What is learning math good for? — Robert Kegan and “meaning-making” — Existentialism’s error — Narcissism and tyranny — How can we avoid radical relativism? — My experience of teaching
This is the video from my January 2025 monthly AMA (“Ask Me Anything”).
As a cine auteur, for previous AMA recordings, I have insisted on the director’s cut, editing both the video and text transcript carefully, out of respect for viewers, listeners, and readers.
The CFO of the studio, Nebulonic Media Productions Inc., put his foot down this time. It takes more than two full days for me—the creator and director of the thing!—to edit the hour’s recording. He says they can’t afford that anymore. They want efficiency, they want me to ship product, they want—blah, blah, blah, business-speak.
I am an artist, I said! No, he said, you are employed as a media professional, which means optimizing yadda yadda, and don’t you forget it.
So this is management’s cut. They made an intern run the video through “artificial intelligence,” and he pushed a couple buttons, and it cut out some “ums,” and it generated a transcript that bears nearly zero resemblance to what I said. It’s a travesty.
(Let me know what you think!)
Thanks to all who participated! And specifically to
, , , , , , , , and , for posing and/or helping answer questions.Sections
0:00
’s Reader’s Guide to David Chapman1:00 Evolving Ground book club: Pema Chödrön
3:23 What is learning math good for?
4:34 You can check many public claims with a little math
8:59 Learning what it means to be wrong lets you appreciate formal rationality
11:50 Mathematics is the ideological basis for the modern world
16:43 How does meaningness differ from meaning-making?
19:24 Robert Kegan and "meaning-making" in educational theory
21:28 Existentialism's error: subjective theories of meaning
26:07 We can't be special. We shouldn't be ordinary. We can be noble.
30:35 Heidegger, authenticity, and being-toward-death
35:38 How can we avoid radical relativism?
47:02 The meaningfulness of programs, programming languages, and programming paradigms
52:47 Hope for more sensible governance
54:19 Approaching Vividness: new course, now in beta
56:15 My experience of teaching: thank you!
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