Solomon's Cairn

Below I reproduce a short exchange I had with frequent LessWrong commenter Viliam last week on this thread .  Some thoughts on the thread in retrospect: I come from a position in stark opposition to 'intersectionality' and similar notions arising from critical theory, and would ordinarily be content to dismiss it out of hand. However, in the recent past I've had to reconsider a similar position regarding the whole body of postmodern philosophy and related studies, owing to the writings of David Chapman (see this article and this comment ), which find part of their base in postmodern and critical figures, most prominently Heidegger and Foucault, and make the case that those thinkers were, in fact, very careful and profound, but that their insights were diluted both by the fashionable nonsense styles they wrote in and by their successors, who were not trained in the Western rational corpus before attempting to reform (or destroy) it.  This by no means invalidates criticisms ...

The current draft of the new California Mathematics Framework emphasizes the importance of word problems which maintain and reproduce equitable structures and represent real-life uses of mathematics. Seeing that previously available mathematics textbooks entirely exclude the lived experiences of marginalized people and do not address the daily needs of Californians, I humbly submit the following word problems for consideration.  Word problems! My favorite! 1. During their 5-year-old child Ostrich's gender reveal party, Theo, Lennie and Dash light an out of control fire. If 50 folx attended, 12% are killed, 34% are non-fatally injured, and 54% escape, how many Hallmark cards will the throuple have to send? 2. Lori weighs herself on several different scales, with different units, including lbs, kgs, stones, and carats. Discuss how dimensional quantities allow people of size to take control of their identities and effect change in the world.  3. 20 undocumented prospective resi...