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Arithmetic is an underrated world-modeling technology — LessWrong

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Of all the cognitive tools our ancestors left us, what’s best? Society seems to think pretty highly of arithmetic. It’s one of the first things we learn as children. So I think it’s weird that only a tiny percentage of people seem to know how to actually use arithmetic. Or maybe even understand what arithmetic is for. Why? I think the problem is the idea that arithmetic is about “calculating”. No! Arithmetic is a world-modeling technology. Arguably, it’s the best world-modeling technology: It’s simple, it’s intuitive, and it applies to everything. It allows you to trespass into scientific domains where you don’t belong. It even has an amazing error-catching mechanism built in. One hundred years ago, maybe it was important to learn long division. But the point of long division was to enable you to do world-modeling. Computers don’t make arithmetic obsolete. If anything, they do the opposite. Without arithmetic, you simply can’t access a huge fraction of the most important facts about th

x Arithmetic is an underrated world-modeling technology — LessWrong Best of LessWrong 2024 World Modeling Curated 174 Arithmetic is an underrated world-modeling technology by dynomight 17th Oct 2024 Linkpost for dynomight.net 7 min read 38 174 Of all the cognitive tools our ancestors left us, what’s best? Society seems to think pretty highly of arithmetic. It’s one of the first things we learn as children. So I think it’s weird that only a tiny percentage of people seem to know how to actually use arithmetic. Or maybe even understand what arithmetic is for. Why? I think the problem is the idea

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