> Unlikely. Too many things in life depend on arithmetic. Most people will learn things when they must.

Yes but arithmetic is actually not intuitive at all, and you can certainly grow up to not know it. There's a lot of people who once grew up not knowing how to read, because they didn't go to school.

Children are still children, they very famously make poor decisions. Yes, not all children, but most. We have to mold and steer them, because for humans we come into this world as basically blank slates. We're not like other animals, ready to roll. We require decades of careful curation.

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braj0 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"for humans we come into this world as basically blank slates."

Can you source this? I thought we were pretty much expressions of our particular genetics and the biological human substrate we all inhabit. This is very much not a 'blank slate'. Every time I've tried to look into or steelman the blank-slate I can never come across hard science that backs up the assertion that we are all 'blank slates'.

Blank-slate seems to be more of a liberal idea then a scientific one.

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preg_match 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Blank-slate as compared to most other mammals, who are often born with knowledge of how to walk, feed, or even hunt. These skills usually come pretty quickly, most mammals have their young on their own within a year. Humans can’t even walk for a year. Many other mammals walk on their first day.

We also have case studies that if humans are not taught language then they won’t, and can’t, speak. Genie comes to mind.

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win311fwg 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Genie could't speak because she was deprived of exposure to normal human interaction, not because of lack of being taught. It is apparent you've never been around a child because otherwise you'd have quickly recnoized that most of them do speak before anyone tries to teach them how.

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preg_match 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I’ve obviously been around children, and I do qualify speaking to children as “teaching them how to speak”.

If you speak math problems to your child you are… wait for it… teaching them arithmetic. That’s what teaching is.

Arithmetic is not something that just naturally exists in the world, it’s a purely human construct. It does have to be taught in one way or another, otherwise people won’t know it. And, unlike language, I seriously doubt parents are just speaking arithmetic randomly in conversation that often. Your kid most definitely will not just “pick up” arithmetic.

In fact, I doubt a kid would even pick up language if you never spoke to them directly, and instead they just heard bits in passing between adults.

	▲	win311fwg 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If you speak math problems to your child you are… wait for it… teaching them arithmetic. That’s what teaching is. Exposure to something and being taught something are usually recognized as being quite different, but it is clear now that you just want to play a game of semantics, so we can put and end to that. > I doubt a kid would even pick up language if you never spoke to them directly, and instead they just heard bits in passing between adults. Kids not being able pick up on language by listening to a recording of adults speaking about some random thing is supported by the research so there is likely some validity to the latter half of your claim, with some assumptions about what you mean about "heard in passing", but the research also strongly suggests that kids can pick up on language if those adults are surrounded by additional context. For example, if adults in the same room were talking about a visible object in front of them then the research suggests that the child would be able to pick up the language even when not directly spoken to. Why do you doubt the research?

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win311fwg a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> Yes but arithmetic is actually not intuitive at all, and you can certainly grow up to not know it.

If you are in a situation where you don't need it, sure, but if you don't need it then who cares? I get the nebulous "but what about the discoveries you are missing out on", but the type of people who wouldn't learn something like arithmetic for fun also never find discoveries anyway, and never would even if you could force feed them all the knowledge of the world. That argument really doesn't apply to most people.

> Children are still children, they very famously make poor decisions.

Not quite. What children are most famous for is that they won't learn until they want to. Poor decisions, implying that they could have made good decisions if only they would have listened, are the outcome of them not learning even when you tried.

> We have to mold and steer them

There are deadbeats in the world, sure, but for the most part that just naturally happens at least up until they hit the rebellious teen years. Kids want to be by your side, watching, learning. We wouldn't have made it as a species if this didn't occur automatically. Like I said before, you cannot exist without learning things constantly.