> It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed
No, not really.
> Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you.
Your experience isn't universal. Some students learned how to do research in school.
"Screwed" = spending hours sifting through poorly-written, vaguely-related documents to find a needle in a haystack. Why would I want to continue doing that?
I do a lot of research and independent learning. The way I translated “screwed” was “4-6 hours to unravel the issue”. And half the time the issue is just a misunderstanding.
It’s exciting when I discover I can’t replicate something that is stated authoritatively… which turns out to be controversial. That’s rare, though. I bet ChatGPT knows it’s controversial, too, but that wouldn’t be as much fun.
Like a car can be "beyond economical repair", a problem can be not worth the time (and uncertainty) or fixing. Especially from subjective judgement with incomplete information etc
No, not really.
> Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you.
Your experience isn't universal. Some students learned how to do research in school.