The incomparable value of being wrong

What is learning math good for? — Robert Kegan and “meaning-making” — Existentialism’s error — Narcissism and tyranny — How can we avoid radical relativism? — My experience of teaching

This is the video from my January 2025 monthly AMA (“Ask Me Anything”).

As a cine auteur, for previous AMA recordings, I have insisted on the director’s cut, editing both the video and text transcript carefully, out of respect for viewers, listeners, and readers.

The CFO of the studio, Nebulonic Media Productions Inc., put his foot down this time. It takes more than two full days for me—the creator and director of the thing!—to edit the hour’s recording. He says they can’t afford that anymore. They want efficiency, they want me to ship product, they want—blah, blah, blah, business-speak.

I am an artist, I said! No, he said, you are employed as a media professional, which means optimizing yadda yadda, and don’t you forget it.

So this is management’s cut. They made an intern run the video through “artificial intelligence,” and he pushed a couple buttons, and it cut out some “ums,” and it generated a transcript that bears nearly zero resemblance to what I said. It’s a travesty.

(Let me know what you think!)

Thanks to all who participated! And specifically to Nicolai Amrehn, Fatima Ali, Vinod Khare, Peter, Max H, Jared Janes, COPONDER, Adam Tropp, and Mike Travers, for posing and/or helping answer questions.

There’s an embarrassing error in this at 6:48. I meant to say that US GDP is around $35 trillion (actually $29 trillion in 2024), but said billion. It was Bill Gate’s fortune that was (at the time) around $35 billion.

Sections

0:00 Max Langenkamp’s Reader’s Guide to David Chapman

1:00 Evolving Ground book club: Pema Chödrön

3:23 What is learning math good for?

4:34 You can check many public claims with a little math

8:59 Learning what it means to be wrong lets you appreciate formal rationality

11:50 Mathematics is the ideological basis for the modern world

16:43 How does meaningness differ from meaning-making?

19:24 Robert Kegan and "meaning-making" in educational theory

21:28 Existentialism's error: subjective theories of meaning

26:07 We can't be special. We shouldn't be ordinary. We can be noble.

30:35 Heidegger, authenticity, and being-toward-death

35:38 How can we avoid radical relativism?

47:02 The meaningfulness of programs, programming languages, and programming paradigms

52:47 Hope for more sensible governance

54:19 Approaching Vividness: new course, now in beta

56:15 My experience of teaching: thank you!

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