alt Hacker NewsAs a mathematician, this is far from my experience of actual professional mathematicians, because they encounter people much smarter than them quite often. Maybe more true among graduate students, however.
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I don't know why mathematicians got lumped in with physicists further down the thread. In my experience this is a well known stereotype of physicists and while of course not universal you don't have to look very hard to see where it came from. In my experience mathematicians stay very much in their lane and often seem to be overly modest even within it.
The best/smartest professionals I meet operate this way (because we know we're wrong quite a bit and don't know everything). It's definitely a personality trait. Inquisitive, curious, intelligent, but also there's some metacognition involved where we can be confident in what we do NOT know.
In contrast, I studied chemical engineering for a short stint. First year, first semester chemistry classes and labs were riddled with these types of students. Tell you you're wrong, IQ 197, scoff when you ask a question, etc...
Listen, if you're the smartest person alive that's fantastic, but please don't talk down to me or the mere mortals that I prefer to hang around with. We get along much better and have a lot more fun saying "I don't know, let's find out".
This thread started by referencing grad students, and I can vouch for it from personal experience with physics grad students.