Author: nicholaschow (Page 2 of 14)

The Feynman Method forces you to explain to understand

August 23, 2020 / / 1 Comment

The Feynman Method involves pretending to teach the concept to a student, which forces you to wrangle with the material and create simple learning analogies (if you find that you stumble anywhere in the explanation, you don’t know the concept well enough). After completing the Feynman Method, you now truly understand the concept and own that knowledge.

In a way, my notes are an extended Feynman Method exercise. In a sense, the function of all my notes is to enhance thinking by making each of the often associative connections in my thinking into an explicit, detailed connection (see the function of note-taking is to augment thinking rather than store information).

Intelligence is about honesty and the will to think as much as it is about raw intellect

July 16, 2020 / / 1 Comment

“The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking. After he’d prove a theorem, or solve a problem, he’d go back and continue thinking about the problem and try to figure out different proofs of the same thing. Sometimes he’d spend hours on a problem he’d already solved.”

Nabeel Quereshi

I read an excellent post by Nabeel Quereshi on intelligence and learning. He makes the argument that intelligent people simply aren’t willing to accept answers they don’t understand, and they need to prove it to themselves. This reminds me of the Richard Feynman idea: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

One of the best ways to be intellectually honest is to explain a topic to yourself with the Feynman Method, since the Feynman Method forces you to explain to understand. In addition, writing and proper note-taking are exercises in intellectual honesty, since it forces you to make information and connections explicit: The function of note-taking is to augment thinking rather than store information.

Thinking is hard — “will to think” is a cool concept from the famed physicist Enrico Fermi. Thinkers are naturally reluctant to commit themselves to the effort that tedious and precise thinking demands.

The other implication is that intelligence (as defined here, which is more of a practical/problem-solving ability intelligence rather than scientifically-measured intelligence/raw intellect) is software, not hardware. It can be augmented by practicing the right principles.

Reimagining learning with Evergreen notes

June 16, 2020 / / 1 Comment

After reading through Andy Matuschak’s amazing Evergreen note system and Sohren Ahren’s excellent book How to Take Smart Notes (one of the only books on note-taking that’s actually worth reading), I’ve spent a good amount of time overhauling my knowledge creation and synthesis process. Matuschak’s work forced me to think critically about how note-taking fits with the learning process. At the end of the day, augmenting learning is what really matters, and note-taking need to serve that purpose.

I’ve included a snippet below from my own Evergreen notes, which means they’re also probably formatted in a foreign fashion to most readers. The biggest change is the double brackets surrounding clauses or sentences. For those of you familiar with different Markdown syntax, these brackets denote other text files with relevant ideas. Therefore, this note-taking process replicates the real-life learning process: explicitly connecting disparate pieces of information with other ideas. I can’t possibly do this justice by describing it, so please visit Andy Matuschak’s Evergreen notes to explore his implementation.

Here we go:

What is the point of note-taking? It should be to record down new facts that you encounter, such that you can integrate the insight into your existing understanding of the world. Most people are very good at the first part — recording the facts — but then neglect to explicate how each new fragment of knowledge fits into their extant body of knowledge ([[The Feynman Method forces you to explain to understand]]).

Learning is the process of connecting and relating. If your notes don’t explicitly promote that process, what is the point of taking these notes? It just gives you a false illusion of knowledge.

Therefore, effective note-taking should help augment your thinking process. Notes are highly effective for retention of information (“The faintest ink is better than the sharpest mind”), but you need to put in the time and effort to connect everything — you need to do the actual thinking. [[Intelligence is about honesty and the will to think as much as it is about raw intellect]].

Good notes allow you to identify existing connections between your thoughts, and serve to generate more ideas off of these connections — [[The explicit notetaking process mirrors how we want to actually learn]]. We know that knowledge is constructed in an iterative and cumulative way rather than absorbed fully-formed, so good notes should help facilitate this process.

A Taylor approximation approach to learning

July 31, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Since I’ve recently graduated from university this past June, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking regarding my learning — both in and out of the classroom setting. I’ve done a lot of writing about learning, ranging from best practices for learning different subjects, utilizing the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge to enjoy learning more, and much more. One thing related to learning that I have not adequately touched upon is my perspectives on “institutional” learning.

Simply put, there’s a large amount of undue complexity presented upon the initial introduction of many topics, sacrificing understanding in favor of rigor; this is something that academic pedagogy is especially guilty of. This learning methodology is the fastest way to destroy any interest or passion towards a topic, whereby you first by cover all definitions in painstaking detail, then proceed to some etymological or historical exposition about the topic, then if you’re lucky, finally end with some convoluted tangential examples (call this School A). In contrast, I find that there is tremendous value for students, where concepts and topics are introduced from a high-level and paired with a variety of analogies to aid in understanding (call this School B).

Continue reading

Cleaning house

April 24, 2018 / / 1 Comment

As my college career is coming to a close (I’m graduating in early June, oh my), I’ve been spending much more time reflecting about the journey that I’ve undertaken over the past four years. I’ve been sorting through old documents and notes, and updating the notes that I’ve taken through the years. I’ve been publishing more and more of these notes here, so keep an eye out for interesting new content!

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