I think people (myself included) really underestimated this rather trivial statement that people don’t really learn about something when they don’t spend the time doing it/thinking about it. People even measure mastery by hours practiced and not years practiced, but I still couldn’t engrave this idea deep enough into my mind.
I currently don’t have much writable evidence about why I think people underestimated this fact, but I think it is true. Below are some things that I have changed my mind/realised after noticing this fact.
cached thoughts, on yourself
Personally, I am a huge procrastinator and I can really flinch away from doing something even when it is weeks overdue. I was trying out BaaS and Beeminder to build up some good habits, but even with the tools I still somethings have procrastination episodes. Only after quite a lot of cycles of the procrastination episodes, I realised that I basically completely wasted the time when I was procrastinating, and I was overall actually worse than before I started the procrastination episode.
Therefore, what I concluded is that you should expect yourself to be the exact same if you haven’t put in the time to think about that topic, especially high-level topics like math. (I acknowledge that motor skills require less thinking) It is a mere wish to be a different person since the last time; You don’t just learn a new theorem automatically.
cached thoughts, on modelling human
There was this bias that you assume other people are at around the same level as you, that is obviously false, but it is quite hard to internalize this. People really don’t automatically improve themselves either, there must be a push for that to happen. Also you can probably see many of those people that just stopped changing themselves.
there’s a very limited amount you can learn by just reading a few summaries:
Some texts are better than others, but even if you only read the best text on the topic you are trying to learn, with the text being paraphrased by a magical AI to maximize for your learning efficiency, there is still a maximum bandwidth on learning. Don’t expect to replicate what other people is able to do in just a few hours. Though I should acknowledge that there are actually very short texts that can change your mind greatly, I suspect that growth mindset is one of them but I’m not sure.
Alternatively, if the questions you ask are specific enough, then you may just be able to somewhat master that concept in a short amount of time. This seems to be how the “Learn in <very short amount of time>” courses out there do.
There are at least a few different dimensions to “learning”, and this idea applies more to some than to others. Sometimes a brief summary is enough to change some weights of your beliefs, and that will impact future thinking to a surprising degree. There’s also a lot of non-legible thinking going on when just daydreaming or reading fiction.
I fully agree that this isn’t enough, and both directed study and intentional reflection is also necessary to have clear models. But I wouldn’t discount “lightweight thinking” entirely.
Agree with everything here, and all the points the first paragraph I have not thought about. I’m curious if you have a higher resolution model to different dimensions of learning though, feels like I can improve my post if I have a clearer picture.
Btw, your whole reply seem to be a great example of what do you mean by “it’s probably best to acknowledge it and give the details that go into your beliefs, rather than the posterior belief itself.”
I think people (myself included) really underestimated this rather trivial statement that people don’t really learn about something when they don’t spend the time doing it/thinking about it. People even measure mastery by hours practiced and not years practiced, but I still couldn’t engrave this idea deep enough into my mind.
I currently don’t have much writable evidence about why I think people underestimated this fact, but I think it is true. Below are some things that I have changed my mind/realised after noticing this fact.
cached thoughts, on yourself
Personally, I am a huge procrastinator and I can really flinch away from doing something even when it is weeks overdue. I was trying out BaaS and Beeminder to build up some good habits, but even with the tools I still somethings have procrastination episodes. Only after quite a lot of cycles of the procrastination episodes, I realised that I basically completely wasted the time when I was procrastinating, and I was overall actually worse than before I started the procrastination episode.
Therefore, what I concluded is that you should expect yourself to be the exact same if you haven’t put in the time to think about that topic, especially high-level topics like math. (I acknowledge that motor skills require less thinking) It is a mere wish to be a different person since the last time; You don’t just learn a new theorem automatically.
cached thoughts, on modelling human
There was this bias that you assume other people are at around the same level as you, that is obviously false, but it is quite hard to internalize this. People really don’t automatically improve themselves either, there must be a push for that to happen. Also you can probably see many of those people that just stopped changing themselves.
there’s a very limited amount you can learn by just reading a few summaries:
Some texts are better than others, but even if you only read the best text on the topic you are trying to learn, with the text being paraphrased by a magical AI to maximize for your learning efficiency, there is still a maximum bandwidth on learning. Don’t expect to replicate what other people is able to do in just a few hours. Though I should acknowledge that there are actually very short texts that can change your mind greatly, I suspect that growth mindset is one of them but I’m not sure.
Alternatively, if the questions you ask are specific enough, then you may just be able to somewhat master that concept in a short amount of time. This seems to be how the “Learn in <very short amount of time>” courses out there do.
version history
There are at least a few different dimensions to “learning”, and this idea applies more to some than to others. Sometimes a brief summary is enough to change some weights of your beliefs, and that will impact future thinking to a surprising degree. There’s also a lot of non-legible thinking going on when just daydreaming or reading fiction.
I fully agree that this isn’t enough, and both directed study and intentional reflection is also necessary to have clear models. But I wouldn’t discount “lightweight thinking” entirely.
^the above is a reply to a slightly previous version
Agree with everything here, and all the points the first paragraph I have not thought about. I’m curious if you have a higher resolution model to different dimensions of learning though, feels like I can improve my post if I have a clearer picture.
Btw, your whole reply seem to be a great example of what do you mean by “it’s probably best to acknowledge it and give the details that go into your beliefs, rather than the posterior belief itself.”