Learn

“When one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior.”

“The expert has failed more times than the beginner has even tried”

The underlying knowledge of experts appears to be tightly structured in hierarchical fashion. They redescribe the problems presented to them, often use qualitative arguments to plan solutions before elaborating them in greater mathematical detail. They make many decisions by first exploring their consequences.


Lessons Learnt

Purpose-First Context and problem focussed with a focus on finding a solutions - e.g. Oxford exams questions were seemingly so simple and jargon free. Purpose-first allows you to see abstractions you might miss out on, draw connections at seemingly disparate activities united by common intentions, motivations and feelings, and understand the reason why certain abstractions were chosen in the first place!

How looking at the way things are connected - deeper stuff, helps in understanding the manifestations. For example, reading JD Lee and Solomon Fryhle made all the concepts of NCERT much, much more clearer. University Physics and HC Verma.

Facts First

Frameworks-first

Abstractions-First (meaning of abstractions) Abstractions are how you carve out the messy, chaotic unify world into something graspable by the human mind, it is surgery done by the human mind into the raw nature of reality. How good your abstractions are will decide how penetrating your insight or question is: often finding an answer closer to the truth is about finging the right abstractions. Words are abstractions, so two sentences which might seem to say the same thing are saying something completely different because they are choosing different abstractions.

Experience-First (a.ka. Learning by doing)

Facts First: The sum of angles of a triangle is 180. Memorize. Then prove. Sometimes fundamental, abstract concepts are easier to learn than their concrete, bottom level implementations.

But sometimes abstraction is not obvious - it is important to understand why, it only make sense once you have grasped the concrete realisations, once you see the common patterns only then retain them. Sometimes fluency builds understanding, rather than understanding building fluency. Examples? Group theory/Topology/Linear Algebra. Kundu courses came so easy to me than Rao courses. Frameworks first: Polygons have internal angles. Then ask. Abstractions First: Define a angle, triangle. Then ask. Experience first: Play with actual triangles, scale them, deform them etc. Then Ask. Purpose first: We have these shapes. One might ask themselves…this problem….this path leads one to think that the answer would depend on this? It might be useful to call this thing something lets call it zopolabeedeedoo …

Spotting commonalities

Mars is the God of War. Mars is also a planet which appears red. Blood is the colour red.

Frameworks are powerful to retain stuff.

e.g. Several ways to remember where someone works

Who’s problem they are solving? Who is willing to pay for the problem they are solving? (Capitalist Framework) How are they contributing to welfare of the community? (Communitarian Framework) What values led they to do the job they are doing?

AC and Referigrator as appliances that deploy electrical energy to modify temperature. At some level, convert electrical energy to reverse-heat, which seems to take a lot more energy than to convert electrical to heat (e.g. geyser or electric heater for cooking).

Difference between people who are fast learners and those who need practice

Whether they feel any the anxiety of uncertainty/not knowing a thing. Practice is less a matter of memorising, and more of drowing out anxiety so that you have extra mind space to concentrate on the bloody thing.

What can help?

Not only did I make things harder, but I learnt less. I could have performed better with much less effort and had more fun doing it.  Watching RBN, NG and Helena teach made me realize this.

The Environment

When I went broke for the fourth or fifth time I finally had to take a look back and say, “What was I doing right every time I made money?” and “What was I doing wrong”. It all boiled down to:

  • Physical health: Eat / Move / Sleep
  • Emotional health: Eliminate ALL of the toxic people in your life.
  • Creative health: Write down ten ideas a day. The ideas can be about anything.
  • Spiritual health: Learn how to deal with anxiety and regret. Release control over the things you have no control over. Just these four things gave me so much energy, it probably took another 1000–2000 hours out of the 10,000 hours.

For instance, when I wanted to learn how to be a better public speaker, I would watch videos of great public speakers right before I had to speak. When I played in chess tournaments I would play through the games of world champions so I could learn more how they thought about the game. And every time I lost a game I went over the game, move by move, with a grandmaster who I paid to coach me. He would set up similar positions to my losing position and we’d play game after game until I mastered the nuances. When I wanted to learn about investing I read every investment book I could find and spoke with 100s of other great investors. When you read, to maximize what you learn: immediately after reading a book write down “ten things I learned”. Else, you won’t remember more than 1 or 2 things at best from the book. I’m trying to learn Standup Comedy now. I capitalize it because it’s that important to me. It’s the hardest skill I’ve ever had to learn. I’m in year two. I probably watch 20 videos a day. I videotape myself on stage 4–6 times a week. And I read books about and by comedians. And, fortunately, I have a podcast. So I ask great comedians to come on and I can ask them any question I want.

