Unlearning common sense

On another blog, a commenter noted:

In second or third or fourth grade, or whenever it is that they teach children the devastating math concept called "greater than and lesser than," I was utterly stumped by the entire concept.

Basically I'd immediately grasped and then discarded as too easy the whole concept of pointing a caret in the direction of the smaller of two numbers. I mean, who would seriously waste class time on something that stupid?

--Mushlette

I rest my case. I'll rest it more thoroughly another time.