[ljhsiung]

> The second argument is the one I always hear around the mathematics department: mathematics helps you to think clearly. I have a very low opinion of this self-serving nonsense. In sports there is the concept of the specificity of skills: if you want to improve your racquetball game, don’t practice squash! I believe the same holds true for intellectual skills. In any case, the case for transference of mathematical skills is unsettled.

Directly from the article.

[epgui]

So in other words, his case against the higher order of mathematics is:

- He doesn't have a high opinion of it

- He makes a vague allusion to some unspecified conflict of interest (?!)

- He argues that first-order skill development is most effective (which may be true, but misses the point).

- He says that higher order value of mathematics is "unsettled".

As he is defending a fundamentally anti-intellectual position, I'm going to need a little more than that.

[barry-cotter]

You keep on assuming your conclusion and name calling and acting like you’ve made an argument.

I’m sure the author has a high opinion of mathematics as an intellectual pursuit. He is a Math professor. That’s separate from his argument, that it has very limited practical use, even to most engineers and others you would assume would be highly selected for finding it useful.

If Mathematics was enormously useful for teaching argument and precise thought in a reliable way Economics would have eaten all the other social sciences already. Economists know far more Math than the others. Math is uncommonly useful but if it was that good at teaching people how to think, if the transfer of learning argument was true, it would not need to be argued. It b would be bloody obvious.

[epgui]

Please point to me exactly where I did any name calling.

There's this thing called the burden of proof, in philosophy. When you take a difficult position, you must displace this burden. The author has not done so, and it is not my responsibility to show how he is wrong: he has not shown how he is correct.

[barry-cotter]

> Please point to me exactly where I did any name calling.

Anti-intellectual. You keep on saying that the author is anti-intellectual for denigrating the practical value of Math.

[epgui]

Allow me to clarify: I do not mean to say that the author is an anti-intellectual person. I have read nothing else that he has written, and I do not know him.

What I am saying (or at least what I intend to say) is that he is defending an anti-intellectualist idea/position, which is just a fact by definition.

[barry-cotter]

> What I am saying (or at least what I intend to say) is that he is defending an anti-intellectualist idea/position, which is just a fact by definition.

Saying something is of limited practical value is not an anti-intellectual position. I do not think most people get any practical value out of the chemistry or physics they learn in school.

[ouid]

The transference of mathematical skill is only "unsettled" in the sense that it is unclear what would it would be transferred to. It is already an entire epistemological category. How much more transference is required?

[epgui]

“It is already an entire epistemological category.”

Very eloquent phrase, I’m going to steal this!