Hacker News Reader

Not really. He’s talking about the power of mathematical formalism. With a good formalism you just push symbols around following easily memorized rules without thinking about what they mean until you reach your final result.

View on HN

I disagree. I think the quote is more generally applicable than just mathematics. For example, we can now almost drive a car without thinking about it. We can order groceries just by saying, "hi alexa, please order me some groceries." You don't even have to think about where the car keys are or even how to drive.

What does that have to do with IQ though?

IQ is a measure of one's ability to think, speed of thought, capacity of thought, memory, predictions of the future. A century ago you had to be smarter to survive than now because there were more problems to be solved by the individual. People still built their own homes back then. Grew their own food. Fixed their own cars.

There were more constraints, so people had to be more clever to survive.

Plato tells us this is why Socrates eschewed writing. He considered the written word a crutch and just like walking with crutches all the time would atrophy your legs, writing atrophies the memory.

I don't really buy it, but I can see where you're coming from

Reply on news.ycombinator.com