After starting to study math, I've realized 99% of the human

>>7978448
wow OP you're such a genius i doubt anyone will be capable of understanding your pain

i hope you're enjoying calc I

>>7978448
>99% of the human population is completely incapable of making any logically coherent argument.

[citation needed]

>>7978452
he's not entirely wrong, most people lack real critical thinking skills.. probably not 99% in any case, but still

what OP fails to realize is ANYONE can develop them, save for the truly mentally retarded

>>7978456
I never claimed they can't develop them. I strongly implied they aren't just what you're born with by saying "after studying math".

>>7978448
Making arguments based on facts and research is hard work, and doesn't serve a quick debate very well without having previously memorized relevant information (which can be hard if you don't know exactly what information to research beforehand). It's easier to argue based on emotion and assumptions that sound reasonable enough, or evoke a desired response. Why prove yourself right when you can just "prove" the other guy less right than you? It's pretty self explanatory, OP.

>>7978457
they way you stated it made you sound like a pretentious fedoralord, as indicated by the other responses to your post

The other day i was buying sliced meat at the deli and i ordered 3/4 lbs of meat. I had to tell the clerk what that was in decimals because she honestly didn't know what value to go to on the digital scale. She was in her 30s. How the fuck do live that long and don't understand what quarters are in decimals?

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>>7978468
They were right
>mfw trigonometry gets btfo
>mfw a glorious poetry major

>>7978468
To be fair, there's a decent chance that the clerk does what a good amount of people that work menial jobs do (at least in my experience), and "turned their brain off." By which I mean completely stopped paying attention to anything that wasn't rote daily motions, therefore succumbing to what is colloquially known as a brain fart.

>>7978448
OP has a point. I find on /sci/ it often takes longer to decipher a question than to answer it.

>>7978501
That's not true. For example if I asked if 0.9...=1 then sci would, in unison, obviously deny such a ludicrous statement.

>After starting to study math, I've realized 99% of the human population is completely incapable of making any logically coherent argument.
I found this to be true as well. It takes one course in mathematical analysis to have a framework and a mindset for discarding most of what anyone says.

99% is way too harsh, if I had to cut down the plebs by % I'd say

33% stupid, annoying dumbasses
33% standard normies, can be pretty cool to hang around occasionally but nothing too spectacular
17% really interesting people with a passion I don't share so I sadly can't really relate to them
17% really interesting people that share at least one of my passion.

Needless to say I'm in the top 0.1%.

I'm a bartender with a minimum wage and I don't even understand what a logarithm does.

>>7978448
It hasn't really been necessary for the primary mass of the population to possess that trait for the entirety of our evolutionary history. It is nothing short of miraculous that any of us has the ability to learn.

>>7978556
Why do most people have such a hard time with logs? It's literally basic arithmetic.

>>7978535
I'm sad that it takes maths to begin with.
All adults should be capable of smelling the shit in newspaper articles, for example.

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>>7978448
>>7978535
>mfw freshmen get a good grade in a class and think they're hot shit geniuses

Read some Kant and you'll see what a logically coherent argument looks like.

99% of people are idiots, but math has nothing to do with ascending idiocy.

Math especially fails to teach you how to make an argument. You should read more before you get on a high horse and spout shit. Sad!

>>7978556
2 to power of 3 equals 8
3 is the logarithm of 8 in base 2

>>7978694
I too was going to throw away his point but I think he's onto something. Analysis forces you to make mathematical arguments strictly using the premises written in definitions and theorems. You cannot use what is not already proven and you can't just do what feels right or has always been regarded as true. As math books tend to write in their introduction, one must not aim to possible to understand but impossible to missunderstand.

>>7978694
>Read some Kant and you'll see what a logically coherent argument looks like.
Because nothing in Rudin is 'logically coherent,' correct?

>Math especially fails to teach you how to make an argument
You don't believe a proof to be an argument? What is the difference?

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>>7978712
He's correct to the extent that studying mathematics will increase you're cognitive capabilities by exercising the mind. That doesn't mean you are better than 99% of people. Every mathematician I've met at my uni is a career whore rather than an intellectual. Well, not all, I get along really well with two of them.

It does not assist you in making a logical argument in a topic such as politics, for example.

