RE: on_ignorance

[Marta Bunge <marta.bunge@mcgill.ca>]

[Note from moderator: Marta is correct that I was careless is posting
Eduardo's message. It is not about category theory and is not part of any
thread I am aware of. Any further discussion will not be on the list.
Thanks.]

Dear Eduardo,


Is this part of a thread? Are we supposed to search the categories listings to look for what you are exactly referring to? Do you realize that in so doing we would be taken away from our work or from anything else we would rather be doing? 

MY guess is that your posting would have been rejected by the moderator had  the author been someone else, and this for any of the following reasons.  It contains no mathematics, there is no explicit mention of the context, and an anonymous text is quoted. Moreover, if this belongs to a thread, it is then not a very recent one and surely as a thread it must have expired. 

If moralizing is to be accepted in categories fro now on, I would offer my own advice. Do not write anything likely to create (further) divisions in  categories. To mathematics, respond only with mathematics. Personal remarks - even if laudatory, ought to be forbidden. 

Although a response to a published posting, the moderator should reject this message. I would understand it perfectly!

Best wishes,

Marta



> Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 14:55:51 -0300
> From: edubuc@dm.uba.ar
> To: categories@mta.ca
> Subject: categories: on_ignorance
> 
> 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."
> 


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