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Comment by troupo

16 hours ago

Ah yes. The famous theoretical mathematicians who immediately started on novel problems in theoretical mathematics without first learning and understanding a huge number of trivial things like how division works to begin with, what fractions are, what equations are and how they are solved etc.

Edit: let's look at a paper like Some Linear Transformations on Symmetric Functions Arising From a Formula of Thiel and Williams https://ecajournal.haifa.ac.il/Volume2023/ECA2023_S2A24.pdf and try and guess how many of trivial things were completely unneeded to write a paper like this.

Seems that teaching Bob trivial things would be a simple solution to this predicament.

  • That's what the program he just took was supposed to be for, learning not output. You've just reinvented the article from first principles, congrats

    • Sometimes I wonder how deeply some people actually read these articles. What's the point of the comments if all we're doing is re-explaining what's already explained in such a precise and succint manner? It's a fantastic article. It's so well-written and clear. And yet we're stuck going in a circle repeating what's in the article to people who either didn't read it, or didn't read it with the care it deserves.

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    • > That’s what the program he just took was supposed to be for, learning not output.

      If you send a kid to an elementary school, and they come back not having learned anything, do you blame the concept of elementary schools, or do you blame that particular school - perhaps a particular teacher _within_ that school?