The original post was written on Jan.21, 2024
A month ago, there was a lot of backlash in the academic community when the decision was made to exclude advanced mathematics for science students from the high school curriculum in Korea.
Korea is striving to foster the semiconductor, IT, and AI industries on a national level, but it seems that decision-makers do not have a deep understanding of the principles in these fields.
Humans are intuitively familiar with linear thinking.
For example, if you eat a lot, your weight increases. To enhance a relationship, you need to increase the frequency of contact, and so on. Because of this, logical reasoning that achieves social consensus (religion, law, etc.) is composed of connecting and combining multiple stages of relatively simple linear logic.
Although it may appear complex with more stages of logic, anyone can understand it if they look closely. It is because it is made up of things that are based on social consensus/common sense. The field of social sciences is similar in this regard. It includes mathematical modeling, but it doesn’t heavily against intuition.
In a society dominated by Confucianism (social consensus) like the Joseon Dynasty, values such as “diligence” and “industriousness” are highly valued, and output that is directly proportional to input becomes the society’s definition of justice. Excessive output tends to be perceived as unfair. Furthermore, except for natural disasters or unforeseen circumstances, it was an economically supported society focused on labor-intensive “agriculture” that could achieve somewhat linear proportional results. Perhaps due to the long history of the Joseon Dynasty, 500 years, compared to about 50 years of capitalism, it seems that such value judgments still exist in Korean society.
The development of finance has advanced exponential thinking. The magic of compound interest and leverage is not something that people familiar with linear thinking can naturally acquire; it requires a shift in learning and thinking. Perhaps one of the reasons why Jews excel in the field of finance is because they have intentionally taught and practiced this way of thinking.
The development of science and technology has brought about innovations from zero to one. It includes the discovery of new energy sources, the discovery of previously unknown substances, the understanding of principles regarding previously incomprehensible phenomena, and the transformation of the impossible into the possible through extreme efficiency improvements. The advancement of science and engineering teaches a way of thinking that transcends dimensions and thinks on a scale of extremes.
Mathematics is the language for such abstract modeling. I still vividly remember the confusion when I had to describe the state of semiconductor devices as equations based on the characteristics that electrons may exist or not exist according to Schrödinger’s equation in my second semester of sophomore year. When I unfolded equations that continued for several lines on an invisible plane, swapping back and forth between dimensions, it was truly dizzying. – I truly admire scientists. Because of these characteristics, I believe that the multi-faceted and complex global businesses of today’s era are born from tech leaders.
Elon is the best example. Moreover, AI is a very good example of a nonlinear + exponential growth structure. Anyway, before transcending dimensions, differentiation and integration allow us to imagine scales of extremes within the same dimension.
If high school students feel limited during this process, it may be difficult for them to pursue advanced studies in STEM fields at university.
The advancement of AI and the increasing complexity of society will require more geniuses rather than having a high average in society. However, it seems that Korean education is going against the flow of the times.
Kyunivers 
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