与儿子聊天记录

我也有机会跟儿子网聊了，用iMessage，哼。

母：       "Did you read the article I sent to you, about math is not perfect?"

子：       It's interesting,

but I don’t think it meant math isn’t perfect

it meant that math doesn’t represent the world

but that’s not necessarily because math isn’t perfect, but the world isn’t (mathematically) perfect

母：       "Ricardo said these days, students are learning less about using accurate math to describe the world"

"People use computers to simulate the world "

子：       well classical mechanics is basically a set of formulas that are all solved
except for three-body problems

no, as in technically people don’t need to know it if it’s in a physics book, people can always look it up when they need it

母：       "I see what you mean. Basically, new generation could pay attention to different things ... What do you think students should learn now?"

子：       I think the problem with math education that Ricardo was talking about is more a problem about the size of mathematics than the interests of students

because modern math research is so complicated that it requires many years of study

like maybe people have to develop AI or augment human brains in order to speed up comprehension of math

so computer science is important, as is neuroscience/psychology, formal logic

of course in order to run society we still need politicians, economists, doctors etc

母：       "I think another problem is that mathematicians work too hard in math, they don't have chance to connect their knowledge to applications. It turned out, most of the science and engineering work is still using 19th century math"

子：       yeah there’s an overspecialization of scientists now because there’s so much knowledge in each little subject

but something like Watson could be good to make the connections

 

比较核心的一段话，我当时没理解，现在回头看很有意思。就是说，“人们发展人工智能，或者说提高人脑的能力，以此来加速数学学习。”这是新一代孩子的视角。我们学习的时候碰到困难，会觉得应该更加努力，头悬梁锥刺骨，或者觉得自己智慧不够，懊恼先天不足。新孩子的想法是，我们人类的大脑就是能力不足，我们需要人工智能的帮助。