# Mentally calculating 889014113748268 mod 222? **URL:** \ **Category:** Mental Calculation, Mathematics, and Puzzles\ **Created:** [November 11, 2020, 5:43pm UTC](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/mentally-calculating-889014113748268-mod-222/56936 "2020-11-11T17:43:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 54
**Author:** ![bjoern.gumboldt](https://forum.artofmemory.com/user_avatar/forum.artofmemory.com/bjoern.gumboldt/32/16747_2.png) [@bjoern.gumboldt](https://forum.artofmemory.com/u/bjoern.gumboldt)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2021, 9:03am UTC](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/mentally-calculating-889014113748268-mod-222/56936/54 "2021-10-18T09:03:52Z")
> [@sonicsid](#): > > I never claimed that. Are you sure about that? You said in your initial post… > [@sonicsid](#): > > Read “The Blank Slate” by Steven Pinker and you’ll find out the truth. What truth are you referring to exactly? That book is too soft science to make that argument. It’s okay though, because elsewhere you said… > [@Chemistry mnemonics](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/chemistry-mnemonics/66331/7): > > I am a high school student, …so welcome to the millennia old **nature versus nurture** debate. 😉 > [@sonicsid](#): > > 400 year old philosophy v/s modern neuroscience, genetics and psychology? _Not even a question_. You should really read up on the topic before making such statements, because you can take the whole thing back another 2,000 years to Aristotle… and then we could argue, “millennia old debate v/s a single book. _Not even a question._” > [@sonicsid](#): > > What I meant was that the mind is not a blank state and some are bound to be better at mental calculation right from the birth Well, your so-called “blank slate” is really an “erased wax tablet” if you want a better translation of the Latin “tabula rasa” and might also better explain the idea. In fact I just discussed with @thinkaboutthebible the very same image… > [@What is a memory palace anyway? \[POLL\]](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/what-is-a-memory-palace-anyway-poll/67955/13): > > Not sure that you mean by “eraser”… it’s wax… you scratch your notes into it. Your so-called eraser would have to put wax back for that to work. What you’d do to reuse the tablet, was to heat it up a little to flatten the wax out again. Is that maybe what you mean? A little “scraper” that allows you to smooth out the tablet’s wax surface when warmed up? …now, I’m not gonna argue that the Ancient Romans/Greeks made a case for neuroplasticity with that analogy but we’re not talking “somethingness from nothingness” here. You should understand the blank slate (the wax tables with Stylo) like a computer with a CPU, ALU ( **arithmetic logic unit** ), etc. that let’s you write a program that you can then execute. There are various reasons why you could move “counting” into the nature category, as you’ll find some animals able of doing so without really being taught by their environment. Same goes for the “ability to speak” but not language itself. > [@sonicsid](#): > > it comes naturally to them and they will require less practice than others to achieve the same level How about you google “nature versus nurture mathematics” and see where that gets you in terms “the truth” because you’ll find as much research supporting one as you’ll find supporting the other. Personal opinion is with @Nodas as far as mental math… not the ability to count (that’s just your brain’s ALU)… most likely neither in your DNA from birth nor epigenetics. Anyways, I hope you have some reading material now that let’s you leave a more qualified comment the next time around. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/mentally-calculating-889014113748268-mod-222/56936)._