Will get pointed up but just smacks of passive-agressive argumental.
History, specifically in science and math is full of examples where people who actively sought to question the knowledge of more senior experts have made discoveries that advanced the knowledge of human-kind and have then been overlooked or ignored because they did not have the correct background. Institutions such as The Royal Society and The Geological Society where created exactly on this principle.
The idea that "you cannot question X because X is a learned man above your station" is what IMO destroys general interest in fields such as physics. You have to spend a career following the party line in the hope that one day you will be given enough rope to actually challenge anything.
How on earth would you put probability on something like that?
The existence of a black swan doesn't imply that swans are usually black.
A. "There are examples where newcomers to a field found a novel solution that senior experts have missed."
B. "It is often the ignorant who succeeds."
B does not follow from A. Not even in mathematics where people use to say that you have to prove yourself worthwhile by the age of 25 or it won't happen.
> You have to spend a career following the party line in the hope that ...
This is a slightly different discussion but IMHO in many fields (e.g. medicine) contemporary science has little to do with genious or insight but rather is an industrial effort ... and that _often_ isn't fun.
A lesson on logic from somebody who equates
"It's often the foolhardy and the ignorant that tackle problems that are supposedly impossible. And sometimes end up succeeding"
to
"It is often the ignorant who succeeds"
seems ironic to put it mildly.
History, specifically in science and math is full of examples where people who actively sought to question the knowledge of more senior experts have made discoveries that advanced the knowledge of human-kind and have then been overlooked or ignored because they did not have the correct background. Institutions such as The Royal Society and The Geological Society where created exactly on this principle.
The idea that "you cannot question X because X is a learned man above your station" is what IMO destroys general interest in fields such as physics. You have to spend a career following the party line in the hope that one day you will be given enough rope to actually challenge anything.
How on earth would you put probability on something like that?