https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00240-9
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/black-lives-ma...
Algebra could be renamed Chestering, to credit the Englishman who did the real work of translating Al-Khwarizmi's text from Arabic into Latin.
Surely the arabs have been colonizing mathematics by translating the indigenous greek works
That argument is rather weird as mathematics was never about culture, but rather about logical truth
No one is out to cancel theorems or whatever other bullshit. Also those concerns over the freedom of science are rich coming from the party that's actually defunding labs, arresting researchers on ideological grounds and burning books.
That philosophical school sees truth as being a fantasy and subservient to power.
Therefore it is common for an adherent of post-colonialism to believe a statement is true if it was made by a person arbitrarily considered oppressed, while the same logic might be false if made by an 'oppressor'.
As this approach makes all science to be political effort before a discovery effort, it was highly successful in the highly political environment of the academics, as it also has highly favorable economical results for its followers. (New departments, ability to religiously outcast the old, new postions)
The problem as it reaches the hard sciences, for example the religious sacrifice each ML paper needs to make to the gods of ethics, is that it assaults the very notion of truth by its very essence. It is easy to see why this is highly problematic for mathematics
You want real politicization of science? Check on the GOP's side. They're the one cutting funding to organization that won't bow to their ideological lines. They're the ones barring access to french scientist for having criticized the dear leader online. They're the ones appointing political commissars to overview what's fine or not to work on in labs.
I currently worry more about the left though, as it is much more powerful in the academics, and actually creates political "science" today
Talk to any academic, ask them wether they fear more from blue haired teens or the looming fascist threat that is Trump and his cabinet. You may be surprised by the answer.
The context was:
> *At least read the Nature one, damn.* ~ @thrance
> *I read the article. It's dangerous nonsense.* ~ @ConspiracyFact
> *Where's the danger? Where's the nonsense in acknowledging the origins of algebra?* ~ @myself
This appears to be old established material that I read in the ANU library back in the early 1980s.
You and the other poster responded with anger, I do not agree I am the one who is not meaningfully contributing
I don't mean to be rude, but do you think it's possible that your understanding of the situation is a bit out of date?
Which part of my critique of post-colonialism do you think had become obsolete?
This part. I'm not sure if it's because it's out of date or just plain wrong, though.
But sorry, it's hard to discuss when you quote a single sentence from the few paragraphs i've written and say it's wrong, with nothing added. When adding to it your replies in previous discussions we had such as this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43705166
I feel you are overly emotionally attached to the subject and this is approaching troll/flame territory. It's not that I don't want to discuss with you, but I feel in our engagements a lot of aggression and very little actual passing of information except for short sentences, so let's end it right here
You just sent links to me without acknowledging the conversation we were having at all.
Very, very strange.
Seriously, what's the danger? Be clear. It feels like you peolple are unable to articulate anything more than "thouhtcrime!!".
Also, what do you think of the actual threats Trump made to academics? Is it dangerous too or not?
Perhaps some form of self-flagelation or bloodletting?
It feels like a really silly way to deflect from the concept that maybe average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
It's not though. It's either being obtuse or outright silly. How exactly does "decolonisation" figure in any of the things they said?
> average UK citizens do benefit in some way from their colonial past.
Even if they do, which is debatable (i.e. it's not clear they benefit more from it than people living in other European countries which didn't have extensive colonial empires) what does this have to with nonsensical subjects being taught in universities?
Since we’re bringing it back onto topic, has any university ever ran a “decolonised maths” program? What would that look like?
Seems relatively straightforward to me...
"" Fibonacci's sequence (i.e. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ...) was discovered in Africa long before the Italian wrote it down, in the form of Ghanaian textile cloth and Egyptian temple design. (1) "" or: "" It is long believed calculus was discovered by Leibniz and Newton, however there is evidence of Indians having discovered the subject 300 years earlier in the Kerala School. (2) ""
Fun trivia I guess. Also inconsequential if Fibonacci, Leibniz, Newton made their discoveries independently since further developments were based on their work.
It's like saying that Ancient Greeks and not Newcomen or Watt "invented" the steam engine... Again, interesting piece of historical trivia but hardly has much to do with physics as a science.
You might not realize it, but thousands of these tiny things over a lifetime creates a subconscious bias. And then that manifests in real ways. Like, for example, disregarding or discrediting an area of study you know nothing about based purely on the type of people who created the study.
That’s the thing, I didn’t say their opinion isn’t worth listening to or consideration in general. Acknowledging bias isn’t the same as discarding opinion.
I am not a US tax payer, I am a UK tax payer. I loath that my tax money is financing some universities that discriminate based on race and push bullshits like "decolonise maths". They are free to pursure all the left-wing fantasies they want, just not with my money. I think it is perfectly legitimate for the US to do the same.