You would make a terrible experimental physicist because you'd just sit there adjusting your aparatus because it doesn't match the equations instead of actually learning something new... It is not the math doing anything. The math does nothing. The aparatus doesn't fucking care what you think it's supposed to do. It doesn't care what's written on the paper.

There is no underlying calculation to expose. What you are doing is pidgeonholing your thought process. You are narrowing the avenues in which you think, which absolutely can and does make people miss important crossroads all the time.

It may be an abstract concept I'm referencing when it comes to math, but the problem is real in human thinking. It shows up in programming all the time. People insist things MUST work a certain way... and are proven wrong again and again... and that's in a domain where humans DO have control over what happens and it actually is an equation!

How much worse do you think dogmatic thinking gets when it's far more abstract? How long did it take people to accept the concept of 'i'? Hell, how long did it take people to accept zero?! Humans are always. Always. Dumber than they think they are. That includes me. That's how I've learned these lessons over the years: by putting my foot in my mouth and not liking the taste.