[dghlsakjg]

I disagree. There is no such thing as a societal oversupply of educated people. There might be a market oversupply, but a well educated society is a stupid thing to avoid. I would also argue that we are seeing an oversupply of people with education credentials, rather than an education. Even in high end universities in China cheating is rampant (this isn't isolated to China, but my experience is that Chinese students are VERY open about it). For many people in University, the goal isn't to get an education, it is to get a degree.

As to my own experience: I am, according to most standardized tests, very apt at quantitative reasoning, but I never progressed far in math in school. Why? because I was placed on the standard track in math in a public school with a bunch of students who didn't care, and teachers who didn't have time to care, and to be honest, the attitude rubbed off. I once got in trouble because I programmed a python script to do my problem sets when I was 13 because it was faster than doing it by hand for me. In retrospect, that form of "cheating" was a sign that my teachers should have picked up on.

Quite simply, I never had access to a good math instructor throughout my schooling.

Now, decades later, I am intensely interested in a lot of subjects that require a background in math that I don't have, and I am becoming interested in Math for Math's sake. I have been using open access textbooks, and an AI assistant of my own creation to help me learn.

[deeznuttynutz]

I'm similar to you in many regards. I had no desire to learn math early in school due to the education system, how it is taught and lack of meaning for math portrayed early on. I coasted through high school like a zombie without meaning until 11th grade when I took Physics. Suddenly everything clicked, I magically became good at math despite not performing well at it before in my math classes. I ended up studying engineering and working in the EV industry. Now, I am studying pure math for the sake of my own curiosity and I'm passionate about developing AI tools to help people learn and see the why behind math as early as possible. I think I would have accomplished much more if I was exposed to Physics in elementary or middle school or at least a "History of Math" philosophy based class.

[endisneigh]

> I disagree. There is no such thing as a societal oversupply of educated people.

I disagree with this assessment. You don’t need everyone to have a phd. There’s education and there’s Education. With respect to the article, sure it’s great if everyone is good at math, but not everyone needs a math PhD. Additionally there are diminishing returns on the time spent learning more and more math vs. other things.

In any case there have already been tons of math resources available for a while now.

A better example would be chemistry. Should everyone be spending time learning chemistry, why or why not?

Intellectual obesity is a thing - simply knowing more things isn’t inherently useful.

[dghlsakjg]

The rest of my comment mostly agrees with that. I highlighted that there is an overage of people with degrees rather than actual education.

> In any case there have already been tons of math resources available for a while now.

That's great if you have the ability to learn everything from a static resource, and have the time to wait for asynchronous guidance. But what if you just sort of get it, but there is no one that can explain the parts you don't get? I've been to places where the educational standards are low enough that making change from a payment was an impossible task without a calculator. A keen student in that particular village has no one they can easily ask about math when they hit a sticking point.

> Intellectual obesity is a thing - simply knowing more things isn’t inherently useful.

I don't disagree for extreme cases, but creating more resources for people to learn has an incredible payoff, and is almost certainly morally right. Erring on the side of overeducated rarely turns out poorly at the societal, or personal level. Across the world, more highly educated societies tend to be better off across most QOL metrics. I'm well aware that there are anecdotal counterexamples of math PHDs living off of ramen. But there's a damn good reason that brain drain is a concern in many places, and other places favour immigration candidates with higher education.

[nathan_compton]

Usefulness isn't the end all and be all of the human condition. In fact, I'd argue that the only reason we care about useful things is because of the non-useful things.

[lupire]

It's complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction

Also, writing a computer program because you are slow at solving math problems is a sign that you may need more math practice. It's not like you were handing my in your homework with solutions your wrote for harder problems that you wrote.

[dghlsakjg]

Elite overproduction theory deals with class and power. The linking of education with power and class isn't inherent, and is a very modern phenomenon. There have been plenty of stupid, uneducated, yet powerful elites. In other historical periods elite membership was more related to heritage, or physical fighting abilities.

> Also, writing a computer program because you are slow at solving math problems is a sign that you may need more math practice.

I didn't say I was slow, I just realized Python was faster than doing the same boring problem with different numbers. I seriously doubt there are people that can do high school level math faster than a computer at any level.

In retrospect a 13 year old knowing the problem area and programming well enough to get a computer to do their homework was a sign of mastery and boredom rather than a need for more practice. You can't get a python script to do your algebra homework without a pretty good understanding of the subject. So much so that in later math courses you are required to buy a programmable calculator to avoid wasting your time on the basic and tedious parts of math problems.

[nathan_compton]

I think evidence for disgruntled failed elites is pretty thin on the ground.