Over the years, I've told colleagues and friends about things I have seen or experienced. Many times, people have said that I should write them down so that they won't be lost and forgotten, since some of them might be useful parts of our history. I've been writing them down, without being sure what I would do with them. I decided to gradually post them on this website, and see what reactions I get. I suggest reading from the bottom up (starting with the August 2017 post "The Meritocracy"). Thoughtful and kind feedback would be useful for me, and would help me to revise the exposition to make it as useful as possible. I hope that while you read my stories you will ask yourself "What can I learn from this?" I'm particularly interested in knowing what you see as the point of the story, or what you take away from it. Please send feedback to asilverb@gmail.com. Thanks for taking the time to read and hopefully reflect on them!

I often run the stories past the people I mention, even when they are anonymized, to get their feedback and give them a chance to correct the record or ask for changes. When they tell me they're happy to be named, I sometimes do so. When I give letters as pseudonyms, there is no correlation between those letters and the names of the real people.

Monday, June 7, 2021

My Superpower, Part 2

After class, a fellow student whom I'll call M brought Professor Loomis a proof that M knew was incorrect. A group of us students gathered round to help Loomis find the flaw in the proof. Every step was intuitively correct, but it led to an incorrect conclusion. How intriguing! Did this reveal a fundamental flaw in the fabric of the universe? Of course not. But what was wrong with M's proof?

There were a dozen or so simple steps, and for each one, I knew an airtight justification for why it was true. Each one, except for one that clearly had the ring of truth.

I pointed to that step and said "I don't understand why this is true." The other students chimed in to explain it to me. (Some people now call this "mansplaining".)

Loomis exclaimed, "That's it! She's got it!" I felt like Eliza Doolittle with Henry Higgins, and wondered if we should burst into song. I fell head over heels in love with him.

Loomis gave us a counterexample for that step. I wish I had thought to do that! I hadn't thought any further ahead than "I don't understand why this is true."