Picking two examples out of all people approaching problems, while ignoring wasted effort and failures to make progress because of not understanding current knowledge, is an absolutely terrible reason to approach from ignorance.
The biggest gains in theory and in practice are far more often obtained by masters of craft, giving much more weight to attacking problems from a position of knowledge.
In fact, even in this case, this progress required that the author was aware of very recent results in computer science, was thinking deeply about them, and most likely was scouring the literature for pieces to help. The “Tiny Pointers” paper is mentioned directly.
Well said. I really dislike the narrative here, that ignorance is something that leads to discovery. One, the poster gives two examples, as if there's something we should gain for such a small sample. In addition to that, one of the examples isn't valid. The student's former professor is a co-author of the "Tiny Pointers" [1] paper that he was reading and working through. And, it was a conjecture, I don't see how someone should think that it would mean it's impossible.
I would rather, instead of thinking ignorance is a key ingredient to discovery, that instead it's the willingness to try things.
The biggest gains in theory and in practice are far more often obtained by masters of craft, giving much more weight to attacking problems from a position of knowledge.
In fact, even in this case, this progress required that the author was aware of very recent results in computer science, was thinking deeply about them, and most likely was scouring the literature for pieces to help. The “Tiny Pointers” paper is mentioned directly.