I’m a senior now at Caltech. Having some experience with the problem sets given out here, my view is that my perception of a problem’s difficulty is significantly affected by my attitude. As an incoming freshman, I had come to Caltech with little exposure to the concepts taught in freshman calculus and physics. As such, I approached problems with minimal confidence and patience. If I couldn’t see a path to the solution right away, I’d quickly lose hope and go ask for help; my view was either that “I must be thinking about the problem terribly wrong” or “I’m missing some important concept.” With this mentality, I viewed many problems as insurmountable. But after taking some more classes, I learned how to temper the emotional side of things. I came to accept the inherent chaos that ensues when solving “hard problems,” and didn’t give up as easily. Importantly, I started to view my progress on a problem not in terms of “how close I am to the solution,” but rather “how well I understand the problem.” As an example, suppose I was at the library last night working on a specific math proof for some time, but still hadn’t found the solution. As a freshman, I would’ve viewed my net progress for that night as 0. Now, I’d probably find comfort in other indicators of progress such as my improved understanding of the problem itself, and the elimination of some wrong ways to solve the problem. Adopting the latter attitude, I’ve been able to approach problems with increased composure. I’ve been able to solve more problems on my own, and feel a little bit more “in control.” To answer your question, if people say Caltech is “impossible” or “very difficult,” I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration, but I think their view may partly be due to behavioral factors.


Strategies to learn

I had a friend who I always played chess with. He played chess all day every day. But he never read a book on chess or studied with anyone. He just played the same moves and made the same mistakes game after game. I asked him why he didn’t take the basic steps to improve? All you have to do is take basic steps each day to improve as small as 1%. He said, “Ahhh, I just like to play.” Which is fine. But he never got better. Chess is much more enjoyable (everything is much more enjoyable) when you get better and when you learn and can appreciate the subtleties and the nuances. Everything is an art form. The greatest artists have a vocabulary of 100,000s of patterns in their chosen field. “Speaking” that vocabulary is pleasurable because you can enjoy the art form more, you can succeed more easily, you get acclamation for your success, you make friends with others who are also successful because you speak their language - but it requires every day learning new “words” in your art form. Studying how Warren Buffet invests. Or how Bobby Fischer plays the King’s Indian. Or how Richard Pryor brought his authentic voice into his comedy. Or how Richard Branson can build and manage 400 businesses. Or challenging yourself to fail a little bit each day to expand your comfort zone. One percent a day = 3800 percent a year.


When I was learning poker, my friends and I would compare notes on every difficult hand we played during an evening. When I was learning investing, I’d talk to friends in every area of investing (day trading, arbitrage, value investing, special situations, quantitative, etc etc) and we’d share notes and quickly learn through the experiences of each other. Why not do this with mentors? Because the mentors have so far passed this level they are not always able to get into the weeds in the same way as the Equals.

Explain what you are learning while you are learning it. Two reasons: 1) If you can’t explain in a simple way, then you need to learn more. Beginner’s mind. 2) People who are behind where you are at in learning the skill will ask basic questions that you often need to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse. Again: beginner’s mind.

Also, collaborate! Get a core group of people to brainstorm with you, and, every once in a while, add a new person into the mix. 

You will learn a lot if you share ideas with fellow students, and if you try out ideas in tutorial discussion. Remember that tutorials are not designed as a substitute for lectures, or for accumulating information, but to develop coherent verbal arguments and the capacity to think on one’s feet, and to tackle specific difficulties and misunderstandings. . This means that note-taking, if it occurs in a tutorialat all, should be very much incidental to the overriding dialogue. You should, however, leave time after the tutorial to make a record on paper of the discussion.


Case Study: Excelling at writing philosophy essays

Are there any tips on getting a first class honours for PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Oxford?


FAQ

Work on a tutorial essay involves library searches, reading, thinking, and writing. It should occupy a minimum of three days. Read attentively and thoughtfully. As your reading progresses, think up a structure for your essay (but do not write an elaborate plan which you will not have time to execute). Expect to have to sort out your thoughts, both during and after reading. Use essays to develop an argument, not as places to store information.

Read to understand. Don’t take notes. Read 2-3 Notes - when to take them, which notes to take, and their form, would emerge from necesssity of making sense of the reading and retaining it.

Yes. Just read first. Without background knowledge, you’re not even qualified to ask the right questions.

First decide your answer by reading your stuctured notes and thining about it. Then Structure. Then fill with notes.


Resources:


References

23 March 2019