Weaponised Illiteracy

Wow, I probably shouldn't have started digging down the literacy rabbit hole...

As someone who is currently teaching Mathematics (among other things), I'm seeing stuff like this.

 

Now this isn't a post about mathematical skill, but the responses to this image are fascinating.

Some people are working out the part inside the brackets and the part outside the brackets separately then multiplying them together due to the brackets. 800 ÷ 4 = 200, 5 x 10 = 50... 200 x 50 = 10000 (This is wrong)

Some are simply working left to right. 800 ÷ 4 = 200, 200 x 5 = 1000, 1000 x 10 = 10000 (Another way to get the wrong answer) 

Some are simply working right to left. 5 x 10 = 50, 4 x 50 = 200, 800 ÷ 200 = 4. (Which gets us to the right answer but using the wrong logic) 

Some are doing the work inside the brackets (5 x 10 = 50), followed by the part immediately outside the brackets (4 x 50 = 200), then the operator by itself on the side (800 ÷ 200 = 4). (Correct answer, correct logic)

It's a basic application of the order of operations... (B.I.D.M.A.S. or P.E.D.M.A.S...or some other combination of the letters). Parentheses/Brackets, Exponents/Indices, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction.

People are arguing about what the answer should be. They can agree that the answer is not 50 (or 50! which is "50 factorial" or 3041409320171337804361260816606476884437764156896051200000000000)

It's not that the information isn't there. Everything necessary to work out the correct result is present, but a lot of the people trying to solve the questions don't know how to read the information presented. In a way it's frustrating, I've got another perspective to look at when it comes to this matter, but I'll get to that in my next post. For the moment, I'm looking at the numbers, the mathematics, the literacy of understanding what a question is actually asking, and linking that back to my last post about game literacy.

A lot of people don't get Tabletop RPGs. For those of us who do get them, they make an intuitive sense as a method for exploring imagined worlds with a group of friends, but as much as we might instinctively and intuitively grok them (I hate that "grok" has been commandeered by the AI project associated with Elon Musk) we have to accept that some folks simply won't. In some cases there's an active resistance, they don't want to get TTRPGs because they have strong opinions about control and anything taking away that control is "of the devil", for others it's simply not being able to make the mental leap between an imagined world and a social pastime where immersion often requires surrendering to the collective space.

I see this sort of thing among my students when I'm teaching them fundamental mathematical concepts, these days more often than when I'm teaching a group of players a new game. I can go over the concepts of how to read mathematical equations, how to read angles, but the actual understanding beyond the surface comprehension of the letters and symbols is a degree of abstraction that is hard to overcome. It can be explained from a dozen different methods, and hopefully one of those methods sticks, but if the recipient of the message doesn't want to decode the transmission of data into a way that will be usable for them, then the message will not get through regardless of what the transmitter of the message intends.

I'll definitely admit that things are different from a school perspective compared to a gaming group. In a school, the students are forced to be there. I'm teaching classes of students with low drive, from a low socio-economic background, they often don't see how understanding mathematics could help them because they think they'll never have money, and ever work in jobs where numbers will be useful. Their parents have been this way (I know because I've had to ring parents on occasion), and in many cases it's multi-generational. This lack of mathematical literacy stretches to verbal and textual forms too. They listen to three word slogans, they think vulgarity is the height of humour because it shocks people and this gives them a situational edge against those who are offended by such things, they fall for scams, televangelists, lying politicians, and snake-oil salesmen because they can't read the nuance and have become so resistant to learning from their mistakes that they won't admit they've made any. They become proud of their ignorance, they weaponise it.

In gaming, we tend to get people who aren't as resistant to those ideas. Rather than being proud of their ignorance, taking themselves too seriously, or unwilling to open themselves to the collective story, we often get outsiders who are looking for a something imaginary that they aren't getting from the physical world around them and their daily lives. As outsiders they might not have had the opportunity to learn the techniques necessary to understand the rules as written, but it's rarely a case that they are actively against want to learn the rules. Many gamers have come to the hobby looking for something more...maybe a creative outlet, maybe a safe social space, or something else. Those who don't want to learn what TTRPGs are about aren't going to be attending our games, they've got their safe spaces elsewhere in the real world... maybe team sports, drinking at the local bar, or organised religion. All things that don't really need textual literacy or social literacy (empathy), they've just passive entertainment that you can sit back and watch while feeling a part of a larger tribe. If they don't fully understand the information presented, they can just hide and go through the motions in the crowd...and as long as they don't question the status quo they'll be fine. TTRPGs are an active entertainment, and to respond actively to a situation it usually requires an understanding of the situation and an understanding of how you can manipulate it in some way.

I probably need to include this in the SNAFU manifesto in some way. It needs some cleaning up, some references, and some deeper analysis of the elements involved, but I feel like it's starting to scratch below the surface of the issues that other recent posts have looked at, and it's certainly worth further investigation.Li