The top-rated answer states that "the goal is to learn how to do mathematics, not to 'know' it". I don't think that's a defeatist sentiment or a rationalizatio

The top-rated answer states that "the goal is to learn how to do mathematics, not to 'know' it". I don't think that's a defeatist sentiment or a rationalization for the state-of-things. It's certainly true that one would gain more insight that shows how modern-maths-as-we-know-it evolved from a centuries' long struggle to understand basic patterns (exempli gratia, Cox's "Primes of the Form x^2 + ny^2"). But it is also true that, when you are doing mathematics, such a book is not nearly as helpful as an impenetrable tome like Neukirch's Algebraic Number Theory. From my own experience (which, I'll admit, is not much to extrapolate from), the former was great for its "insight" and the latter just had too much unnecessary "information". Until I got stuck in an actual maths problem. Then suddenly my opinion switched, and the latter became a trusted map through strange lands. You're right about the amount of information that's encoded in a definition or theorem. And it is very difficult to portray why that information is important (never mind how to access it, see other's comments about scaffolding and cathedrals and the like). I fear that trying to describe why groups are defined like they are would just lead to more impenetrable tomes - but instead of being maps to the lost traveler, they'd be more like tourist adverts. But the questions the source was asking is "why are books like this?" and "how do others [learn maths] in this situation?" Well, maths books are like this because they are guides to help people doing maths. And you learn maths by doing it. I don't think its defeatist to say that no book or lecture about riding a bike would compare to the experience of actually riding a bike. To paraphrase the top-rated answer, why would you expect anything different from maths? But to answer the underlying question of both yourself and the source: how do we improve this? I think pedagogy should focus on getting to "do maths" faster. You really learn by getting stuck in a problem.