You need the right relationship with confusion. By default confusion makes you stop your thinking. Being confused feels like you are doing something wrong. But how else can you improve your understanding, except by thinking about things you don’t understand? Confusion tells you that you don’t yet understand. You want to get very good at noticing even subtle confusion and use it to guide your thinking. However, thinking about confusing things isn’t enough. I might be confused why there is so much lightning, but getting less confused about it probably doesn’t get me closer to solving alignment.
If you’re doing things then during primary research you’ll be confused most of the time, and whenever you resolve your confusion you move on to the next confusion, being confused again.
Yes. If you are never confused, it probably means you are always within the well-known territory. That feels nice, but you probably don’t learn much.
Of course, all of this only works as an approximation. When you keep making non-zero but very small steps forward, you are learning. (That’s basically the ideal of education—this situation won’t happen naturally, but it can be prepared for others, and then it is both educational and pleasant.) And as you said, not all kinds of confusion lead to learning.
You need the right relationship with confusion. By default confusion makes you stop your thinking. Being confused feels like you are doing something wrong. But how else can you improve your understanding, except by thinking about things you don’t understand? Confusion tells you that you don’t yet understand. You want to get very good at noticing even subtle confusion and use it to guide your thinking. However, thinking about confusing things isn’t enough. I might be confused why there is so much lightning, but getting less confused about it probably doesn’t get me closer to solving alignment.
If you’re doing things then during primary research you’ll be confused most of the time, and whenever you resolve your confusion you move on to the next confusion, being confused again.
Yes. If you are never confused, it probably means you are always within the well-known territory. That feels nice, but you probably don’t learn much.
Of course, all of this only works as an approximation. When you keep making non-zero but very small steps forward, you are learning. (That’s basically the ideal of education—this situation won’t happen naturally, but it can be prepared for others, and then it is both educational and pleasant.) And as you said, not all kinds of confusion lead to learning.