From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/6598 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Eduardo J. Dubuc" Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: on_ignorance Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:55:51 -0300 Message-ID: Reply-To: "Eduardo J. Dubuc" NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1301835734 15861 80.91.229.12 (3 Apr 2011 13:02:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2011 13:02:14 +0000 (UTC) To: Categories list Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Sun Apr 03 15:02:10 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtpx.mta.ca ([138.73.1.4]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Q6MwS-0005Vl-0d for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Sun, 03 Apr 2011 15:02:08 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:40893) by smtpx.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Q6Mw6-00088i-Lt; Sun, 03 Apr 2011 10:01:46 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Q6Mw2-0008SJ-99 for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Sun, 03 Apr 2011 10:01:42 -0300 Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:6598 Archived-At: Concerning certain sarcastic answers given in this list to some trivial questions (trivial for the expert, but not trivial for the ignorant), I just read the following (I ignore the author): "Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries." [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]