site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   29676 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

No indexed sequences, even? Was it all category theory?

Always has been.

Ah, there were indexed sequences, you are right about that. It was a highly complex Abstract Algebra course, but there were sequences of Ideals.

Maybe I should change my claim to "did not use numbers for any purpose beyond kindergarten counting".

Still sounds suspect. No explicit examples worked out all semester?

I was a math major, and I don't find this suspect at all. Beyond 100-level courses, college math is primarily about logic, often applied to numbers, but also often applied to non-numbers. It would be entirely reasonable for a full semester of a class not to involve any engagement with numbers beyond the kind of basic everyday stuff, and explicit examples would be irrelevant, because those examples wouldn't involve numbers anyway. A majority of college-level math is writing essays.

However, on that note, I would say that I disagree with the notion that this would make math, or certain types of math, a verbal field. The fact that it's primarily about writing essays doesn't make it verbal, because the essays are based around rigorous rules of logic, which is what makes it a quant field, rather than a verbal field where such rules just don't matter.

Probably the class that stood out to me the most as having basically zero concrete examples that cash out on the level of actual numerals was differentiable manifolds. Who the hell wants to actually describe any concrete examples of those objects all the way down to the level of numerals?! That just sounds painful. I mean, maybe there was like one simple example of a problem on a torus way back in the introduction part of the course, just to give a nod to the idea that one could go get at real problems, but I actually don't remember anything other than like, "Oh, here is an example of how the state space of a dynamical system could be represented as a torus or a cylinder, or..." but stopping short of actually solving any particular problem on them.

I believe him. For tertiary math education the actual numbers are mostly irrelevant. Consequently the undergrads/profs don't bother and just use "some constant C" or in the rare occasions numbers mostly < 10 or 100.

There were, but I don't remember numbers being used, Just stuff like Z to represent the integers with x,y elements of z, never explicitly saying x = 12, z = 25 or whatever.

Replying here only to avoid unnecessary duplication.

I'm a doctoral student in pure math. The reason I have a hard time believing it is that there was computation in the same courses described. A few that come to mind:

Ring theory: primary decomposition of ideals. Of course it's defined abstractly, but pretty much any concrete exercise would involve ideals of finitely generated polynomial rings and required computation.

Differentiable manifolds: Early on, we worked out a formula for stereographic projection and its inverse. Lots of other examples in low-dimensional spaces.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats