[trouble]

I was about 27 when I realised what = means. I'd always just kinda taken it to indicate something more like "and then". So 2 + 3 and then you have 5. It blew my mind to understand that = means that what's on each side of the equation is the same, just written differently. I had this epiphany after I finished an MSc. My childhood was somewhat math deficient.

[dinkleberg]

It's amazing how similar we all are and yet can have such drastically different understandings of the world.

I suppose we must all take for granted the ideas we've lived with that we perceive as knowledge. To me it is mind boggling to not see = as equivalence, but that is the way with understandings formed long ago.

[YesMilord]

An anecdote to give you an idea of a different way of thinking. When I was very young I didn't have any friends and played a lot of games, including quite a few with map builders like warcraft 3 and age of mythology. This was a very early taste of programming.

Because of this however, when we got to learning about equations in school, I already had a more procedural idea of how things work. If I do 2 + 3, something gives me 5. This way of thinking was pretty good for algebraic problems but absolutely demolished my understanding of geometry.I only managed to get over it and understand equivalences in my third year of engineering school because I was doing terrible in the courses.

I'm pretty sure our way of thinking is extremely affected by our early lives and how our young brains optimized themselves to solve ever increasing challenges