alt Hacker NewsA corollary of this is that many professional mathematicians are not actually competitive in research.
It’s just different leagues of intelligence: social studies undergrad vs math undergrad vs math grad vs competitive researcher.
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The definition of professional mathematics is research. That’s what they are trained in and that’s what they are competent at. I don’t understand your comment.
The dumbest people I’ve ever encountered in university were the math and physics majors who thought they could score some easy points by taking humanities classes, because just like you they considered that below their level. I’m sure they were smart on an IQ test but they couldn’t reason their way out of a paper bag, and their writing skills were just laughable.
The smartest ones were usually the philosophy majors. Also some of the weirdest (in a good way) folks.
This is what I've observed as well. By my own metrics and grades, I was a somewhat bright math minor (near-perfect score in abstract algebra, etc), would have been middle of the pack as a PhD student, may have been below par if I managed to complete the PhD, and almost certainly would have been deadweight as a pure mathematician myself. That's just how the scaling and competitive dynamics have worked out; it's not really something to feel personally bad about, any more than you might feel personally bad about not having the potential to be a competitive figure skater.
EDIT: Uh, actually, it looks like I may have underestimated myself at basically every point here and would have become a basically okay mathematician based on updated priors.