Have you ever wondered how some people just seem to soak up information? The secret is that they have accumulated a critical mass of knowledge, which allows them to create enough anchor points (more on anchor points here) to seamlessly integrate the new information into their existing knowledge framework. That’s it. The tough part is developing that initial mass of knowledge.
I’ve gone on and on about how all knowledge is connected. Too often, subjects in schools are taught as if they were isolated, self-contained bodies of knowledge. That is so very false. And there is nothing better to prove this phenomenon than the Wikipedia Game.
I was first introduced to the Wikipedia Game at Chinese school when I was in sixth grade. The goal of the game is to navigate from one Wikipedia page to another page, using only the hyperlinks on the pages. Whoever uses the fewest links/goes the fastest is the winner. For example, if you wanted to navigate from “Ming Dynasty” to “Mao Zedong,” you could proceed like this: “Ming Dynasty” > “Forbidden City” > “Chinese Civil War” > “Mao Zedong.” Of course, there is probably a faster and more efficient way of doing this, but discovering the quickest path is the fun of the game.
While a very dynamic and exciting game, the core takeaway is that all fields of knowledge are connected. If you deconstructed and graphically represented all Wikipedia’s pages as nodes in a graph, you’d likely be left with an artistic and extremely sophisticated linked spiderweb of knowledge. This interconnectedness explains how those people can amass encyclopedic amounts of knowledge in their heads — as you spend more time learning, it just becomes easier to retain the information!
Now, here’s a challenge for all of you: Try and navigate from LeBron James to the Manhattan Project in under ten links. If you accomplish it in under six links — LeBron’s old jersey number with the Miami Heat — be sure to let me know!