

The importance of stupidity in scientific research - rywang
http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full

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atakan_gurkan
I would like to counter the opinions that claim that the author should use the
term "ignorance" rather than "stupidity". IMHO, the inadequacy that one feels
during research does not arise from not knowing the answer, it is a result of
not being able to figure out how to approach the problem and reaching an
answer. More than this, most of the time you do not know what the appropriate
question is.

This is not ignorance, sometimes you simply cannot weave the threads of
knowledge you have to reach a pattern. Of course if you have more threads,
your job becomes easier; and at some low level of knowledge you will have
nothing interesting to ask, but this is not the major difficulty in completing
a Ph.D. thesis, at least in my experience (which is in physics/astronomy).

This is what the author is talking about, it is not "knowledge" that is
lacking, at least not knowledge in the sense that something you can learn from
a book. It is the quality that is mentioned in an essay by pg:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html>

I would not call this problem ignorance. Even though stupidity is kinda harsh,
it captures the feeling well.

~~~
andrewcooke
the idea that stupidity is harsh, and that we have to rename this feeling as
ignorance is all part of the problem. everyone is so hung up on not being
stupid. even after reading the article, it's what people care about...

you can argue all you like that the author should use another word. but what
you have to get over when you're doing research is exactly that _feeling_. the
feeling that people are trying to hide from by playing with words.

not sure i am making my point well - what i am trying to say is that the
people who are complaining about the term "stupid" are not helping anyone.
they're just exhibiting the same instinctive reaction that you feel in
research. whatever name you give it, you feel the same.

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nickolai
In my limited experience with academia, I would argue this article is more
about recognizing one's ignorance in front of a problem, which is indeed one
of the most important attributes of a good scientist : "i dont know how to
solve this problem, yet".

This is in fact quite the opposite of a stupid position - which would handle
the issue of being faced with a challenging problem with either militant
ignorance "i don't know and I don't care" or uninformed arrogance "This? of
course I know : <insert wrong answer here>"

~~~
rflrob
Very true, but for the first 15 or so years of schooling, knowing the answer
to a question is a sign that you aren't stupid, and so the inverse _must_ be
true: not knowing is a sign you _are_ stupid. It takes a while to get out of
this habit.

~~~
calibraxis
Yes, that's a huge problem with education — if it's geared towards scoring
well on tests, and collaboration and research is often "cheating", then it
promotes facile understanding.

For a job, tests are fine; you want to know if someone has a basic foundation
of ability before they cut into you. But that's different from actual
education, the kind that people go through for the first decades of their
lives. That should be about something deeper than reliably scoring 90% on
mindnumbing series of tests. Like critical thinking and self-directed
learning.

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andrewcooke
note that the author is male; the person who dropped out is female. for some
reason, women, on average, seem to take "being stupid" to heart, while men can
ignore it. i have no idea why this happens, but i've seen it again and again.

[no criticism of either sex intended. i simply read the article, then thought
"i wonder if the author was male and the other person female?", went back,
checked...]

~~~
c0riander
Anecdotally speaking, that reminds me of a woman's comment about why she found
raising a VC round so exhausting and difficult -- it was much harder for her
to shake off the criticism and doubt constantly lobbed at her by potential
investors, whereas male CEOs did not seem to take it to heart the way she did.

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iqster
When you operate in uncharted waters, independent thinking makes for a good
compass. As someone who studied comp sci in undergrad, I felt I didn't develop
these skills as much as folks in the humanities.

~~~
pradocchia
I don't know if it's independent thinking so much as synthetic thinking. In
comp sci, you get _a lot_ of mileage out of analytic thinking. It maps nicely
to linear processes in a computer, and to the rigor of programming languages.

So much mileage, in fact, that your non-analytic faculties atrophy from
disuse.

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Djehngo
I think I understand the author's point and repeated use of the term
"stupidity" keeps the article on a theme and sounds somewhat nove.

However, I think his point would be a lot clearer if he would stop using
"stupidity" when he means "ignorance".

~~~
lutorm
I think his point is that most smart people throughout schooling have not
encountered true ignorance, so it _feels_ like stupidity.

