If you stretched out your intestines, they would reach all the way around the world.

Ever hear that line as a kid? That's what we were taught in elementary school.

We were also taught, "food takes 24 hours to pass through your digestive tract."

Let's assume both of those are true.

Since the circumference of the earth is estimated at 24,901 miles, that means food travels through your intestines at a minimum of 1,037.5 miles per hour. (and that isn't even setting aside any time for it sitting in your stomach digesting)

No wonder our educational system is producing such unintelligent people. They're teaching kids that food zooms around through their body faster than the speed of sound?

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.

Leedskalnin On Education

You know we receive an education in the schools from books. All those books that people became educated from twenty-five years ago, are wrong now, and those that are good now, will be wrong again twenty-five years from now. So if they are wrong then, they are also wrong now, and the one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is misled. All books that are written are wrong, the one who is not educated cannot write a book and the one who is educated, is really not educated but he is misled and the one who is misled cannot write a book which is correct.

The misleading began when our distant ancestors began to teach their descendants. You know they knew nothing but they passed their knowledge of nothing to the coming generations and it went so innocently that nobody noticed it. That is why we are not educated.

Now I will tell you what education is according to my reasoning. An educated person is one whose senses are refined. We are born as brutes, we remain and die as the same if we do not become polished. But all senses do not take polish. Some are to coarse to take it. The main base of education is one's "self-respect". Any one lacking self-respect cannot be educated. The main bases of self-respect is the willingness to learn, to do only the things that are good and right, to believe only in the things that can be proved, to possess appreciation and self control.

Now, if you lack willingness to learn, you will remain as a brute and if you do things that are not good and right, you will be a low person, and if you believe in things that cannot be proved, any feeble minded person can lead you, and if you lack appreciation, it takes away the incentive for good doing and if you lack self control you will never know the limit.

So all those lacking these characteristics in their makeup are not educated.

- Ed Leedskalnin, 1936.

http://www.leedskalnin.com/