Knowledge is not the same as understanding

From tonight’s episode of On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti, “AI is steamrolling through math. Why does that matter?”:

Francis Su is a math professor at Harvey Mudd College in California and a former president of the Mathematics Association of America. He says math is more than just those numbers, equations, and variables. It is also a set of virtues.

SU: It's a set of character qualities, habits of mind, dispositions that enable you to live in the world with joy and wonder and awe and responsibility. If we lose sight of that, then of course people are going to have this idea that math is just calculation, and I don't want people to think of math that way, right? Math is more than that. Math is understanding. That's the whole reason anybody's ever been involved in the mathematical pursuits, to try to deeply understand things, and we can't cede that to AI.

Steven Strogatz: “What's going to be lost is, yes, human creativity, but what's also going to be lost is something like dignity. And what Francis Su is talking about is that struggle makes us better. We learn how to, we learn how to be better people in our lives.”

Chakrabarti, Su, and Strongatz are discussing the recent Open AI dump of hundreds of solutions to unsolvable mathematics problems, including a millenium question.And, yes, the math world is shook, and yes, it is sparking conversation of the point of problem solving, and what’s lost when we simply are given the answer, much like Icarus being simply given a set of working wings, without any real understanding of what he has. (This is why Daedalus is the example of hubris, not Icarus, but I digress.)

I remember when Big Blue played a chess match against Kasparov and won over 25 years ago. 

Back then, computers and the idea of artificial intelligence was wowing the socks off us, but this match left me sad. I didn’t think that there was a point to having “solved” chess, because the point of chess is to play a problem that is co-constructed by the two players. The solution isn’t the point, which is why it’s preposterous to conceive of a game-as-such between two wildly mismatched opponents. 

Yes, it was neat to watch the first match, and, in many ways, the computer scientists were taking thinking about—and playing—chess into new directions. But there is no mastery per se in a solution. What makes chess fun is the ways in which imagination of strategy plays out on a literal board, not the moment that a king is toppled. 

Chess is, at its heart, imagination at play, and not calculus of memorized moves. This is why, despite an updated Big Blue winning the rematch against Kasparov, people still play chess. 

Thoughts on All the Things You’re Not Allowed to Say in Texas

“ Many, unsure of what might trigger the bot, told me that they had private conversations with administrators who told them to simply self-censor and remove materials from their courses in advance, so as not to draw the wrath of leadership or lawmakers.”*

Self-censorship, and the fear that drives it, seems to be the goal of much of the educational legislation in the last five years or so. Revamping control over the curriculum is widespread, certainly not limited to Texas or to higher education. “ Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children,” President Trump declared in 2019. Since then, the political machine has taken aim at education in efforts unprecedented in both pace and scope; not even the McCarthy era’s fear-mongering took aim at libraries, schools, and Universities. 

Legislation in Texas has inserted the state into governance over materials in public schools and universities, stripping educators of their roles in governance and replacing faculty with politicians as decision-makers. Serwer investigates how AI is being put to use in curriculum review in Texas’ state universities, but AI is certainly not the only new facet to sidelined educators, nor is it the largest problem. The idea that the state can and should control curriculum over and above educators is the definition of state-controlled education. The whole process is predicated on the notion that education, educators, and even ideas, are dangerous, and that there should be controls to protect us from being exposed to them. 

The creation of state-controlled education is totalitarian, authoritarian, and antithetical to the ideas and ways of freedom. Education is not about limiting investigation, and certainly not about making inquiry itself submit to a stamp of State approval.

Investigation is the path of knowledge.

Out of knowledge comes choice.

Out of choice comes agency.

Out of agency comes freedom.

Home Comforts

Geo And I are nearly recovered from a week-long illness, but we’re still only operating at about 75% of full power. We’re emotionally tender, and that calls for a bit of home comfort. 

Today that looks like knitting and filling the house with home-baked goodness.

I’m casting on a new blanket in a deep, rich brown—Purl SoHo’s Knitting Wool in Peat Bog—while a fresh batch of whole-grain mustard matures on the counter and the dough for butter rolls rises. 

We rarely eat the rolls before they go stale, since they only last a day or two, and I might take half the batch to a friend, or I might divide the dough for fresh cinnamon sugar donut twists. 

