Math Is A Universal Language?

This is a claim that's thrown around a lot by scientists (and people who want to sound smart), but it seems the people who say this don't really understand what the term "universal" means.  Math, like any other language, is a learned system of communication.  If you don't have the specific learned cultural knowledge to decipher what somebody is trying to communicate, it's just a bunch of gobbledygook.

First, let's look at the symbols:
< = > + - x ÷ ² ³ √
These don't have any "universal" inherent meaning.  If you didn't know what these symbols meant, you wouldn't understand what was being said in the "language" of a mathematical equation.

"But wait!" you say, "It's not the symbols themselves, but the concepts they represent which are universal!"

Alright then, let's look at a mathematical language in common use:  Binary.

Computers use binary for everything, right?  Binary numbers have no inherent context beyond just being numbers.  Without knowing what patterns a computer uses to decode binary number strings, you can read the data straight from a hard drive and get nothing but a long string of 1s and 0s.  Sure, with enough time, effort and content, you could probably eventually figure out what they represented just like deciphering any other verbal or written linguistic system, but if math is such a "universal" language, shouldn't the meaning behind those numbers be intrinsically obvious?  There's actually a form of written language (Ogham) which is a bit like binary and the Trigrams from the I Ching are basically binary representations, but those are also not a "universal" language, as they require a translation key to understand what they represent.  This scene from Kyle XY simply wouldn't be possible, because not only is there insufficient context in a brief glimpse of the crash code on a computer screen to figure out the underlying patterns of information, but the intricacies of the binary information of an image file can't be properly represented by a standard ASCII text program in the first place - the format is different. (a keyboard doesn't have all the ASCII characters on it anyway)  Opening a non-text file in a text editor and then saving it, even without making any changes, will often corrupt the information within the file and make it unuseable for its original purpose.  Regardless of how smart a person is, they simply can't read and manipulate binary code from a display which isn't designed to do so and therefore is subject to fundamental interpretation errors.

Another example: Base-10 versus Hexidecimal versus Binary.
10 - 1 = ?

Base-10: 9
Hexidecimal: f
Binary: 1

If mathematics is a "universal" language, how does the same simple equation yield such staggeringly different results with such a simple modification of context?  If we assumed base-10 was the norm and sent that equation to somebody who assumed we were using a base-8 number system, there would be a big misunderstanding.

Imagine if you suddenly had to start calculating everything in the format of time.
1 x 60 = 100 and 100 x 24 = 10000 and so on.  It would make communicating with people who tended to use standard base-10 for everything not time related a bit more difficult, wouldn't it?  What if we had to communicate a concept of time with somebody from another planet, which might rotate at a different speed and orbit their sun at a different rate and where the people might have chosen to break up the increments differently?  It would be a bit like converting back and forth between Metric and Imperial measurements.  How often do you have to convert a measurement from one to the other when trying to communicate with somebody from another country?  Doesn't that require prior knowledge of the specific system they use?  That doesn't seem very "universal" now does it?

Last example: PEMDAS.
It stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction - or, the official predetermined order of functions in an equation.  That's so if you have something like 2 x 3² + 5 ÷ 3 you know which order to work the functions within the equation, because that often changes the outcome.  If there was no predetermined order, two different people could often solve the same equation in different ways and get completely different results, even though neither was technically wrong.  The official order we use is something somebody had to decide at some point.  If we ever have to communicate with an alien culture like in the movies, they might have decided to do things very differently and we simply wouldn't arrive at the same result using the same equations.


So in conclusion, mathematics requires knowledge and understanding of specific cultural symbols, specific cultural procedures and specific applicable context in order to be a useful form of communication and therefore is not a "universal" language at all.

Victim-Blaming!

This is a very common accusation that gets thrown around whenever the topic of rape prevention is discussed in relation to women.

"Women shouldn't dress a certain way." - Victim-blaming!
"Women should watch their drink so nothing gets slipped into it." - Victim-blaming!
"Women shouldn't accept rides from strangers." - Victim-blaming!
"Women should stay out of dark alleys in bad neighborhoods at night." - Victim-blaming!
"Women shouldn't walk home alone." - Victim-blaming!
"Women should try to reduce their risk of..." - Victim-blaming!

The popular slogan out there right now is "Don't teach women not to be raped, teach men not to rape!" and anything to the contrary elicits the accusation of "victim-blaming!"

Well, are smoke detectors a form of "death-in-a-housefire-blaming"?  Are bulletproof vests a form of "getting-shot-blaming"?  Are locks and alarms a form of "theft-blaming"?  Are seatbelts, airbags, speed limits, stop signs and traffic lights a form of "car-crash-blaming"?

Let's say just for the sake of argument that preventative advice and defensive precautions actually are a form of "blame."

Doesn't that mean convenience stores and gas stations blame the cashiers for being robbed?

Doesn't that mean fast food restaurants blame their employees for being murdered?

Doesn't that mean we blame children for being offered drugs?

"Don't teach children not to take drugs, teach drug dealers not to sell them!"

See, the difference between protection and blame is "this will help you" versus "this is your fault."  Just because the rapist, or house fire, or shooter, or thief, or other driver, or robber, or murderer, or drug dealer, or whatever may actually be at fault, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to protect yourself from them.  If you make every effort to be as oblivious and vulnerable to the danger as possible, bad things happening to you may be no fault of your own, but some of them may still have been avoidable.

Re: Schrodinger's Rapist

A popular piece of rhetoric lately, "Schrodinger's Rapist" is the idea that every man should be assumed to be a sexual predator and treated as if they are a threat until proven otherwise, whether they do something to reasonably warrant such treatment, or not.  Women should be wary of a man approaching them or of being alone with a man and people should be wary of a man interacting with their children, etc.

Well, let's look at this from another angle: Schrodinger's Rapist, meet Schrodinger's Mugger.



Even if we were to discount the plethora of evidence that sexual predation is not a gendered crime, is there really any question that this is simply a bigoted, hypocritical example of garbage rhetoric?

And how ironic is it that the hypothetical experiment it is based on, Schrodinger's Cat, is actually intended to demonstrate the failings of such an assumptive theoretical approach when applied to practical scenarios.

The experiment was designed to illustrate the flaws of the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics, which states that a particle exists in all states at once until observed.

Isn't there a stereotype having something to do with "women" and "science"?  Perhaps it goes something like "every woman should be assumed to be bad at science and people should be wary of any scientific work done by women."  Doesn't seem so "enlightened" when the shoe is on the other foot, does it?