This is a casual PRACTICE RUN of my talk debunking vicious misinformation about math!
Math is not a robo-brained exercise in following rules, any more than art is about memorizing that BLUE + YELLOW = GREEN. Like art, math is inherently creative and driven by intuition. It can be subversive and has led to controversies and dangerous ideas.
You might call this "Austrian math," because I investigate how human values give meaning to mathematical concepts, similarly to how the "Austrian school" approaches economics.
3:13 the ancient Greek cult member martyred for the square root of two
11:08 the irrational mystery hiding in every square room
22:40 inadvertently embedding pi in the dimensions of the pyramids, "the banality of ratio" (not aliens)
36:20 Pythagoras' iPod
42:30 introducing "Perspective Shift," the intuitive math skill that no one talks about
50:42 the void: what's outside a finite universe?
55:14 money is the root of all zero
1:00:46 the monk who almost died for pi
1:14:11 how your intuition solves Zeno's infinite paradox on the first day of algebra class
1:32:11 a metal detector does not find the metal--YOUR INTUITION does
1:36:00 let's look at "shifting your perspective" FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
1:44:07 the Dark Side of rationality: intuition gone wild
1:53:48 the almost-holy equation of everything
1:55:02 experts accused Einstein of misinformation
2:01:39 Aristotle rationally deduces that men have more teeth than women
2:14:10 break the awareness loop, with an ORACLE?
2:26:28 Conclusion: memorize the rules, trust your FEELINGS
2:31:05 even the MATH FROG must be boiled slowly
Reply to my email or forum post where you saw this link.
Known issues:
* I'm very pleased with the intellectual content, though I'm aware the execution is quite mediocre.
* I hadn't looked at this talk in four years, so I'm pretty disorganized with copious umms and ya-knows and thinking out loud.
* I recorded this on the built-in microphones of two different laptops in three different settings and then cleaned up the audio in an editor. I eliminated the most irritating aspects but couldn't do much else. It probably sounds best on laptop speakers or cheap earbuds.
* The talk was written for a one-hour time slot but really requires an hour and a half. This run-through took me two and a half hours! Consider speeding it up using the control in the lower-right corner.
Thanks for watching!
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