<story><title>The centrality of stupidity in mathematics</title><url>https://mathforlove.com/2024/09/the-centrality-of-stupidity-in-mathematics/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gwd</author><text>&amp;gt; Science makes me feel stupid too. It&amp;#x27;s just that I&amp;#x27;ve gotten used to it.&lt;p&gt;When I started my PhD program, a group of us were given a little talk by the department secretary.&lt;p&gt;She told the story of how she went to audition for Jeopardy!, a trivia game show.  She saw a whole bunch of other people at the audition get really nervous and choke up; her take on it was that they were used to being the most knowledgable in the room -- they were used to sitting in front of the TV screen with their friends or family and knowing every fact, and when they were suddenly confronted with a situation where &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt; was as knowledgable as they were, they were suddenly very intimidated.&lt;p&gt;She, on the other hand, was completely relaxed -- she spent her days working with Nobel prize winners and loads of other people for whom she had no doubt were smarter than her.  Being confronted with loads of people smarter than her was a daily experience.&lt;p&gt;She told this story to us to say, a lot of you will experience the same thing: You were used to being the smartest person in your High School, you were even used to being the smartest person in your classes at the prestigious university you attended.  Now you&amp;#x27;ll encounter a situation where &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt; is like you: the best and most driven people in your classes.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;ll feel stupid and inferior for a bit, and that&amp;#x27;s normal.  Don&amp;#x27;t let it bother you.  Eventually you&amp;#x27;ll notice while that most of these other people have areas where they&amp;#x27;re better than you, they have areas where you&amp;#x27;re better.  And there will still be the occasional person who seems better than you at everything: that&amp;#x27;s OK too.  You&amp;#x27;re not the best at everything, and you don&amp;#x27;t have to be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tombert</author><text>For every job I&amp;#x27;ve ever had, I&amp;#x27;ve been the &amp;quot;math and functional programming nerd&amp;quot;, where I know lots of tricks in Haskell and F# and even concurrency theory within Java.  I felt very smart.&lt;p&gt;I went to ICFP in 2019, and I can say with a high degree of confidence that I was the dumbest person there [1].  Everyone was speaking on four-syllable mathematical notation that I had never heard of, and talking about intricacies in GHC that I wasn&amp;#x27;t really familiar with, and different aspects of type theory that were completely foreign to me.&lt;p&gt;It was very humbling; it didn&amp;#x27;t depress me or anything, but made me realize that there&amp;#x27;s a lot to learn and improve on, and the people there were actually extremely nice and gave me some pointers so I can get incrementally closer to being as smart as they are.&lt;p&gt;I think 2024 Tom would be the second dumbest guy in the room if I went again.&lt;p&gt;[1] Knowledge-wise, I have no idea about IQ or anything.</text></comment>
<story><title>The centrality of stupidity in mathematics</title><url>https://mathforlove.com/2024/09/the-centrality-of-stupidity-in-mathematics/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gwd</author><text>&amp;gt; Science makes me feel stupid too. It&amp;#x27;s just that I&amp;#x27;ve gotten used to it.&lt;p&gt;When I started my PhD program, a group of us were given a little talk by the department secretary.&lt;p&gt;She told the story of how she went to audition for Jeopardy!, a trivia game show.  She saw a whole bunch of other people at the audition get really nervous and choke up; her take on it was that they were used to being the most knowledgable in the room -- they were used to sitting in front of the TV screen with their friends or family and knowing every fact, and when they were suddenly confronted with a situation where &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt; was as knowledgable as they were, they were suddenly very intimidated.&lt;p&gt;She, on the other hand, was completely relaxed -- she spent her days working with Nobel prize winners and loads of other people for whom she had no doubt were smarter than her.  Being confronted with loads of people smarter than her was a daily experience.&lt;p&gt;She told this story to us to say, a lot of you will experience the same thing: You were used to being the smartest person in your High School, you were even used to being the smartest person in your classes at the prestigious university you attended.  Now you&amp;#x27;ll encounter a situation where &lt;i&gt;everyone&lt;/i&gt; is like you: the best and most driven people in your classes.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;ll feel stupid and inferior for a bit, and that&amp;#x27;s normal.  Don&amp;#x27;t let it bother you.  Eventually you&amp;#x27;ll notice while that most of these other people have areas where they&amp;#x27;re better than you, they have areas where you&amp;#x27;re better.  And there will still be the occasional person who seems better than you at everything: that&amp;#x27;s OK too.  You&amp;#x27;re not the best at everything, and you don&amp;#x27;t have to be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andai</author><text>My first day at computer science I saw a guy with a huge beard playing Dwarf Fortress, and I was like &amp;quot;oh crap, he&amp;#x27;s like ten times smarter than me.&amp;quot;</text></comment>