Argument against: back when cities were more flamable, people didn't set them on fire for the hell of it.

On the other hand, it's a lot easier to use a timer and survive these days, should you happen to not be suicidal.

"I want to see the world burn" is a great line of dialogue, but I'm not convinced it's a real human motivation. Um, except that when I was a kid, I remember wishing that this world was a dream, and I'd wake up. Does that count?

Second thought-- when I was a kid, I didn't have a method in mind. What if I do serious work with lucid dreaming techniques when I'm awake? I don't think the odds of waking up into being a greater intelligence are terribly good, nor is there a guarantee that my live would be better. On the other hand, would you hallucinations be interested in begging me to not try it?

"assume unbelievable X".

Only this is not an unbelievable X, its an entirely believable X (I wouldn't have any reason to ask an unbelieveable - as would anyone asking a question - unless they are actually trying to trick you with a question). In fact - assuming that people are asking you to believe an "unbelievable X" is a strawman of the argument in point.

Invalidating someone else's question (by attacking it or trying to defeat the purpose of the question) for reasons of them not being able to ask the right question or you wanting to answer a different question - is not a reasonable way to win a discussion. I am really not sure how to be more clear about it. Discussions are not about winning. one doesn't need to kill a question to beat it; one needs to fill it's idea-space with juicy information-y goodness to satisfy it.

Yes it is possible to resolve a question by cutting it up; {real world example - someone asks you for help. You could defeat the question by figuring out how to stop them from asking for help, or by finding out why they want help and making sure they don't in the future, or can help themselves. Or you could actually help them.}

Or you could actually respond in a way that helps. There is an argument about giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish; but that's not applicable because you have to first assume people asking about fishing for sharks already know how to fish for normal fish. Give them the answers - the shark meat, then if that doesn't help - teach them how to fish for sharks! Don't tell them they don't know how to fish for normal fish then try to teach them to fish for normal fish, suggesting they can just eat normal fish.

Assuming there isn't something wrong with the question I originally ask and how I present it.

More importantly - this is a different (sometimes related) problem that can be answered in a different question at a different time if that's what I asked about. AND one I will ask later, but of myself. One irrelevant to the main question.

Can you do me a favour and try to steelman the question I asked? And see what the results are, and what answer you might give to it?

conversation and discussion isn't about what you want. It's what each of us wants.

Yes this is true, but as the entity who started a thread (of conversation generally) I should have more say about it's purpose and what is wanted from it. Of course you can choose to not engage, you can derail a thread, and this is not something that you should do. I am trying to outline that the way you chose to engage was not productive (short of accidentally providing the example of failing to answer the question).

The original question again -

Do you have suggestions for either:

a. dealing with it

b. getting people to answer the right question

I am having a crisis in my life of trying to ask people a particular question and have them try to answer a different question. Its painful. I just want to yell at people; "answer the question I asked! not the one you felt like answering that was similar to the one I asked because you thought that was what I wanted to hear about or ask about!".

This has happened recently for multiple questions in my life that I have tried to ask people about. Do you have suggestions for either: a. dealing with it b. getting people to answer the right question

Assuming there isn't something wrong with the question I originally ask and how I present it.

The top 3 answers to the MathOverflow question Which mathematicians have influenced you the most? are Alexander Grothendieck, Mikhail Gromov, and Bill Thurston. Each of these have expressed serious concerns about the community.

• Grothendieck was actually effectively excommunicated by the mathematical community and then was pathologized as having gone crazy. See pages 37-40 of David Ruelle's book A Mathematician's Brain.

• Gromov expresses strong sympathy for Grigory Perelman having left the mathematical community starting on page 110 of Perfect Rigor. (You can search for "Gromov" in the pdf to see all of his remarks on the subject.)

• Thurston made very apt criticisms of the mathematical community in his essay On Proof and Progress In Mathematics. See especially the beginning of Section 3: "How is mathematical understanding communicated?" Terry Tao endorses Thurston's essay in his obituary of Thurston. But the community has essentially ignored Thurston's remarks: one almost never hears people talk about the points that Thurston raises.

My school was largely about memorizing things and barfing it back. No understanding or practical use required. To be fair, this is part of why places like the US or UK tend to be ahead from most places, because their education is more... life-like? Because mine, in the rougher parts of Europe was pretty much exactly what Feynman wrote about Brazil in Surely You Are Joking. PDF: http://buffman.net/ebooks/Richard_P_Feynman-Surely_Youre_Joking_Mr_Feynman_v5.pdf then Ctrl-F for "I discovered a very strange phenomenon". My schooling was very similar.

But even in the more pragmatic type of US / UK style schooling, it is still purely dry theoretical intellectual academic things. How many highly intelligent geeks there learned at school and by the school how to climb a rock, swim, or not get lost in a forest? Or something far, far more important: to present an idea before an auidence, like they do at Toastmasters?

Show me one school in the world that does something more or less Toastmasters'-like on a mandatory basis... this is one of the most important skills for the intellectuals. A scientist has to be able to give a presentation that convinces the fat cats to give a budget to the research project. Without money nothing moves forward.

Intelligence is basically how quickly you learn from experience

I am not at all sure it is true (at the very least it depends on the type of learning, intelligent people often do not learn music or sports movement fast) but to the extent it is true, it would be then very useful to send highly intelligent people through the equivalent of an obstacle course where they gain a lot of different type of experience, like a month long summer camp for gifted students with a different profession or difficult activity tried every day.

Because, you see, we tend to have literally the opposite. Usually the highly intelligent are shut-in savants who have hardly any experience that does not involve a computer, books or paper.

I got an honorary mention in the 2014 Putnam Competition. I have taken the test at December and I heard the results on April, but I haven't posted this other bragging threads, so I'm not if this is appropriate here.

An upvote communicates to other readers "this comment is worth your attention."

If a comment is more highly upvoted, people are more likely to read it rather than skip over it, more likely to read it closely rather than skim it, more likely to follow links that it contains, and more likely to spend some time thinking about its arguments rather than just moving on.

Downvotes sort of do the opposite, but it's not perfectly symmetrical because scores below zero pack an extra punch.

I think you are too quick to take disagreement personally. Interpreting disagreement as lack of respect is an example of this.

Other commenters have said similar things, but I want to express this with my own words. To do mathematics requires multiple skills, and an aesthetic sense may be an underappreciated one of them. You argue that Scott has a good aesthetic sense. I also think that Scott probably has good abilities in some of the skills necessary for doing mathematics. But from Scott's account he appears to be lacking in other skills. Why do you think that what Scott has is sufficient? You mention that early college courses are not representative of real math, but even at higher levels you need skills such as reading formulas, applying algorithms, and understanding the implicit meaning of unmotivated (or even imperfectly motivated) definitions. Keep in mind the Scott relates here that other people skilled in math have tried to educate him outside of a college context.

I'm saying I think your conclusion is wrong, I'm uncertain myself. And even Scott admits "I don’t know if it’s that I’m bad at math, or that I just don’t enjoy math enough to be intrinsically motivated to pursue it," (same link as above), which sounds a bit like a way of retreat to your way of thinking.