When Life Imitates Art

I’m reading Sunrise on the Reaping, and in theory book, a train porter just brought in a tray of sandwiches, each one “loaded with a day’s wages of meat—fresh ham or roast beef or chicken cut thin and piled high.” The point of this passage is to show the constant calculus of poverty and the food insecurity it creates, part of the fabric of control that inequality weaves around the second-class citizens of the districts. 

But as I read the line, it hit me that this isn’t too far-fetched just now. 

Happy Labor Day.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

The Struggle is Real

Has anyone written an essay about the persistence of poverty, and the struggle against it, continues to be compelling in literature over the last two centuries? From Charles Dickens to Suzanne Collins, we continue to gobble up literature that shows all classes struggling, even the upper classes treading water to keep up appearances. I love literature that moves beyond the coin to show other social monsters that we fight—Frankenstein, for instance, or Fahrenheit 451 or The Handmaid’s Tale or  The Gate to Women’s Country. But the struggle for survival is so pervasive, and so tenuous, that when we encounter a tale in which it no longer exists, we call it science fiction (and thank you, Gene Roddenberry). 

Anyway, the local cinema is showing The Hunger Games collection, one movie each night over the holiday weekend, and of course Geo and I are attending. 

The Nixon Pardon Was a Death Knell

The basic tenet of democracy is that no one is above the law. This is the bedrock upon which all other democratic ideals and lofty aims is built. 

The United States of America heard the death knell of democracy on the day that Ford pardoned Nixon. On that day, the fact that those in power would not be held accountable was on full display, and there was no outrage. 

The US is failing the test of basic kindergarten:

Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal. 

If it’s not yours, don’t touch it.

Be respectful, and whenever possible, be kind.

A kindergarten teacher, fed up with the incessant tattletale activities of her students, installed a phone in the coat closet just for the children to report the infractions that they saw. It worked amazingly. Children reported pulled hair, lunch money infractions, being late, saying mean things, everything that you would expect. They tattled on their parents as well as on each other. This, in so many ways, is the epitome of democracy: reporting an infraction, regardless of the status of the offender, expecting that the rule of law will swoop down and have its say, setting everything to rights. Children have an unerring sense of fairness. But this is not about Rawls.

The experiment worked until it suddenly didn’t. 

It didn’t take long for children to notice that nothing was coming of their reports. Not for wearing un ugly outfit or for pulling hair. Not for their parents or adults, and not for the children. When this anticipated accountability failed to materialize, the children’s participation waned and then disappeared altogether. The children had given up. 

The Nixon pardon stands out, but it is far from the only instance of those in power in the US slipping free from accountability. What makes it so distinct in my mind is the lack of outrage. Everyday adults—not only just the cronies of the perpetrator—took the pardon in stride, defended it even, as simply what one would expect. This was presented as sincere, a genuine belief that this pardoning of corruption was defensible and ought to be done, not merely expected. Impeachment, the highest crime in the land against an elected official, would simply and predictably be pardoned by his successor.

Today, we are faced with rampant corruption, and at times there seems to be outrage, but more than anything there is a thread of cynicism, a shrugging dismissal as though to say It’s all unfair; what are you going to do? 

This stance of political powerlessness by the citizenry is the antithesis of democracy.

Saturday, July 5

Out our window this evening, a thunderstorm has rolled through once again, this time with enough rain to lift my spirits. Today was hot-but-not-blistering, a perfect summer day. We met with a friend for breakfast, then ran pre-Scotland errands and grabbed a perfect lunch downtown before going to see Supergirl at the Grandin. Huzzah for summer—the last six weeks have been nothing short of excellent for our peace of mind. I think the burnout is finally starting to recede for real, and we have a peaceful, easy feeling.

After the movie, I tended to dog sitting things and thought about reading, but mostly just rested through the afternoon and evening. Geo is simply the best, and I feel blessed to get to spend this summer together. As we were wrapping up at lunch, I said “I love our downtown life,” and he heartily agreed. 

The Scotland Packing is proceeding apace. We have a couple last-minute small items to pick up tomorrow afternoon after I get back from dog sitting and then a trip to the library to print a couple documents I’ll need this week. 

The qualifying exam looms on the horizon beginning this Fall, but I’m letting myself enjoy every last minute of this summer break. Thank you, Universe.