age, didn’t care about math, then never really cared to learn because they could always coast on their writing/verbal ability.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

For real life math applications - probably less than a day. Learn to know exponential functions, positive and negative feedback, some statistics and probability theory - that's it. All of those take one or two hours to grok at basic level. And with them you will be able to build useful mental model of almost anything.

While I think some people are limited in some fashion, I also think basic math is just taught in a horrible fashion.

The contrast between my econ and finance courses and the math courses I was required to take were like night and day.