Indeed. I've learned more mathematics from free online resources (IRC, Math.SE, nLab, papers available online) than anywhere else. In most other fields, when yo

Indeed. I've learned more mathematics from free online resources (IRC, Math.SE, nLab, papers available online) than anywhere else. In most other fields, when you pester experts to share their knowledge, the very first thing they first ask you is how much you're going to pay them. In mathematics, the only real bottleneck for the transmission of knowledge is my own ability to assimilate it. I feel particularly deceived about this state of affairs because my parents paid a lot of money for my formal education (school, university), and I got significantly less value from it than from people simply willing to share their knowledge for free.