That is, I could trace back to the beginning of what they found confusing. I don’t think I was special in having this ability—it’s just something people don’t bother to do, or don’t themselves possess the understanding to do, whether it’s teaching physics or social skills (for which I have the same complaint as you).
This demonstrates a highly developed theory of mind. In order to do this one needs to both have a good command of material and a good understanding of what people are likely to understand or not understand. This is often very difficult.
I thought I should add a pointer one of the replies, because it’s another anecdote from when poster noticed the difference (in what “understand” means) on an encounter with another person who had a lower threshold.
Maybe there is a wide variance in “understanding criteria” or “curiosity shut-off point” which has real importance for how people learn.
Maybe so, but then this would be the only area where I have a highly-developed theory of mind. If you’ll ask the people who have seen me post for a while, the consensus is that this is where I’m most lacking. They don’t typically put it in terms of a theory of mind, but one complaint about me can be expressed as, “he doesn’t adequately anticipate how others will react to what he does”—which amounts to the saying I lack a good theory of mind (which is a common characteristic of autistics).
But that gives me an idea: maybe what’s unique about me is what I count as a genuine understanding. I don’t regard myself as understanding the material until I have “plugged it in” to the rest of my knowledge, so I’ve made a habit of ensuring that what I know in one area is well-connected to other areas, especially its grounding concepts. I can’t, in other words, compartmentalize subjects as easily.
(That would also explain what I hated about literature and, to a lesser extent, history—I didn’t see what they were building off of.)
Yes, I had that thought also but wasn’t sure how to put it. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that you had that good a theory of mind for physics issues. Your hypothesis about plugging in seems plausible.
Also, it looks like EY already wrote an article about the phenomenon I described: when people learn something in school, they normally don’t bother to ground it like I’ve described, and so don’t know what a true (i.e., level 2) understanding looks like.
This demonstrates a highly developed theory of mind. In order to do this one needs to both have a good command of material and a good understanding of what people are likely to understand or not understand. This is often very difficult.
I thought I should add a pointer one of the replies, because it’s another anecdote from when poster noticed the difference (in what “understand” means) on an encounter with another person who had a lower threshold.
Maybe there is a wide variance in “understanding criteria” or “curiosity shut-off point” which has real importance for how people learn.
Maybe so, but then this would be the only area where I have a highly-developed theory of mind. If you’ll ask the people who have seen me post for a while, the consensus is that this is where I’m most lacking. They don’t typically put it in terms of a theory of mind, but one complaint about me can be expressed as, “he doesn’t adequately anticipate how others will react to what he does”—which amounts to the saying I lack a good theory of mind (which is a common characteristic of autistics).
But that gives me an idea: maybe what’s unique about me is what I count as a genuine understanding. I don’t regard myself as understanding the material until I have “plugged it in” to the rest of my knowledge, so I’ve made a habit of ensuring that what I know in one area is well-connected to other areas, especially its grounding concepts. I can’t, in other words, compartmentalize subjects as easily.
(That would also explain what I hated about literature and, to a lesser extent, history—I didn’t see what they were building off of.)
Yes, I had that thought also but wasn’t sure how to put it. Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that you had that good a theory of mind for physics issues. Your hypothesis about plugging in seems plausible.
Also, it looks like EY already wrote an article about the phenomenon I described: when people learn something in school, they normally don’t bother to ground it like I’ve described, and so don’t know what a true (i.e., level 2) understanding looks like.
(Sorry to keep replying to this comment!)
Don’t let that stop you from writing about related topics.