To do that you should study the history of political thought and then evaluate those views in reference to the current circumstances.

However, one is better off still to study some basic philosophy first in order to pick up on reasoning and how to go about making a coherent argument.

Or just pick up Kant, the reasoning on display in his Critique of Pure Reason is astoundingly dense.

You don't gain the ability to see through the lies of politicians and journalists by studying maths. Nor do you automatically ascend above the rabble.

>>7978694
>old philosophy full of continental wishy washy influence is "a logically coherent argment"

fuck off

>>7978729
>What is the difference?
Certitude. Arguments are messy, intuitive and tend to be insufficient for any complex idea. The point of a proof is to create a mathematically unambiguous notion for more abstract types of communication. Basically math is an attempt to create precise languages.

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>>7978729
>After starting to study math, I've realized 99% of the human population is completely incapable of making any logically coherent argument.

Nice try dipshit, I'm responding to the OPs comment. In everyday life, in debate, etc. mathematics does not assist you to make an argument better than another individual. You don't become better at reasoning about the news by reading Rudin. The 'logically coherent' remark comes from the above. Don't take it out of context and think you unraveled the point.

>You don't believe a proof to be an argument? What is the difference?
Proof = Proves a statement
Argument = Gives reasonable grounds for belief in a statement/opinion

Improving one's sense of reason in the philosophical sense (philosophical ability/critical thinking/as you like it) is difficult because you generally don't know where to start and the end is uncertain. It's best cultivated in engaging in others opinions and listening to them; when you have amassed a large amount of reference opinions and figured out how they develop and are related. Then you can begin to propound your own and dismiss others as faulty or ill-developed.

Mathematical ability is cultivated by building up a large amount of reference techniques and proofs and then applying them according to your best ability.

The key difference is that the first is much more intuitive than certain, and the second is much more certain than intuitive. They are remarkably similar, but I think you can see the difference. They are both restricted to certain fields and prove ineffectual outside of their boundaries. Though of course mathematics branches out to physics and beyond and a study of political thought tends to lend some solid foundations for a study of history, philosophy or literature.

That's convoluted and I'm not proof reading it since I'm working on a damn presentation, but I hope that makes some sense. I will respond to questions.

>>7978522
Well, obviously they aren't the same. Infinity isn't a number, it is a concept, so you can't really have an infinite sequence of numbers.

>>7978686
I have a masters in math and I always have to think about it as "yeah, uh, the thing we should raise the e to"

>>7978757
Dismissing my opinion like that is too easy.

Continental philosophy is not necessarily a bad thing, though there is a lot of nonsense associated with it and it is usually taught badly.

Kant has an outstanding record as a thinker, read some of his politics instead if you prefer. Or his phyics related speculations. The point is that his reasoning is painstakingly powerful even when he is wrong. You learn how to reason from examples like his.

>>7978456
Came here to post this.

People really don't understand just how unrepresentative of a person one interaction can be.
Here's an instance I can think of, illustrating what I'm talking about.

Everyone knows what a penguin is, right? I don't think there's a single person in a western country who does not know what a fucking penguin is. They'd have to be a newborn or comatose.
When I was in high school, I was taking this shitty excuse of a geography course (by the way, this singular subject is why a good chunk of European visitors are convinced that we are completely fucking retarded. It is an extremely common subject in everyday conversation. Needless to say, we skimp and bullshit around it frequently). Teacher hands us our worksheets, has us take out our texts, tells us "the answers to these problems are in the book. Get cracking."
I spend like 15 minutes, flipping back and forth through the chapter to fill out the information, before I get to the last question. "What black and white bird lives in the antarctic?" I pause for a moment, flipping back and forth through the chapter. I can't find fucking ANYTHING about wildlife in this fucking book. I start getting frustrated, I start looking through other chapters. I finally raise my hand, my worksheet completed except for this one fucking question, and ask the teacher about it.

You can imagine the look she gave me.

>>7978810
Killer whales?

>is dismayed about the rarity of quality people
>goes to a containment board for the worst of the worst

If you want to talk to real people then join a mailing list or something.

>>7978694
>>Read some Kant and you'll see what a logically coherent argument looks like.

funny you say that. learning proofwriting and falling captive to the power of careful reasoning is what led me to philosophy.