Ze Frank on Complexity
Sorry for the delay today. I’ve been on the apartment hunting grounds. There will be a real post later tonight.
For now, today’s Best of Ze Frank calls back to last July. One good bit, linking this to the topics in play here:
Trying to understand the entirety of something before I started doing it or thinking about it became overwhelming.
Lots of people seem to experience this. When they fail to understand a small exception in eighth grade algebra, they spend the rest of their lives saying, “I’m not good at math.” Even the 1992 Teen Talk Barbie came with a prerecorded voice that said, “Math class is tough. Let’s go shopping!” The complicatedness of something can make people not want to do or think about it at all.
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Actually, the 1992 Teen Talk Barbie didn’t have the statement, “Math class is tough. Let’s go shopping!” in its memory. It did store the sentence “Math class is tough” and some vacuous statements like “Want to go shopping? Okay, meet me at the mall”, but they weren’t necessarily combined. “Math is hard, let’s go shopping” didn’t appear until 27 May 1994, in the USENET group soc.motss.
Take it up with Ze. I think his point holds true nonetheless. Consider the quote as a foma.