Math vs IQ, Science & Religion, Matriarching, Tech — an interview with @MamanLunettes
or: no, you're not too stupid for high-school math, science & religion are not at odds, and kids need to be taken seriously
@MamanLunettes aka Violeta is a beloved twitter poaster, a matriarch, a math aesthete & educator, and a Person in Tech. We discuss all of these, and more, below.
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Frequently repeating Discourse is that math, especially after a certain level, is only accessible to those above a certain IQ? What say you? What’s your stance on innate vs learned skill?
Violeta:
I say No: math up to Calculus and Linear Algebra is accessible – as far as ability is concerned – to pretty much everyone who’s made it past middle school. Which, of course, is not literally everyone, but it’s by no means only the domain of the cognitive elite, whatever that means (I’ll come back later to how I think this group maps to the high IQ crowd).
I do believe in innate skill/talent but advanced high-school math ain’t it: it’s more a form of literacy (I like to call it matheracy) that is pretty mid to learn. Correct sequencing, clarity in explanations, enough repetition of classes of problems is what’s needed and what’s generally lacking in schools today. And, like for everything else, cultivated curiosity and confidence in oneself (also something schools notoriously suck at). None of these are trivial to achieve and I have thoughts on how to – and I practice them – but they have nothing to do with kids being able to. Now, competitive math (olympiad style) or, for example, Real Analysis, or research math are different beasts, it’s almost like a whole other domain, that yes, you need to be extremely talented to master, and for which, guess what, IQ testing is pretty useless, too. Such great talent is often missed in really gifted kids exactly because they didn’t even get to try mid-level math, which often is the track via which kids even get access to the creative, interesting math, although it is not necessarily the only possible way.
A few qualifiers for my thesis:
I state this not from deep under the curse of knowledge - i.e., thinking that because I am talented in math, it comes just as easy to everyone else. I both learned together with, and taught many kids who I can tell were less talented, yet they could all handle algebra, or calculus.
This is not to say that everyone should learn math, maybe they shouldn’t, they could do just fine, and lead creative and productive artistic or intellectual lives without math.
I do think that math is beautiful and worthwhile to have in one’s life for aesthetic reasons – even the mid-level one – and this is where I’m biased in my tastes: I believe even algebra is soulcraft.
*IQ testing is pretty much useless: it predicts incompetence - scatterplot groups neatly by a line - but falls flat for competence; overall, because of this piece-wise distribution giving the illusion of high correlation. But to tell about low cognitive ability you could also use a simple sorting task, while for high competence domain-specific tests, such as those related to business or math, are better at measuring success. The idea that IQ tests are useful for pattern recognition in real life is misguided, imo: we know what pattern overfitting can do to an individual (or a society).
[*this last paragraph is a ChatGPT summary of my thread here]
Orpheo:
I endorse the above — ime, I have seen many “stupid”, math-illiterate kids in school, grow up to learn to love, and become quite good, at math, later on in life and given different learning environments.
What does public education get wrong about kids/young humans in general?
Violeta:
Kids need to move often, go out in the sun, they need human touch and lots of laughs. They need play. They need to be free, no less than adults do. They need to be taken seriously, respected. They need thaumazein. Few schools succeed, and only partly, at this.
I think all of this may be mainstream-held views among your readership, or tpot. Here’s a take that’s maybe less popular: kids are ok with accepting intellectual, epistemological authority, they even crave it in adults that manage to earn their trust. This is conditional upon the adult having and exhibiting competence, but also on the overt – always there – possibility of leveling up to, or above, their master’s level. And all kids can sense this naturally. The boost in confidence when kids experience such meritocratic leaps in epistemological status is close to nothing I’ve seen or tried. It’s the framework that works best even for safe failing: you’re an apprentice, errors are not only fine, they’re meaningful. I wrote a thread here about this.
Orpheo:
It’s funny — kids are very capable of telling whether you are taking them seriously or not, and will react/communicate with you accordingly. I feel that kids, more than anyone, appreciate people that talk to them with the intention of *thinking* & *exploring* together, not the ones that just talk to them like they’re imparting the World’s One Truth.
What are the core principles around which you’ve strived to raise your kids? In hindsight, what’s one thing you’d change about how you’ve been raising your kids?
