Comment by dahart

My ‘of course’ to @ColinWright was intended to be tongue in cheek playful, and not presume anything. But I accept it might come off a different way than I intended.

I think (like with others in this subthread) that I have mislead you or am being misunderstood or both. I’m familiar with the feeling of stupidity in math, and I’d agree that it’s useful when/if harnessed. I’m calling the process of accepting it and dealing with it “curiosity”, partly since if curiosity is missing then people tend to feel shame and anxiety with their stupidity and tend to avoid math and give up on learning it.

I don’t believe there is such a thing as right and wrong here. I’m making a point of view framing distinction, not disagreeing with the article or the quote in the article. I think that “stupidity” isn’t the best word choice in general, even though it might work for math researchers in this case. That word comes with many overloaded and negative meanings that aren’t accurate to what the article is really trying to say.