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> This quality of “not stopping at an unsatisfactory answer” deserves some examination. > This requires a lot of intrinsic motivation, because it’s so hard; so

> This quality of “not stopping at an unsatisfactory answer” deserves some examination. > This requires a lot of intrinsic motivation, because it’s so hard; so most people simply don’t do it. It also requires self-confidence, persuasiveness, and social power. Without these traits, your attempts to really understand something will be dismissed as "overthinking things" or "trying to understand the universe". Those around you will urge you to "stop thinking just do the task" or "do the obvious thing" as they lose patience with you. If you don't resist them you'll end up moving forward despite feeling confused, sometimes completely. You'll then end up pissing people off when you execute too slowly or fail (in their eyes, intentionally). > This is a habit. It’s easy to pick up. Not if the people around you are exhausted by you.

ssivark 6y ago
It’s worth mentioning that this desire to think through things deeply often runs contrary to a bias for action, and it’s very difficult to measure progress in thought. There is a long phase of thinking very hard, and a short phase where things suddenly become clear. So, thinking through and understanding things deeply is often discouraged as a consequence.
- philjr 6y ago
  The key is to decouple the two. When you are required to act, act and act decisively. If you are clear that the understanding could be deeper (and it usually can), you trigger a work effort to understand more. So the next time you need to make a decision you’re more informed.
matt_kantor 6y ago
Your points about social context are great ones and 100% valid, but I want to make a case for "stop thinking just do the task": --- Often, trying (and potentially failing) to do a task is the best way to learn about it. The key is to be very explicit about what parts of that task you actually understand and which ones you're pulling out of your ass. This is especially true when creating software. It's super rare to have requirements that are concrete and detailed enough to form a comprehensive understanding of the final design before you start developing it. Instead there are usually parts that have clarity and others that are fuzzy. If you can enumerate those and keep them separate you can often leverage the parts you understand to make progress on those you do not. Writing placeholder/obviously-terrible code to stand in for the unknown parts just so that you can spin up a running system is a great way to do that. Along the way you'll see what patterns emerge, where you hit walls, etc, which is not always easy to imagine with raw abstract thought. And having "working" software that you can play with is a great way to find edge cases and otherwise make progress on those unknowns. Once you've gained a more complete understanding you can replace the placeholder junk with well-designed/actually-thought-out modules. (Another obvious reason to do this is if your company will literally go out of business if you wait until you have a perfect understanding to launch a product/service, but I think most people here get that.) I'm not sure how much this generalizes, but it also works well for me when writing. I usually start with a vague understanding of an idea I hope to communicate, then jot down disjointed sentences to capture parts of it. As I do so it gradually becomes clear how things are connected, where my reasoning is muddy, what I thought I knew but can't express so probably don't, etc, and I can use this gained understanding to iteratively rewrite and reshape my message until it becomes something coherent. Sometimes, anyway; other times I don't end up sending/publishing it at all because along the way I learned that the thing I was hoping to communicate was based on a faulty assumption or is not as straightforward as I thought it was. Which is great, because either way I've learned something. --- I guess I'd say it differently: "keep thinking and do the task".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- darkerside 6y ago
  Agree with this. I think of education as a "series of increasingly smaller lies". If you try to explain everything right away with complete fine-grained truthfulness, you quickly get to molecular dynamics, and don't have to stop there. A common unspoken theme in the post is, the art of learning is knowing "what" to care about and "when".
BeetleB 6y ago
There are both extremes, and best not to be at either one of them. Example: I forget the name of the principle, but in mathematics the statement "P implies Q" is considered true if P can never be true. As an example, let P be "George Washington was a woman" and Q be "Queen Elizabeth is a man". Then the statement "If GW was a woman, then QE is a man" is considered to be a true statement. I have a friend who refuses to accept that such a statement should be considered "true". And he has put off studying real analysis until he can learn enough logic theory to convince himself on the validity of accepting such statements as true. I do not think he'll ever get to study real analysis, because he is full of "No! I need to understand this really really well before proceeding!" statements. It's a fine approach if you have an infinite amount of time. The other issue, as another commenter pointed out: It's very difficult to measure progress in thought. The mind is great at fooling itself, and not until you try to solve real problems (or discuss them with others) will you expose most of the gaps in your mind. The same person in the above anecdote does suffer from this. He definitely puts in effort to learn a lot (and has succeeded), but there are always more things to learn, and he moves on to the next topic before really applying what he has learned. As someone who talks to him often, it's really hard to tell if he understands. He is the classic case of "I'm sure I can solve problems when I need to, with a bit of review". At the other extreme, of course, are people who are not really that motivated to understand. They are satisfied if they get the answer at the back of the book. You won't get far with just that. > If you don't resist them you'll end up moving forward despite feeling confused, sometimes completely. You'll then end up pissing people off when you execute too slowly or fail (in their eyes, intentionally). This sounds more like an issue at work, and your experience is fairly universal - most jobs I've worked at have it. In my experience, understanding things well is sadly not valued on the job. They want you to "execute", and want you to minimize the time you spend learning. And of course, they would rather hire someone else instead of ensuring your proper learning/training.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  Actually there were women who dressed like men, pretended to be men -- and if it, surprisingly, turns out this was the case with GW, then that won't make QE a man. I have to agree with your friend :-)
- 6y ago
TrackerFF 6y ago
I want to add - habits like that are great to pick up, and fine tune, when you're in college. More so if you're a college student that can focus 100% on your academic life/studies, unburdened by things like work. EVEN more so if you have great mentors, professors, etc. that can guide you to the right place. I'm not saying that one CAN NOT do the things above, if you're a busy student with work on the side, and very limited resources as far as mentors or professors go...but I do think that those lucky enough to find themselves in the right positions, are more likely to mature - and quicker. (And it was no surprise to see that the author is a PPE grad from Oxford)
baby 6y ago
I don’t agree because I still do this all the time. Sure some people get annoyed, assholes will try to make you feel bad for asking dumb questions, or even mock you publicly. The fact is, your understanding grows so quickly when you ask questions that this doesn’t matter.
cbsmith 6y ago
Yeah, there's a bunch of caveats here. You also need to be reasonably quick to understand things, otherwise you'll be spending a lifetime trying to understand some pretty basic concepts and never get to anything interesting. In general, there are a bunch of starting conditions necessary for this kind of approach to glean value.

