Paul Graham writes that studying fields with hard, solved problems (eg mathematics) is useful, because it gives you practice solving hard problems and the approaches and habits of mind that you develop solving those problems are useful when you set out to tackle new (technical) problems. This claim seems at least plausible to me and seems to line up with me personal experience, but you seem like a person who might know why I shouldn't believe this, so I ask, is there any reason I should doubt that the problem-solving approaches and habits of mind I develop studying mathematics won't help me as I run into novel technical problems?
Simple: Where's the evidence?
Let me make a simple parsimonious assertion: knowledge acquisition is limited to the precise information acquired with zero secondary benefits to any other areas of the brain. Furthermore, unless practiced regularly this information will most likely not be retained.
While such an assertion is in all likelihood not true, in the absence of evidence, it is more likely to be true than a more complex theory of how knowledge is acquired and retained.
Now, if I was to put Paul Graham's argument into precise, scientific terms, it would b...
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