[vacri]

I was on a forum where there was a guy who had self-studied maths and physics and was an 'ideas man'. The problem was that he just didn't have the standardised nomenclature to get his ideas across - and also meant that he couldn't understand the reasons why other mathematicians debunked him.

One outstanding example was his method for a 'free energy' spacecraft movement system, that hinged on an arm throwing -foo- into a receiver. The argument was that there is a difference between throwing something and merely releasing it at speed, and he didn't have the understanding of physics to realise there is no difference.

Another one of his ideas was a system for finding prime numbers, which he couldn't articulate well enough for people to figure out whether it was a valuable predictor or merely a sieve.

He was a regular at the forum and respected, and I've never seen so many people patiently explaining physics and maths at such clear lengths before... and he just couldn't grok it, because he didn't have the standard language to get his ideas across.

This anecdata doesn't contradict the GP though, who is talking about doing self-study in parallel with formal study.