5 ms·

So, so much hubris. - "My analogies are brilliant, but you need to already understand the field for them to be brilliant, which I learned after tons of people

So, so much hubris. - "My analogies are brilliant, but you need to already understand the field for them to be brilliant, which I learned after tons of people told me that the analogy is actually not brilliant. But they are brilliant!" - "You need to identify as an X to be good at X" -- No. Polar opposite. The best people in any area don't identify as anything. If anything, the opposite is the case - once you think you're a great mathematician, you stop becoming exactly that. - "If you had any difficulty following that first paragraph (only two sentences, each of pretty average length), then you are not a good mathematical thinker" -- or your semantics just suck and you're used to dealing with reading shitty semantics. That doesn't make you a good mathematical thinker, it just means that you opted for a bigger buffer than 99% of people need in their day to day jobs, even those which are able to either come up with or understand foreign omplex models on the fly. Also, the length of the sentence doesn't matter, its the density and arrangement of information in it - and, like I said, your semantics suck. - "That then, is mathematical thinking. How do you teach it? Well, you can’t teach it; in fact there is very little anyone can teach anyone. People have to learn things for themselves; the best a “teacher” can do is help them to learn. " -- the entire paragraph just wastes the readers attention. Teaching is to help learn. What are you saying? Nothing of value. Posts like these are why I can't take academics serious. This is high-school levels of ignorance, crossing into five different fields that the author is not even close to being competent in. What the hell?

lesam 5y ago
Also: “my work was extremely valuable to a group of academics, but not worth publishing.” What?
devnonymous 5y ago
I'm not sure you either read the entire post or if you did, you grasped the point of the post. Prof. Delvin [1], the author, has been pushing to make math literacy and mathematical thinking more accessible for a long time now. This post is a guide to what that means. [1] http://profkeithdevlin.com/ http://profkeithdevlin.com/ ..so much for the irony of calling out hubris and stating 'the author is not even close to being competent'
- hans1729 5y ago
  >..so much for the irony of calling out hubris and stating 'the author is not even close to being competent' I don't see how your answer relates to my criticism at all. What I'm pointing out is that the author touches on a variety of topics where he clearly exceeds his field of expertise. I'm not saying that he is incompetent as a mathematician at all, nor that he is ill-intended in writing the post.
  - devnonymous 5y ago
    > I don't see how your answer relates to my criticism at all. What I'm pointing out is that the author touches on a variety of topics where he clearly exceeds his field of expertise. I'm not saying that he is incompetent as a mathematician at all, nor that he is ill-intended in writing the post. Forgive me, I'm confused. You did claim hubris. Which topics, precisely, does the good professor touch upon that is not within his field of expertise as a mathematician and an educator ? ... within this post that you claimed is full of hubris ?
    - hans1729 5y ago
      From the post: >If you want to be good at activity X, you have to start to see yourself as an X-er – to act like an X-er. This is what struck me the most. It's a terrible generalization (beyond the limits of a mathematicians competence) that doesn't hold up - you can be good at any given topic without actually identifying as anything. Since I have no degree in psychology, I'm in no position to actually claim to know better. That being said: the notion that identifying with anything somehow enables you to reach deeper ends of a field is simply off. Afaik, identifying with anything is more a blockage than anything else. Also, the mere fact that he is an educator is meaningless to me in this context, as some of the most ignorant/filled with hubris people I've come across can call themselves educators, so if anything I take that term as counter-indicative for general competence. That being said, I may have judged too harshly given that I missed the clarification in the last paragraph.
      - devnonymous 5y ago
alberto_ol 5y ago
At the end of the post there is a note "The opening paragraph is a parody of such writing. This comment was added a day after initial publication, when a letter from a reader indicated that he missed the fact that the opening was a parody, and complained that he found it difficult to read."

lesam 5y ago

Also: “my work was extremely valuable to a group of academics, but not worth publishing.” What?

devnonymous 5y ago

I'm not sure you either read the entire post or if you did, you grasped the point of the post. Prof. Delvin [1], the author, has been pushing to make math literacy and mathematical thinking more accessible for a long time now. This post is a guide to what that means. [1] http://profkeithdevlin.com/ http://profkeithdevlin.com/ ..so much for the irony of calling out hubris and stating 'the author is not even close to being competent'

hans1729 5y ago
>..so much for the irony of calling out hubris and stating 'the author is not even close to being competent' I don't see how your answer relates to my criticism at all. What I'm pointing out is that the author touches on a variety of topics where he clearly exceeds his field of expertise. I'm not saying that he is incompetent as a mathematician at all, nor that he is ill-intended in writing the post.
- devnonymous 5y ago
  > I don't see how your answer relates to my criticism at all. What I'm pointing out is that the author touches on a variety of topics where he clearly exceeds his field of expertise. I'm not saying that he is incompetent as a mathematician at all, nor that he is ill-intended in writing the post. Forgive me, I'm confused. You did claim hubris. Which topics, precisely, does the good professor touch upon that is not within his field of expertise as a mathematician and an educator ? ... within this post that you claimed is full of hubris ?
  - hans1729 5y ago
    From the post: >If you want to be good at activity X, you have to start to see yourself as an X-er – to act like an X-er. This is what struck me the most. It's a terrible generalization (beyond the limits of a mathematicians competence) that doesn't hold up - you can be good at any given topic without actually identifying as anything. Since I have no degree in psychology, I'm in no position to actually claim to know better. That being said: the notion that identifying with anything somehow enables you to reach deeper ends of a field is simply off. Afaik, identifying with anything is more a blockage than anything else. Also, the mere fact that he is an educator is meaningless to me in this context, as some of the most ignorant/filled with hubris people I've come across can call themselves educators, so if anything I take that term as counter-indicative for general competence. That being said, I may have judged too harshly given that I missed the clarification in the last paragraph.
    - devnonymous 5y ago

alberto_ol 5y ago

At the end of the post there is a note "The opening paragraph is a parody of such writing. This comment was added a day after initial publication, when a letter from a reader indicated that he missed the fact that the opening was a parody, and complained that he found it difficult to read."