ssivark 6y ago

It’s worth mentioning that this desire to think through things deeply often runs contrary to a bias for action, and it’s very difficult to measure progress in thought. There is a long phase of thinking very hard, and a short phase where things suddenly become clear. So, thinking through and understanding things deeply is often discouraged as a consequence.

philjr 6y ago
The key is to decouple the two. When you are required to act, act and act decisively. If you are clear that the understanding could be deeper (and it usually can), you trigger a work effort to understand more. So the next time you need to make a decision you’re more informed.

matt_kantor 6y ago

Your points about social context are great ones and 100% valid, but I want to make a case for "stop thinking just do the task": --- Often, trying (and potentially failing) to do a task is the best way to learn about it. The key is to be very explicit about what parts of that task you actually understand and which ones you're pulling out of your ass. This is especially true when creating software. It's super rare to have requirements that are concrete and detailed enough to form a comprehensive understanding of the final design before you start developing it. Instead there are usually parts that have clarity and others that are fuzzy. If you can enumerate those and keep them separate you can often leverage the parts you understand to make progress on those you do not. Writing placeholder/obviously-terrible code to stand in for the unknown parts just so that you can spin up a running system is a great way to do that. Along the way you'll see what patterns emerge, where you hit walls, etc, which is not always easy to imagine with raw abstract thought. And having "working" software that you can play with is a great way to find edge cases and otherwise make progress on those unknowns. Once you've gained a more complete understanding you can replace the placeholder junk with well-designed/actually-thought-out modules. (Another obvious reason to do this is if your company will literally go out of business if you wait until you have a perfect understanding to launch a product/service, but I think most people here get that.) I'm not sure how much this generalizes, but it also works well for me when writing. I usually start with a vague understanding of an idea I hope to communicate, then jot down disjointed sentences to capture parts of it. As I do so it gradually becomes clear how things are connected, where my reasoning is muddy, what I thought I knew but can't express so probably don't, etc, and I can use this gained understanding to iteratively rewrite and reshape my message until it becomes something coherent. Sometimes, anyway; other times I don't end up sending/publishing it at all because along the way I learned that the thing I was hoping to communicate was based on a faulty assumption or is not as straightforward as I thought it was. Which is great, because either way I've learned something. --- I guess I'd say it differently: "keep thinking and do the task".

