> When you just want to look smart, you don’t care whether you know something because you thought of it or because you read it in a book. You just care that you can show off what you know and solve problems easily. So you voraciously read and memorize and try to accumulate a massive mental database of facts to show off. Then at the end you find you’re actually good at the thing.
What should one do instead, in order to avoid merely “looking”/“sounding” smart?
Just do math. A student driven merely by the pleasure of doing math without concern for external validation is lucky. But if external validation is a driver, that's lucky too. In both cases, math gets learned.
What should one do instead, in order to avoid merely “looking”/“sounding” smart?