This is one of those things that I deeply, deeply despise.
It is a foul attitude, that I rarely tolerate without giving some fairly sharp words in return — and it’s made all the worse by the default assumption that I join in with this stupid, idiotic belief.
I work in an office full of theoretical physicists. I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to say that, amongst their number, are some of the most intellectually gifted people in the country.
Most of these people are lovely — perfectly normal — and can more than appreciate that, even though they’re very good at what they do, they’re also terrible at other things, and that this doesn’t make them inherently better or worse than anybody else.
Then…there are the others.
People who think that their ability at mathematics/physics makes them objectively superior to those who aren’t. These people make fun of people who don’t understand the things that they do.
To let you understand how much hatred I feel about this phenomena, let me tell you a story.
Our coffee machine broke, a couple of days ago, and a man came to fix it. For some reason, I ended up being the person who took the instructions on how to ensure the machine didn’t get broken again — and I was chatting to him afterwards.
He commented that he was always a bit intimidated by this building — as we have lots of open spaces with chalkboards covered in crazy symbols, and we all seemed super clever.
Somebody else overheard this conversation between me, and the guy who fixes coffee machines, and decided to take it upon himself* to try to explain what the closest symbols meant.
Now: I love telling people about physics. It is one of my genuine passions, I could talk about physics for weeks, if you let me.
But I think it is absolutely abhorrent to do so with the sole intention of making yourself look clever, to mock the other person when they don’t understand what you’re saying.
Of course the guy who fixes coffee machines doesn’t know what a “renormalisation group” is — and making fun of him to his face for not knowing that makes you look like an absolute twat.
For all this absolute cockwomble’s gesticulating about how simple all of this is, and that it just requires paying “a bit of attention to the world around you” — it’s worth remembering he didn’t know how to fix a fucking coffee machine.
In the grand scheme of things, “not being able to fix a coffee machine” is a more mockable quality than “hasn’t read up on quantum field theory”.
People are good at different things. Some people fix coffee machines, or cars — some people make beautiful dresses, or can carry our brain surgery, some people can run very fast, or can lead entire teams of people towards a single goal, some people can knit entire gardens to raise tens of thousands for charity:
Could I do that?
Hell no…I tried to help, and made squashed crochet heart that looked more like a turd than a love heart.
But you know who could make that? My mum. She made loads of the stuff in that image (including the watering can in the foreground), and helped project-manage the creation of the rest of it, for a wonderful charitable cause. Her knowledge of maths and physics is, as she would freely admit, woeful compared to mine — but give her some sticks and some wool, and she can make magic.
That’s a pretty incredible thing to be able to do — and arguably so much more useful than anything I can do with my maths and physics.
Other people have skills beyond maths and physics — and a failure to recognise any skills beyond what you can do as worthwhile makes you more of a turd than my squashed heart.
One of the wonderful things about humans is our variety of talents — judging any particular person as being “less worthwhile” because you’re better at them at a single activity makes you a disgustingly shallow human.
I think it’s fair to say that, no, I do not look down on people who are terrible at mathematics.
I do, however, know plenty of people who do — and many of them expect me to join in with this percieved superiority game.
I think it is also fair to say that I do look down on these people.
*I would make this gender neutral, but let’s face it….there aren’t exactly many women in our department. It was going to be a guy.
-Jack Fraser
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