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
darkerside 6y ago
Agree with this. I think of education as a "series of increasingly smaller lies". If you try to explain everything right away with complete fine-grained truthfulness, you quickly get to molecular dynamics, and don't have to stop there. A common unspoken theme in the post is, the art of learning is knowing "what" to care about and "when".

BeetleB 6y ago

There are both extremes, and best not to be at either one of them. Example: I forget the name of the principle, but in mathematics the statement "P implies Q" is considered true if P can never be true. As an example, let P be "George Washington was a woman" and Q be "Queen Elizabeth is a man". Then the statement "If GW was a woman, then QE is a man" is considered to be a true statement. I have a friend who refuses to accept that such a statement should be considered "true". And he has put off studying real analysis until he can learn enough logic theory to convince himself on the validity of accepting such statements as true. I do not think he'll ever get to study real analysis, because he is full of "No! I need to understand this really really well before proceeding!" statements. It's a fine approach if you have an infinite amount of time. The other issue, as another commenter pointed out: It's very difficult to measure progress in thought. The mind is great at fooling itself, and not until you try to solve real problems (or discuss them with others) will you expose most of the gaps in your mind. The same person in the above anecdote does suffer from this. He definitely puts in effort to learn a lot (and has succeeded), but there are always more things to learn, and he moves on to the next topic before really applying what he has learned. As someone who talks to him often, it's really hard to tell if he understands. He is the classic case of "I'm sure I can solve problems when I need to, with a bit of review". At the other extreme, of course, are people who are not really that motivated to understand. They are satisfied if they get the answer at the back of the book. You won't get far with just that. > If you don't resist them you'll end up moving forward despite feeling confused, sometimes completely. You'll then end up pissing people off when you execute too slowly or fail (in their eyes, intentionally). This sounds more like an issue at work, and your experience is fairly universal - most jobs I've worked at have it. In my experience, understanding things well is sadly not valued on the job. They want you to "execute", and want you to minimize the time you spend learning. And of course, they would rather hire someone else instead of ensuring your proper learning/training.

cutemonster 6y ago
Actually there were women who dressed like men, pretended to be men -- and if it, surprisingly, turns out this was the case with GW, then that won't make QE a man. I have to agree with your friend :-)
6y ago

TrackerFF 6y ago

I want to add - habits like that are great to pick up, and fine tune, when you're in college. More so if you're a college student that can focus 100% on your academic life/studies, unburdened by things like work. EVEN more so if you have great mentors, professors, etc. that can guide you to the right place. I'm not saying that one CAN NOT do the things above, if you're a busy student with work on the side, and very limited resources as far as mentors or professors go...but I do think that those lucky enough to find themselves in the right positions, are more likely to mature - and quicker. (And it was no surprise to see that the author is a PPE grad from Oxford)

baby 6y ago

I don’t agree because I still do this all the time. Sure some people get annoyed, assholes will try to make you feel bad for asking dumb questions, or even mock you publicly. The fact is, your understanding grows so quickly when you ask questions that this doesn’t matter.

cbsmith 6y ago

Yeah, there's a bunch of caveats here. You also need to be reasonably quick to understand things, otherwise you'll be spending a lifetime trying to understand some pretty basic concepts and never get to anything interesting. In general, there are a bunch of starting conditions necessary for this kind of approach to glean value.