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I think this misses that the word "noob" (or at least its negative connotation) is mostly used in comparison to other people, and doesn't apply at the boundary of human knowledge. Newton wasn't a "noob" because he didn't know about relativity. He probably didn't feel like a "noob". He was just very curious.

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I think his assertion is that Newton did feel like a noob. I tend to think pg's right. He's done novel enough things that he has an informed view. My experience with novel though less significant investigation and problem solving shows the same.

I think noob (short for 'new boy' where I come from) just means that you're new to an institution, like a school, or today an open source community. It doesn't imply anything to do with competence.

Probably just multiple people with different understandings of the word. For example, I picked it up from StarCraft multiplayer in the late 90s/early 2000s, where there were levels:

newb(ie) - New to the game (typically doesn't know what they're doing).

noob - Currently not good at the game, but is trying to get better (usually lots of overlap with "newb(ie)").

n00b - Insult for someone who isn't good at the game, and is not trying to get better. Often deludes themselves into thinking they're already good at the game.

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