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Comment by papeda | Hacker News Reader

> I am constantly encountering people that Absolutely. Will. Not. Admit. Ignorance. Or. Fault. Even when it’s quite clear.

IMO this is one of the fringe benefits of a good math education. Almost everybody who does math for long enough, especially if you work in small groups with your peers, will have a moment of "oh, I see, I am totally wrong and you are totally right" and find out that being wrong does not make someone a bad person. And you will see your peers do the same.

It's one underrated side effect of clear and unambiguous reasoning. Yes, many things are grey areas, but there's value in a place where you can't throw up a muddle of goalpost-shifting and rhetorical tricks to run away from your own errors.

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Also in math, you spend a majority of your time not understanding things. As soon as you understand something in math, you immediately move on to the next thing you don't understand. As opposed to say engineering where you tend to get good at a particular process and applying it. In math confusion is the default state.

> In math confusion is the default state.

I love that!

I find that in engineering, too. I write about that here:

https://medium.com/chrismarshallny/thats-not-what-ships-are-...

I agree (I think Andrew Wiles said something like this but I can't find it now).

When I was younger and my dream was to become a programmer, I imagined (probably rightfully so) my default state in life would be feeling very secure in the fact that I am an expert in my job and know advanced stuff and so on. Now that I became a mathematician instead, I miss that sort of self-assurance.

I think programming also humbles you in that sense.

After thinking a few times "it must be the compilers fault", you get more humble and figure out that you're too stupid to find your own fault ;).

I have a rule of thumb: "If it's the tool's fault, then it's my fault."

That's a big reason I don't like to use prerelease compilers and toolsets.

I spent half this week on a bug that I was sure was the compiler's fault.

It was my fault.

I've been through that one enough times to realize it's always my fault. The more convinced I am that it's a compiler bug, the harder I look for my mistake.

Not really, because you find the bug soon enough and that reinforces your self-importance.

When you write software you write bugs, because nobody is perfect. You cannot even try to deny the bugs that you wrote, because it's all in source contol. Your fix might even brake something else, every senior knows this.

So I still feel the more experienced you get, the more you have to aknowledge your own shortcomings.

Or someone looks over your shoulder for 2 minutes and finds it..

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