Post #4023589

2026-07-23 00:08 UTC

How many people even know that? Racism must be a tremendous factor. The abacus? Too "Oriental" (sorry for that word.) But in general it feels like any mechanical method for aiding arithmetic and calculation has been dissuaded for multiple corporate reasons assisted by bigotry: all such methods can be derided as "primitive" and thus nothing any patriotic God-fearing American needs to touch. Not when there's cheap calculators. I have a lot of affection for cheap shitty calculators myself but (thanks I think to my RL father) that affection didn't sway my mind away from what I thought of as the pedagogical necessity of teaching pen-and-paper calculation. Calculators, I told myself, aren't always available. (cont'd)

Replies (1)

@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-23 00:11

But the real issue I have with their too-frequent use is that they discourage human beings from learning abstract conceptions about numbers and their relationships. People hooked on calculators, it seems to me, never actually learn any mathematics--even basic arithmetic seems like some weird strange magic to them. Folks seem to take a kind of sneakfaced pride in being bad at that shit in a way that nobody ever talks about literacy. 'Illiterate' has almost the weight of a slur in U.S. talk but it's funny to titter about having no head for figures. I don't know what the answer is. I only suggest that there's a serious problem and that encouraging the use of mechanical calculation aids and ensuring their general availability might be a step towards alleviating the problem. ~Chara of Pnictogen

Open ##4023588