Jensen Huang Says Kids Forgetting Math Doesn't Matter, and That's a Test We Should Fail
The Test
Jensen Huang told Ezra Klein he doesn't know his own address or ZIP code and doesn't care that kids are forgetting basic math. The author argues these aren't just rich-guy quirks but loyalty tests: when tech leaders say absurd things, those who nod along prove their obedience. The only way to win is to fail the test loudly and publicly.
The only way to actually win at that test is to fail it. Fail it as hard as you can.
- titzer
I don't think it's unreasonable to limit a person's total wealth to, say, 100x the median person's lifetime earnings. In America, the median income is about $50k/yr. So 40 years as a wage earner means $2 million. With compounded interest, inflation, and wage growth, it's still under $10 million. So if we capped individual net worth at 100x that, it'd be $1 billion.
The fact that we live in a society where people don't bat an eyelash at people who have literally 100,000x the median lifetime earnings of a person (literally, 1000x what I personally consider reasonable) and yet want more says that our society has passed one of these absurdity tests and just suck down whatever stupid propaganda they promulgate.
- RGS1811
This post resonates with me but for reasons not given in it. It calls to mind Immanuel Kant's famous essay "What is Enlightenment?" Where he says this:
> Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own understanding!”--that is the motto of enlightenment.
- tangled
As others have said: this was not a good faith discussion. Huang was using the interview as an opportunity to “talk his book”, and Klein was using it to sell his own Serious Interviewer brand. Both were getting something out of this.
Given this arrangement, Klein had a limited ability to push back (well, he could, but that would mean a bunch of future interviews wouldn’t happen). Instead, he left it up to the viewer to make their own inferences. And some people are going to see Klein’s lack of push-back as a legitimization of Huang’s views.
After watching the first twenty minutes or so (I couldn’t watch any more), I had a much lower opinion of Klein as an interviewer who is willing to ask the tough questions no matter who he’s talking to.
- jpitz
Counterpoint: the person who understands how do to a task without the tool often winds up being the more capable user of the tool.
- NKosmatos
So many truths in this post…
With regards to division and mathematics, I remembered this article/study I saw some time ago about a maths professor handing out “crooked” calculators to the whole class and then having them take an exam.
Most of the kids took the results from the calculators as they were, without challenging them and hence failed the test. The minority had the knowledge and critical mind needed in order to understand that what their tool* was telling them was off.
* where tool replace with agent, map, AI