Hasnain says:

This was a sobering read - not because of the content itself, but the implications that come from really thinking about what it's saying.

"Perfectionism endures because it has its merits, and we must see these clearly as well. It establishes a high standard and feeds on a source of intense energy, i.e. the fear of losing our identity and self-worth. So it is no surprise that some of the world's luminaries have made contracts with it.

But the cost of that contract is just as present. Carl Gauss, through whom it set mathematics back by decades:

> His own contemporaries begged him to relax his frigid perfection so that mathematics might advance more rapidly, but Gauss never relaxed. [...] Had he divulged what he knew it is quite possible that mathematics would now be half a century or more ahead of where it is.

— E.T. Bell, Men of Mathematics"

Posted on 2022-02-05T22:27:59+0000