How do we make sense of a world that doesn't? By looking in unexpected places, says mathematician Eugenia Cheng. She explains how applying concepts from abstract mathematics to daily life can lead us to a deeper understanding of things like the root of anger and the function of privilege. Learn more about how this surprising tool can help us to empathize with each other.
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To all the mathematicians who came up with the concept of zero..
Thanks for nothing.
well done. comment of the week. I concede graciously. see you next time x
Graham Jonathan Those that can’t do….teach.
Oh r u offfended hahahah sad
+JUSTICE VIXEN
r/whoosh
and like… badly XD
+Gods Autobiography hahaha
This is not a way to understand people. This is a way to estimate supposed privilege based on certain categorisations which we do not know to be consequential in individual experiences.
I think we should try to treat each other as individuals and not make any assumption of privilege based on these categorizations unless we know statistically they are the most influential factors in human wellbeing.
Edit: spelling
+mongke insight may be lost, sure. But it may no as well. To assume either is non-beneficial to the conversation.
+Gods Autobiography yeah, agreed.
I’d be surprised if any serious social scientist would be comfortable saying ‘OK black + trans = -3 privilege points for you’
(I know I’m being reductionistitic).
Can we truly gleam any knowledge about individuals? I’d argue not.
Can we be certain about the causal weight of these categories in populations? I’d say yes, to a limited degree.
Honestly, thinking about it, my comment is a bit time-wasting because this discussion has to be very statistic-heavy to be meaningful and I don’t have those statistics.
+mongke only time-wasting if you have something better to do =P
For the most part, discussion is all we have. And our most powerful tool for revealing meaningful change.
You are on point. The fallacy lies in the application of statistics to individuals.
Example: A randomly picked individual out of category A has an 80% chance of being a woman.
Flawed reasoning: Jacob, you belong to category A, so you are probably a woman. No? I’m sorry Jacob, you can’t argue with statistics.
So sick of seeing identity politics taking over Ted. Unsubbed.
+Gods Autobiography Are you Eugenia Cheng? Because you sure are defending this video like your life depended on it. All the privelage/victim propaganda is not a great way to show how to use your little number table in real life.
+Jokester you still don’t get the point of the video, do you… Your bias is unfortunately amusing.
+Jokester I’m Steven French, by the way. Just a poor white Boi with no plans for the day.
+Tyler Poppy Wow talk about completely missing the point of the video. That’s not what she was saying at all. Just that different people are going to have different perspectives than you. For example, people need to realize that even though white privilege is really a thing, that doesn’t mean that a white person can’t be poor. Or just because men make more than women, doesn’t mean that a man can’t need financial assistance sometimes. She wasn’t telling you how to approach a conversation with every person you come across. Just that things are not quite as simplistic (binary) as people usually believe.
+For An Angel There are great Ted talks, but for every 1 there are 20 stinkers.
Intersectional Minecraft Platonism
IMP building a better world.
Empathy by math?
I prefer waiting for AI to do that
AI is math but yes.
Okay, so, basically, we have a basis for intersectionnal feminism, without any justification for what is a privilege, why associate rich (okay) white (what?) and male (no comment) to te property “privilege”, what does affects thoses privileges (goes with the definition of privilege), etc…
And after that lack of rigor that would have put any reasonable student’s homework to an “F”, she applies feelings (internal indicators, way non-precise) to facts and logic.
She still have her job?
I thought she was going to highlight how females are actually the privileged class… favoured and prioritized by governments, marketers, academia, media, rescue effort teams, etc.
@The Flaneur “favoured and prioritized by governments” False on the grounds of 80% of legislators being white males who construct laws to suit their best interests and the interests of their lobbyists (also 80% white male corporate owners).
“”favoured and prioritized by marketers” maybe only in terms of products targeted toward women, which as reported tend to be more expensive by the sole virture of being a female version of a product. Female variants of cosmetics have been reported to contain more heavy metals and preservatives.
“favoured and prioritized by academia” False considering that 70-80% of top level academic body is still white male. Women are promoted less and there have been clear examples of segregation and sabotage of female candidates.
“favoured and prioritized by media” False, white male protagonist features in 80% of all media productions. In the last 20 years female roles contained only 30% of spoken lines in oscar winning movies. Vast majority of movies in the so called movie pantheon fail to pass the Bechdel test.
“”favoured and prioritized by rescue effort” False in terms of broader medical reality. Women are excluded from drug testing which means dosages are designed to suit men, women end up overdosing on many dangerous substances. Medical equipment like fine cutting tools, stents, prosthetics is designed for the male body. Women’s illnesses and symptoms are given less attention and treated less seriously than male (on the example of children where according to a study male patients were given more attention that females).
Your perception of the so called female privilege is severely inaccurate and possibly shaped by your frustration of having to share your economic space with incoming women and people of color, something that has been an exclusively male dominated area since the 50s.
PS. Harvard has been caught discriminating against asian applicants, quite the scandal that was.
A mathematics PhD saying she “knows” she is less privileged than the average white person…the juxtaposition of such lunacy with such brilliance never ceases to amaze me with people like this.
As an Asia she is math privileged. How else would not like math and yet end up with a doctorate in pure math?
By abstract mathematics she means a way of making a list of all combinations and showing how you can remove one element at time.