Violeta:
Zero fault in telling the truth is, I feel, one that works well for us and gets us out of trouble and difficult trials. Figuring out the intricate framework to operationalize this principle in daily life is a hard and ongoing process. My husband is who I look up to for guidance here when in doubt: he always, since I met him, was able to walk the fine line of being truthful *and* kind – intelligently, generously.
Another one is, I always, *always* have their backs, even if they fuck up. And they know this, and many times shared just how safe this makes them feel. I believe them over anyone else, is the default, and we work from there, not the other way around.
Keeping them alive is a simple, crucial one: it’s what I tell them, e.g., when I leave them alone at the ski slope: “Don’t die, please” (and don’t talk to the cops).
I wish I had started home-schooling them earlier. It’s not the confidence in myself at being able to do it that I lacked as much as not trusting them enough when they told me they stopped liking school. My approach was more to support them and equip them for the hardships of school, when I think the better way would have been simply to not deal with it altogether.
Orpheo:
Based.
Favorite book?
Violeta:
This is difficult, I don’t have one, I’m 99 percentile in openness, highly susceptible to being passionate, obsessed, cult-like about different stuff at different times. I had a couple years of obsession with the New Testament when I was about 5, it was the first book I picked up because I liked the scritta paper quality, but then I joined a neighbor’s pentecostal Bible study group (and dressed modestly!), because my family just laughed at me with the Book, affectionately. I still like it. Amongst my most recent favorite reads are Rebecca Goldstein’s both fiction and non-fiction works (36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction and Incompleteness) and Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures, Spivak’s Calculus and Walter Rudin’s Real and Complex Analysis are delightful classics. I witness my different hermeneutics decades later re-reading Dostoyevsky with my daughter, which is fulfilling. I read Lucian Blaga’s poetry all the time, his complete poetry works never leave my bedside. My favorite is At the Courtyard of Yearning.
Science & Religion — are these two at odds?
Violeta:
You’re not making me answer this in one paragraph/one blog post, Orpheo. But I guess if I can write a tweet smugly expressing all of my philosophy about e.g., marriage or teaching algebra, I can give it a try.
No, they are not at odds – there are layers, duh. And yes, in some strict textbook-defined sense, they are. Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from religion, loosely speaking though. As far as I’m concerned there’s something godly in Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, where he proves the limits of formal systems in mathematics. Conversely, there’s something very algorithmic to Bible stories, with almost like a natural science, more than normative, flavor to them: like, if you do that, this will happen. I find these algorithms particularly useful in real-life pattern matching and action prompting.
Orpheo:
I just go with “i guess Galileo, Bayes, Riemann, Gödel, Dyson, etc., etc., were either not scientists or not religious”
In the past you’ve worked with Roam Research, now with Interintellect. How did you get into the startup world?
Violeta:
I got all my work in the startup world by tweeting, being curious, and making friends, which is pretty wild because I’m otherwise a first-generation immigrant, suburban mom (ok, ok, suburban queen). Really liking people I end up working or hanging out with is my little secret in life. Read: I manifest it.
Roam basically revived the interest in the tools for thought/PKM category, but has seemed to have lost its headstart. Can they rekindle their original energy and vigor?
Violeta:
Oh yes, although a lot has changed in the world of tools for thought, accelerating. E.g., as recently as 2020 I was teaching my kids how to break text down, using Roam, into semantic and syntactic units of knowledge to mix and match and build on, and now ChatGPT can do that seamlessly if you talk to it right. And I don’t know that the AI rise takes away from learning, although I’m still mulling over the ways in which the experience of taking notes, especially domain-specific, changes. I think it’s fine – and even indicated – to spend time to question it all at the most fundamental level, in the words of philosopher Visa: start your day by asking, in all seriousness, What the fuck?. And by this, I mean, questioning even the definition of learning or personal knowledge. But I digress, re: Roam: I think if they do their “it’s so over” to “we’re so back” arc right, the vigor and spark are there to have a big-time re-birth. The Roam community, aka Roamcult is one of the most interesting, curious, fun, truly diverse crowds I’ve ever been part of. I made lifelong friends in it, which I read as a strong signal there’s something big animating it.
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