From: dy@depsych.Gwinnett.COM (Dr. Yes)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Believe in youself, dammit! (was: Re: Singles Bar)
Date: 12 Sep 92 13:40:55 GMT

rawdon@colby.cs.wisc.edu (Michael Rawdon) writes:

> In <JMD.92Sep11173357@lion.bear.com> jmd@bear.com (Josh Diamond) writes:
> >Remember -- there are other people (men and women) out there looking
> >for relationships also.   This are just some suggestions of good ways
> >to meet them.  
> 
> >And people: STOP TELLING EVERYONE THAT THEY ARE WRONG!  The fact that
> >you haven't made it work for you in the past DOES NOT INDICATE THAT IT
> >WILL NOT WORK!
> 
> This sounds to me a lot like saying, "The fact that you've done poorly at
> math before does not indicate that you'll do poorly in the future."  Sure,
> it doesn't mean conclusively that it won't, but, given a reasonable amount
> of experience with math (whatever "reasonable" is), it DOES indicate IMO
> that it is VERY, VERY UNLIKELY that you will do well at it in the future.

I had just posted a reply to this and was getting ready to start
my real work for the day when it occurred to me that your example
was relevant to another point Josh made.  He said:

>As for detail, there is none.  I didn't go and do some specific thing
>to create a relationship.  If you think that there is some formula, or
>set of magic operations which will give you a relationship, then you
>are crazy.

Well, in math there _are_ procedures, algorithms, methods, etc.
When I was young I had a "math block" or something.  I couldn't do
it.  And I _wanted_ to do it.  Back in the 50s when I was growing
up we had a faith in science and math that would seem naive today.
Remember, that was before AI failed and before post-structuralist
thought and quantum theory popularized the idea of the universe as
_bricolage_.  Well, I kept taking math and science courses all
through high school and college.  During tests I'd free associate
on the mimeograph smell and the random marks on the paper --
integral signs looked like snakes crawling, they actually seemed
to move!  When I took the GRE my math score fell at the 48th
percentile (sic! [sick!] sic! -- actually _below average_!).

In grad school in the early 60s I had occasion to take the
Freshman course in logic at Harvard.  It was taught by Willard
Quine, who was actually probably the leading philosopher and
logician at that time, but he was teaching the Freshman course. It
was similar to the "new math" of that time but much clearer. What
he did was to conceptualize traditional math and logic in terms of
symbolic logic and set theory.  About half way through the course
I realized that I understood the structure of equations.  I could
set them up by rote if I didn't see the answer immediately.

Shortly after that I had occasion to take the GRE over -- I was
changing fields. This time my math score fell at the 94th
percentile.  And it was a real reflection of what I could do
since since that time I have never had any difficulty with any
kind of math, either understanding it or actually doing it.

The moral?  Well, if there is a "trick to" math -- namely
understanding it conceptually -- maybe there _is_ a trick or
algorithm or formula or something for meeting women.  If there is
I'd like to know what it it.  So if somebody knows, the way
Willard Quine knew the secret of math and logic, I'd appreciate it
if they'd tell.

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Newsgroups: soc.singles