There is nothing abstract about saying how many ways can I make lists with A, B, C, D. Well I can start with all 4 and get {A,B, C, D}. Then I can go to three {A, B, C}, {A, C, D}, {A, B, D}, {B, C, D}. Then to two {A, B}, {A, C}, {A, D}, {B, C}, {B, D}, {C,D}. And finally end with 1 {A}, {B}, {C}, {D}. I must be an abstract mathematician!
Anyone can do this with any amount of letters, or “privilege”, or names of people they know, or tree species or however you want to categorize something. Just make a list and each time reduce the number of whatever you are categorizing by one and continue on making a list. This is not abstract mathematics by any stretch of the imagination.
TLDR: She made a list of combinations and stumbled upon the idea that you can reduce the number of elements in a list on at a time.
+Gods Autobiography My point being that she demonstrated the use of a list and this, in my opinion, did not warrant a TEDx talk.
Regardless of ones opinion on the merits of this talk, she did not demonstrate anything new. All she demonstrated is that our basis for categorizing/listing things, in this case privilege, shows up in mathematics. This shouldn’t be a surprise or even novel in any circle of thought.
I find it disingenuous to say abstract mathematics can help us look at privilege differently, when the abstract mathematics she employs are lists. We have been categorizing things since humans have been on the planet.
+Tyler Poppy I think you may be making an overestimating in favor of common intellect. This is seemingly common knowledge to you and I (and many others I’m sure) but there are many who may benefit from this.
What she said is rather anti-left as far as current trends. She presented to them, in a way they might be willing to listen, that group identity can be broken down and that general casting is inneficiet.
+Gods Autobiography I do agree that I am could be making an overestimate of common intellect. However, in my opinion equating this type of list making with abstract mathematics (which has the connotation of being an “intelligent field” of study) was done in attempts to give the actual point of her talk more credence that it deserves. I just feel the use of mathematics as a basis for her argument is disingenuous and was done to make it seem like her reasoning is completely objective.
Nevertheless, I do agree that her method of presenting this topic in this way could encourage more discussion on this topic. Thank you for point this out 🙂
+Tyler Poppy I see your point as well, and I don’t disagree.
I guess it’s just a common tactic to use a clever segue. Her use of math seems more like an attempt at grabbing the audiences focus, but comes off as an invalid proof of her perspective.
You forgot the empty set. You are hack! A HACK!
As Eugenia says, you can put “anything” in there – anything to fit a preconceived narrative.
You sure can! (finally a smart comment!) The real honest answer comes down to this. boiling down to the facts and mentality and the explanations and the evidence and blah blah blah. your “preconceived narrative” is a matter of what your are predisposed to believe. If you believe X and someone has proof that it is not X but Y you are more than likely NOT going to change your mind on X. The more attached you are to X, the less likely Y will appeal to you as an alternative or even just an option.
Yeah, no… You may as well stick to gematria if you like numbers and insanity combined :/
You should remember that there is nothing wrong for being a white man
+Fatima Muhammed Why you so hurt over another person of ANY particular distinction being at peace with himself? Cuz instead of being better yourself and liking the result, your advantages, self-worth, and particular distinctions gain favour in your eyes, by ensuring others keep themselves down, mired in self-loathing and guilt. Should people only like the person in the mirror if they are female and muslim like you? Which authority figure declared this particular rule?
Fatima Muhammed #failedsohard
its not being a white man that matters, its being any colour male who has A,S,P,D
Correct, there is nothing wrong with it, no one chooses how they are born. We all have to realize that there are people better and worse off than us, some more than others, and we cant forget to remember the people on the lower end of the social spectrum.
Trigger warning: mention of white male privilege.
TEDx needs to have one of those to avoid unnecessary disgruntled rustling.
A better idea: be a real person with all of its foibles. Improve yourself and your community. Stop blaming others for your problems and grow up.
Also, as an Asian myself, I can honestly say that she is full of crap.
Praise, brother of thought.
Yes, look in the mirror and repeat this affirmation. Hahahaha…I see ALOT of hurt feelings over a talk that is supposedly meaningless. Fragility is real.
+Fatima Muhammed Hello, Sister. How many comments do you ctrl+c and ctrl+v?
+Adi Primanda Ginting lol. NPC
My QI reduced after that
Press F to pay respects to logic which died during the filming of this… whatever it is…
The logic was okay, but her axioms are debatable, I guess
So the diagram of an empty cube is very abstract. QED
This is what diversity hiring does to society. An 11 minute nonsensical speech that can be summarized into what we already knew, that identity politics is bad.
I literally only subscribed some days back. Now I realize TED got woke, and I unsubscribe.
When I subscribed to Ted, I expected high quality videos, not this.
This is a high quality video and a very interesting take on built in social structures in the western world. This hierarchy exists and i think she explained it all really well. We all have people above and below us and we cant always look up an envy. Sometimes we have to look down and realize that we stand above others. In a lot of cases standing above someone is completely arbitrary.
This is a great talk. It is actually a Sokalian inspired piece that is a big troll, just like Nobel Prize winning comedian Samuel H Yde did on Tedx
Holy …. I was with you during the factoring… but aside from that your mind is poisoned. You are basing your hypothesis as if it were fact. Scary.