Math should be slave, not pope
I've given up arguing with "conservatives" on educational topics. They're stuck in a self-defeating war between old abstractions and new abstractions. They want students to memorize Cicero and Locke. They want students to memorize Euclid and Descartes.

This is the wrong argument. Students shouldn't be memorizing ANY abstract theories, new or old. Students should be learning how to USE math and politics, and at the same time learning how enemies MISUSE math and politics.

Bitcoin shit provides a perfect illustration of both at once.

Ethereum is a wildly obvious trick, a version of the old Spanish Prisoner swindle. You see the potential of a huge jackpot. The swindler runs you through a complicated set of hoops, involving a fake stageplay of good and evil elements. You're helping to defend the good side, but you know that you're also slightly outside the law, so you aren't going to call the cops. You pay and receive mysterious amounts to help the good side win. What you DON'T notice is that every transaction comes with a cost, and you don't get the cost back in the end.

Last week's "constitution" dodge is an ideal example of the sloshing and the hidden cost. Thousands of people contributed about $200 each, expecting to get the money back if the bid failed. Well, they can get the money back, but the 'gas fee' on each side of the transaction ranges from $75 to $100, arbitrarily changing all the time. The lucky ones might get $50 back; most will end up with nothing.

Aside from the swindle aspect, why in the fuck would anyone agree to ANY transaction that costs the same as the transaction? Non-crypto transactions typically cost about 3%, not an arbitrary huge amount.

It's clear that MATH IS POPE for these people. They don't know how math really works because they haven't used it yet for any real purposes like cooking or carpentry or sewing or sales clerking. They just know that math is infallible, and even worse the math embodied in the crypto is OFFICIALLY INFALLIBLE. You aren't allowed to read the scriptures and make your own interpretation. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

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The potential of computerized cheating was visible from the start. Sheldon Dansiger, writing in 1967, tried to remind programmers and trainers of the danger:

Before computers became part of the American way of life, there were countless occurrences of embezzlements and frauds done by hand. With the computer mystique now present, there is a strong indication that a day will come in the not-too-distant future when a new, sophisticated style of stealing will begin coming to light. What can we do about it?

Dansiger was a real auditor who had seen the tricks of embezzlers, and could also see how to computerize each of the tricks.

If students were learning math as a NATURAL TOOL of selling and buying and clerking, math would not be a mystique.

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Another DAO swindle would fail if people had learned the important parts of history.

Swindlers have organized a "new city" based on DAO code, and they've already crowdfunded a 40 acre piece of land in Wyoming. The land is barren and useless, just right for a utopian cult with no skills and no chance of success.

History is full of utopian projects. The cultists think they're blazing new trails in governance and religion and economics. In reality they're just losing their savings and wasting part of their life. The organizer always absconds with all of the money.

The Topolobampo Colony is a perfect example. Kansas Populists, persuaded that they were beating the banks and inventing a new way of life, flocked to Albert Owen's colony in a distant part of Mexico. Nothing happened. Owen got rich.

School history could help people to see this type of shit if it focused on scams and bubbles and utopias instead of battles and generals and "constitutions".

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Bitcoin is also venturing into "art", without inventing or creating anything at all.

NFTs are collages of real art. I only see one attempt at "creating" art. This NFT mixes the real photos in a pattern that was common in the earliest era of digital graphics around 1962: repetitive sinusoidal doodles. It doesn't even use the power of modern computers, let alone the imagination of a real artist.

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When math is taught as a NATURAL TOOL in the middle of real work, you can't be fooled by cheaters. When you're sewing or cooking or soldering, you use ANALOG measuring tools like cups and tapes and voltmeters. You constantly learn that measurement is ALWAYS APPROXIMATE, and you learn that the results of proportions and formulas can only be applied APPROXIMATELY.

Reality itself is infallible. Following math will lead you to cook inedible glop or sew a misfitted shirt or solder a fuse-blowing short. You need to be guided by reality at all times, keeping math down in the role of occasional servant.

Labels: Experiential education, MMT, Real World Math

  ¶ 10:44 PM