"but that’s so obvious that it’s not even worth stating"
"but that’s so obvious that it’s not even worth stating"
1) There's a lot of value in writing down something about one's experiences, even if the result is "obvious" to anyone else who has gone through the experience. There are likely a lot of people who HAVEN'T gone through that experience who would benefit from reading about it.
2) I worked on a project, mostly independently, for a year or so and produced something useful. To me, it seemed fairly pedestrian: some basic data structures, some ordinary algorithms, nothing particularly novel. A mentor suggested I write a conference proposal about it. I resisted, using the "it's obvious" argument. He came back and said "You've worked on this for a year, and no one else in the industry has worked on it. By definition you're the expert. It's worth a conference talk." Indeed it was, and it launched a significant portion of my career as a conference presenter.
I think this is largely about the difficulty of thinking about what others think when one is too close to a topic. After working on something intensively for a time, one develops a familiarity and intuition of the knowledge about that area. When working with that understanding, things may seem "obvious" but that are totally non-obvious to someone who hasn't worked in the area. This is less about absolute intelligence per se than it is about expertise, and so it's a variation of Kay's aphorism "A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points."
It absolutely poisens the learning atmosphere. And after 20 minutes of lecturing on a difficult topic they ask if anyone has any questions and wonder why noone raises their hand or says anything.
Dude, if you had to think about it for 45 minutes, it's not obvious.
I have on multiple occasions sat down and worked with another mathematician on a problem for an hour+, only for us to find the solution and both conclude that the answer was "obvious."
Is that not inherently obvious? Good things are... good, and bad things are not?
Assuming something is obvious is dangerous.
Looking back I can't understand why it took me so long. It's so obvious.
Sometimes it's really hard to understand why some things are not understood.