Calculus is a Utamaro Konaki-jiji
Repeat after me — All we need is Arithmetic, Algebra and Geometry!
Calculus fails because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts thus measuring the infinitesimal quickly becomes an expensive exercise in numerical paleontology.
Calculus is a burden best avoided. Should you ever be unfortunate enough to cross its path DO NOT pick it up. Even more distracting then its descendant, Object Oriented Programming, Calculus is a socialist wrapper on capitalist Algebra and Geometry which have been solving market problems effectively applying Arithmetic for millennia.
It’s the tax man’s land grab after one measures more accurately in hopes of growing just a little more next season. The credit stealing agent, the Marketeer pretending he’s a Pioneer. It’s the elite using insider language to obscure the simple reality… hiding the truth that everything you see around you is thanks to the same Math you learned in Elementary School not College.
The Konaki-jiji is an evil spirit(yokai) said to be able to take the appearance of an old man or a baby. In either case, the spirit lures an unwary passerby towards it and allows him or her to pick it up. After the spirit is picked up, it suddenly becomes a heavy stone that crushes the victim to death. In some versions of Konaki-jiji stories, the spirit is that of a baby left to die in the wilderness. — Wiki
The tools we used to build the greatest monuments of our civilization weren’t standardized and they didn’t require special language. They required technique and hard work. Adaption and organic composition. Originality and artistry. If all you have is language but you don’t have any good ideas then you may be literate but you aren’t an author. You’re just a script kiddie who fancies himself a programmer. You may be compatible with “the system” but you play at someone else’s pleasure.
Forget about Trigonometry; Geometry will make you rich and Algebra will keep you that way. Practice counting. Calculus promises market control but it almost always compromises your capacity. A database is no substitute for a brain and algorithm can’t drive profit like a mind.
You don’t need fancy software or brilliant people working for you to produce amazing things. Basic math will carry you through. You’re capable, all on your own, of original thought. You hear what noone has ever heard and when you sing it sounds unlike any bird. But you have to listen to your own voice and stop paying others to speak for you. Stop worrying so much about making mistakes and focus more on being heard.
Arithmetic consists of the study of numbers, especially the properties of the traditional operations on them. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Having made my bones rising through the ranks of Canada’s growing technocracy in the late 90's I’m happy to celebrate the advantages of the electronic age, but let’s be fair here. Digital is a cheat almost all the time enabling a button pushing generation of “don’t have to know how things work” consumers. Are there situations where “programmed solutions” have advantages? Of course. There are entire spheres of production where programmers rely on digital armour like a space suit. Without it you don’t even leave the ship. However, these are highly specialized pursuits and it’s a major error in judgment to think you can or should apply principles which work in such finite conditions to the broader world you live in.
Algebra studies the rules of operations and relations and their application to solve equations.
Algebra applied to geometric representations of information is the cost effective tool of choice for almost every artist, composer, farmer, or producer you love. If they used a short hand, such sorcerers almost always conceived of their own. These optimizations can be highly effective. Calculus is just one such system, commercialized by academia as a way to gin up content it sells to ignorant students who are “shined” by the verisimilitude of it all.
Geometry studies shapes, size and properties of spaces of a given number of dimensions.
Calculus is a dusty database of shortcuts, a small handed thieves cant. The prize is the attention of the paying public. Are there advantages to dialects? Yes. Are there efficiencies in a “working language”? Obviously. Are these advantages you’ll be able to leverage in your own private means of production? Almost certainly not. Are you a computer scientist? A mathematician? Do you work as a professor? Do you need it on your “profile” so you can push buttons that do it for you at your job? No? Then forget about it. You’re better off without the Calculus. Whoever decided to place Calculus at the “higher levels” of your education was an asshole.
Calculus is a branch of mathematics that studies change. It focuses on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals and infinite series. It is also the most stifling, deterring, waste of time any grade 12-er who might have otherwise loved math could possibly be exposed to right before they’d be choosing their Major.
A pompous trickster who used smoke and mirrors to warp the appraisal of a neat bag of tricks. It’s not more advanced than Arithmetic, it’s just more commercial. Calculus is like magic. It’s shiny, colourful and it appears to do things without the effort of boring substantials like work and accuracy and diligence and creative composition of approach. Calculus is like Object Oriented Programming. It IS the approach and you better hope it can handle the need. By definition it’s trapped within its routine. Capable of tackling problems already tackled. For those seeking new value… it abandons, instead favouring the student happy to play 2D origami. Musical chairs around tables of old data.
Trigonometry is basically about studying properties of triangles, lengths, and angles. However, it is also deals with waves and oscillations.
Calculus claims it’s real “processing” the way Wallstreet claims it’s real capitalism. Just because something is private doesn’t mean it’s good or capital producing. A best practice is named so for its effect in the past not its potential for the future. The word optimize only reliably applies to the system that created the best practices in the first place. It fails to apply much advantage in new systems yet generates inconvenience like any special tool beyond its purview.
It takes capitalization to produce new wealth. Algorithms can’t automatically produce new capital; they can print but they can’t compose. Last years Flu vaccine is this years example of what not to do if you want a new vaccine to actually work. Calculus is a timely approach codified to appear timeless, effective for most only in the lab as a demonstration.
Wallstreet is “market capitalism” which is a hybrid and like many of the more collectivist hybrids it uses market control (opportunity power) to accomplish what socialism attempts through means control (capacity power). From my point of view both are insidious and despicable if for different reasons.
Calculus surrounds itself with the sycophants who have worshiped it for so long from the ivory towers it paid for. Singing its praises and pointed to past success. It’s manna from heaven (old ideas). Rather than innovate (new ideas); simply conduct (repackage/remake/reboot). Follow the rules. Jesus take the wheel. Pretend it’s harder than it really is so that people are impressed by your ability to apply it. The masters who produced Calculus for worthy purpose in their time are long gone while posers charge composition rates for recital.
The audience doesn’t need to know you just pushed a button. They don’t want to know the details. If only they realized the “artist” doesn’t know them either. Calculus is exciting, though! What a show… a professor is like a DJ! Drop the Bass and watch the students assume their gravitational orbit. Like any other magician the professor prides himself on a big bang from a little bit of sulfur. Yet more misdirection from the “trusted authorities” turning another generation away from earning for themselves toward the church of calculated illusion instead.
