Facts are how you build up everything else. It pretty hard to reason about complex math if you don’t understand how to count to 100. It’s pretty hard to reason about how societies move in waves and cycles if you don’t memorize something about history.

I think people don’t understand that you don’t just start doing abstract work. You build it a bunch of facts that you memorize and then you can start building higher level things like patterns and abstractions.

I know this from trying to teach my child basic concepts like what money is. What exactly is a day. How magnet work. The entire concept of estimation. These are trivial to adults, but these are hard won concepts that were build from concrete ideas for my child.

We know this is necessary because of cultures that are missing whole concepts like particular colors. The idea of right and left. So on.

Tell me how many people rely on you? Because being unavailable for hours can actually be deadly to a child you are responsible for.

I have 3 examples I have experienced, one with my own child where if I or the other person was just unavailable while they were outside of the house, irreparable damage would have happened to the child. Or in my in kid’s case, she would have just died.

Spoken like someone who isn’t responsible for others. My kid is ADHD and autistic. She’s high functioning, but that doesn’t mean I get to just be unreachable. I’m several people’s emergency contacts. I have to travel unknown places all the time and be there exactly to get the help my kid needs.

I’m a single mother. I trade off whatever they are stealing from me for the ability to get cheaper versions of what my kid needs. My job is flexible, so it allows me to take my kid to what she needs with the understanding that I can answer questions when I’m away.

Oh, I also have a deadly neurodegenerate disease that is only kept in check by this specific medication that I need to be places for a while to get. I like my phone reminding me to go get that and also being able to fill out the paperwork on my phone because of my shitty hands.

A lot of people I see who are like, “Just live without a phone!” Are not the people who are actually responsible for people and/or things. I was like that when I was young, but then you know, I became a pillar of my family and friend network. People who are unreachable when needed are dropped from my network. I know several people who when I actually needed them and it was very dire, were unreachable. I left them messages and everything. Nope. Don’t think they ever knew the issue. Dropped. Sorry even in the 90s and 00s, you were expected to listen to your voice mails promptly. I shouldn’t have to mount a search party to find you, which is actually necessary for some people I know.