On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 14:34:39 -0700
Syeed Ali <syeedali@???> wrote:

> On Tue, 19 Mar 2024 13:09:57 -0400
> Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:
>
> > I'm re-learning pre-calculus online, and an advertisement came on
> > saying something like:
> >
> > "Still searching Youtube for math help and finding nothing except
> > videos from 2006?
>
> A lot of technical people like yourself have a valid conservative view
> on abandoning the old, preferring cautious and iterative improvements on
> what is well-proved. However, it's also valid to believe the
> opposite: That things can be incautiously improved upon.
>
> Aged mathematics YouTube videos is an honest concern, and it has
> nothing to do with mathematics itself. Video production has moved on
> since 2006. Contemporary resolution and technique are far superior.
> Sure you can get classic explanations with great presentation which
> stand the test of time, as with good lectures with blackboards, but
> it's possible to improve on and even obsolete the old.
Hi,
But it is not possible to reinvent a rounder wheel once you made it round
and the decreasing of IQ in the population in the last years shows us at least one thing
that all the revolutions in the education systems did not bring the expected
improvements (be it the removal of numerical valuations or the use of quiz
like examinations or the use of digital equipment as consumers [not creators!!!]
of digital content or the use of printers rather than paper and pencils).

>
> To say it in reverse:
>
> Yes you can learn math from 1800s handwritten ink on paper in cursive,
> but at some point you have to allow for improvement somewhere. It's
> still also true that technology and innovation can be a crutch or form
> of premature/unnecessary "optimization".

Especially if the "innovation" is driven by ideological reasons or by economic
interests most of the times the results are worse than expected.

>
> That particular ad was speaking to a whole generation of people who
> view "the now" as disposable and you correctly sense a problem with
> that. I think the advertisers are just tapping into that market, and
> you have good defenses against that manipulation.
>

This is just the same old story of viewing the "now" as disposable until
you yourself became the disposable "now" of somebody else.

Good night,
Tito