Stream of consciousness LL as I read it:
Page 2: Man, I think I've read this before... Also, parallels with the state of English education? How dogdamn surprising >_>
Page 3: Someone who says there's a difference between a poetic dreamer and a rational thinker needs to be bludgeoned with logic books until they speak in sentential. There's no goddamn difference between two people able to speak eloquently in their respective languages. There is only the eloquent and the not.
Page 3: My philosopher sidings twitch. Bastard needs to step off my turf, damnit. Or at least stop calling dibs on what my homeboys started. We were doing patterns from ideas when we
made your bloody field of study Lockhart! *fist shake*
Page 5: Now I'm thinking "fanfiction is the mathematics of the written language" *pseudotroll*
Page 5: Math not being the truth, but the explanation... kinda' like grammar is not a book. An expression of a language is different from the language itself, perhaps.
Page 5: Art of explanation... just like all the
other arts. Which include everything. What isn't art? I guess what already exists before manipulation? I prefer the "language of addition" myself, as that actually differentiates it from all the other arts, which are themselves just languages of different sort. Light, sound, reason, the physical world, etc., so forth, so on. So
an Art of Explanation, perhaps. It's a crowded pantheon.
Page 6: Difference between mathematics and other arts (all of the arts, all of the everything) my arse. Though I guess it was talking cultural view of it, which yeah, true enough. People look at math classes a lot like they look at english classes. Wonder why... [/rhetorical]
Page 7-8: Simp/salv thing fairly spot on, really. We would kinda' benefit from more and better
art language classes taught in school. They say that each language you speak is another soul you own, and if one soul is the greatest of things, then surely several are even better?
Page 8: Hear hear on the math textbooks. Shitty pieces of shit. I occasionally run into fairly decent works in other fields -- good anthologies, good summaries with good source lists and excerpts, stuff that makes things inviting and interesting to read. The math texts I was dealt during school weren't them.
Page 8: Oy. You stepping again bro. Logic is the music of reason. Kinda' the language of reason, too. I'll let it slide, you seem to be on a roll.
Page 9: Depends on which infinity you're talking about! There's more than one sort. Though even the formulaic sort isn't really a number, per se, iirc.
Page 9: Technique, context. Word up. Struggle and frustration... maybe. It's harder with some of the unrelated issues I mentioned in my first post in th'thread, but presumably separating functional real-life stuff and actual math into separate classes might help the burden, I'unno. There's some social/psychological things going on there, beyond what LL seems to get to. Which is fine, an essay doesn't have to be all inclusive.
Page 11: Replace "painting and poetry" with "communicating in
any language". The statement remains the same!
Page 11: Teaching is open conversation with a person! Miracle of miracles! Congratulations, you've figured out the secret good teachers already know~ Now juggle a couple hundred open conversations a day <3
good luckPage 11: Simplicio can now officially suck my rhetoricock.
mumblemutterPage 12: Salvati brother, you're basically saying the same thing I've been saying about philosophy for a few years now. Not exactly surprising considering which lead to the other *trollface* Though if they were siblings, philosophy would only be a little older, I guess.
Page 12: Body of mathematical facts... heh. A parallel to classical literature, I wonder...? Or the great masterpieces of music and the more visual arts?
Page 13: Yes, bloody well yes the musician speaks another language! You don't have to be literate to speak! You don't need flawless grammar to communicate! It can make it prettier, but it's not a requirement, not for plain communication nor for beautiful communication! Salvi buddy I think I love you but now you're kinda' shitting on linguistics and the sublime fundamental beauty of communication and I think maybe we should talk about our relationship.
Page 15: I've occasionally said to others folks would have an easier time getting into mathematics if someone would translate the shit into goddamn English. LL's basically saying the same thing, I'd say. Anyone worth two shits knows better than to use technical language when you're initially teaching things (and if they
don't know better, I know a couple dozen teachers who'd be happy to hit them with sticks until they get the point. There's a reason many of my philosophy classes would, for example, use epistemology and the study of knowledge interchangeably throughout the semester for the introductory courses.). That comes later, when they need to discuss things rapidly between people already in the know.
Page 17-18: Teach 'em to speak the language, not just phrases from it. Word up.
Page 18: Brother speaks truth on proofs. Once you can read it (and I'm bit rusty right now, but I wasn't for a short period) logic proofs are kinda beautiful when they're done well. Sometimes they're even funny, heh. You can make a damn good joke with one of those things, providing you can actually read it. [/language parallel]
Page 20: Paradox, formal logic, word up. And hey, yeah, proofs can be translated into English! It's just another way of saying something.
Page 22: No idea what they're saying: For all they know, they're saying that the orange flies at midnight, not asking where the bathroom is. It just so happens that "orange flies at midnight" is how the language they're learning refers to the bathroom for some convoluted historical/cultural reason.
Page 22: Definitions matter. Yesh. The assumptions you make are a fundamental part of creating proofs <3
Last bits: Makes me damn glad I never got to trig or beyond >_> I actually do sorta' appreciate math nowadays, even if it's kinda' how I appreciate French. Beautiful but fairly incomprehensible 'cause I've never really learned more of the language. Can communicate enough to get by, but my artistic/linguistic leanings have gone in other directions and... effort