Incorrect notation in math?

Does math have an incorrect notation / syntax? I don't mean writing misaligned notation (google), but when you take something like a number to powers to powers to powers, $${{2^2}^2}^3$$ (I was told this is incorrect notation by a teacher). Is it really incorrect, or does it just need to be simplified with parentheses? Do people write maths like this?

a radical expression with the root being a radical expression? $$\sqrt[\sqrt{2^3}]{2}$$

Your teacher is mistaken. There is a well-established and universal convention about the meaning of an expression like $$2^{2^{2^3}}$$it is always understood to mean $$2^{\left(2^\left(2^3\right)\right)} =2^{2^8} = 2^{256}$$ People can and do write expressions like these. For example this paper, "Analog of the Skewes Number for Twin Primes", by Marek Wolf, contains the expressions $$10^{10^{10^{10^3}}}\qquad\text{and}\qquad 10^{10^{529.7}}$$on the first page, with no further explanation. Similarly "Some Rapidly Growing Functions" by Craig Smoryński has $$10^{10^{10^{34}}} < e^{e^{e^{e^{4.369}}}}$$ and similar expressions. (I picked these two papers arbitrarily; they were the first two hits in Google Scholar for "Skewes' Number".)

There is a good reason for the convention about what $a^{b^c}$ means: $a^{b^c}$ could be understood as either $a^\left({b^c}\right)$ or as $\left(a^b\right)^c$. But if it were understood as $\left(a^b\right)^c$, one would never need to write $a^{b^c}$, since it would be equal to $a^{bc}$. So it is always understood as $a^\left({b^c}\right)$.

Nobody ever writes $$\sqrt[\sqrt{2^3}]2$$ even though its meaning is clear. Partly this is because it would have been difficult to typeset with old-fashioned metal type, so there is a tradition of expressing this differently. And partly it is because it looks bad.

Since by definition, $$\sqrt[a]b = b^{1/a},$$ one would almost always write something like $$(2^{1/2})^{1/2^{3/2}}$$ instead, at which point it would become clear that the expression could be simplified to $$2^{(1/2)(1/2^{3/2})} = 2^{1/2^{5/2}} = 2^{2^{-5/2}}.$$ Good notation enables and encourages this sort of simplification; bad notation obscures and impedes it.

Towers of exponents have been standard for ages. Cajori, in his book History of mathematical notations, §313, tells the story. He reproduces an image from a book by Waring published in 1785:

$a^{\large b^{\Large c}}$ means $a^{\large(b^{\Large c}\large)}$. This is not in dispute.

Note that $\left(a^{\large b}\right)^{\large c}=a^{\large bc}$, so there would be no reason for it to mean this.

I think I'm starting to see the problem; exponentiation is right associative. Perhaps a more sensible notation (for $a^{b^c}$) would be $${}^{{}^c} {}^b a$$