I’ve written about this before, but I’ve gone through most of my school years labeled as “the smart one”. Since it’s a mostly positive label, I haven’t take particular issue with it. At the same time, I also accepted the term of “athlete”. These two terms have been the ones that surround me as I made my way through school, and they still do. Whether or not I like them, they’re the ones that have been ascribed to me.

I’ve always been interested in a particular teaching technique that I think of as the “deception”. I’m sure you’ve experienced this sort of technique before, where it goes something like this:

Often, we fear changing our minds on ideas because we don’t want to seem like we aren’t solid in our opinions and beliefs. It’s as if we think people will dislike us because we don’t stick with our beliefs when they are challenged. In popular culture, there’s no better example than politicians in debates, who will never sway from their beliefs¹.

Ask any scientist or mathematician, and this is the quality that they would love their solution to have. They want the result to be elegant, simple, and intuitive.