> What's the chance that you'd even know to try though?
> [...] esoteric topics also give new ideas something to latch onto. Our brains are associative, and being able to look at a new thing and tie it to a few esoteric concepts is a bit of a superpower, even if the association is weak. The difference between knowing nothing other than how to learn and knowing what's vaguely potentially possible or not is weeks or months of research.
The only point I'd add to your paragraph is that this applies to every domain when you're on the job, not just math. I live in constant terror of discovering that other disciplines solved my problem like a hundred years ago.
> [...] esoteric topics also give new ideas something to latch onto. Our brains are associative, and being able to look at a new thing and tie it to a few esoteric concepts is a bit of a superpower, even if the association is weak. The difference between knowing nothing other than how to learn and knowing what's vaguely potentially possible or not is weeks or months of research.
The only point I'd add to your paragraph is that this applies to every domain when you're on the job, not just math. I live in constant terror of discovering that other disciplines solved my problem like a hundred years ago.