"dancing animals"

Moontower Munchies #134

Friends,

Couple Munchies today to take you gently into the holiday🦃, but before that, I’ll mention that Sunday’s post was abnormally popular for a non-finance piece. I think the resonance is that it’s a call to slow down in the name of quality so it’s a grounding message that doesn’t present falling behind as a trade-off. It’s a nourishing thought and we can feel that.

If you missed it and have extra cozy time to read, here’s the link: slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Onwards (and related!):

Math Sympathy

My wife started the Math Academy diagnostic on Sunday night. She couldn’t remember that if you raise a number to the 0th power, you get 1.

Her frustration instantly reminded me of being a kid and getting mad at math.

She was annoyed because she couldn’t see the intuition behind “if I multiply something by itself zero times, I get… one?”

I don’t get that either. Rather than look it up, I figured we could “prove” that this must be true based on rules that feel more visible.

Here’s how I tried to make sense of it from basics:

I asked her what 2² * 2³ was — something she could manually see as 4×8=32.

Then I said “Represent 32 using the same base of 2”.

She got 2⁵.

I had her write down what we did so far:

2² * 2³ = 2⁵

So what’s the pattern?

“That you add the exponents when you multiply?”

Right — as long as the base is the same.

But here’s the key part: she basically derived the rule herself from observation. And that matters. Most of us don’t like to accept rules “just because.”

So from there I ask what’s: 2³ * 2⁻³?

Add the exponents... 2⁰

But we know, by definition, that 2⁻³ = 1/2³

So:

2³ * 2⁻³ = 8 * 1/8 = 1

So 2⁰ MUST also be 1.

There’s no intuition here—but it follows inevitably from the basic definitions we already accept.

Back to sympathy for the learner…

She still felt annoyed even though she followed the chain. I remember being frustrated as a kid: you can see how it works, but it’s not intuitively satisfying.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown more patient with “I don’t get the intuition, but I see why this rule must be true given the rules I know are inviolable.”

But when you’re young, or new to a topic, it’s easy to get bogged down by “not getting the why.” You don’t yet have the faith that a little time, a few reps, or a fresh look on another day will eventually give you that satisfying resolution in your head.

Without that faith, you feel like you’re following a recipe blindly. Which is, of course, why my wife was annoyed. She doesn’t want to rely on arbitrary memorized rules. When you feel that way, you don’t feel confident — you don’t feel like you could re-derive the rule if you needed to.

It feels like an assault on your independence or intelligence.

Anyway, this is just a thought I had because I totally commiserate with that frustration in numeracy, and this little back-and-forth dominated Sunday night’s family dinner conversation.

By the way, I still haven’t looked up “intuitive explanations for why raising numbers to the zero power equals 1,” but the proof-by-necessity — the “how could it be otherwise?” style — is satisfying enough for me not to care.

“dancing animals”

Option trader and professional shtpoaster P4 tweeted this quote I’ve been sitting on a for a month:

Kurt Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:

”Oh,” she says, “well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?”

And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And see some great-looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is -- we’re here on Earth to fart around.

And of course, the computers will do us out of that. And what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And it’s like we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

My wife will sympathize with Kurt’s wife. I will leave the house, forget the stamps, and come back telling her about the friend I just made who works in the produce section where we just discussed apple varietals for 30 minutes. Tangos are my favorite.

I’ve always thought this was a bit of a bug. It is quite inconvenient since I easily lose track of time. But “dancing animals” is the redemption I didn’t know I needed. It’s a redemption we all need.

It is grace.

It’s a little reminder that we are messier than our identities or affiliations or goals. Your strengths contain your weaknesses. Your beliefs are self-contradicting. You thought you were so smart 10 years ago and now cringe at what you didn’t know.

And still we will try to figure it all out. And we should.

But if we ever forget that we are animals and if we forget to dance, all that we figure out will not be for us but for our sedation.

Happy Thanksgiving…I’ll be back next week.

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There’s so much to be thankful for. These are just a couple of shots from this past Sunday. The little guy came up to play teen spirit after our set at the music school. Last Xmas, on a lark that he might like it, I got him that guitar. By this Xmas he’s asking for a wah. How can I say no to that? F’n A kid let’s go!

Stay groovy

☮️

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