Learning vs. Having the Impression of Learning

I think this is why I have the particular Weakness of overestimating my abilities, because I treat simply reading 1 article, scratching the surface, or just watching a YouTube video, and thinking I have mastered the subject.

Unless you truly struggle with a topic, you haven’t really learned it.

This is why you have to be careful and be mindful:

• Just because you made a note on a particular subject inside Obsidian doesn’t mean that you have mastered that subject

Serendipity: You learned in SPCOM223 about the 4 Stages of Learning.

Also on Understanding vs. Doing

2022-10-27: However, there is also this new lesson. Sometimes, you don’t need to truly learn something. Scratching the surface sometimes is good enough. You don’t always need to go super deep into every subject. You time and energy matters. Invest it in what matters. You cannot learn everything. You just need to be aware that you are scratching the surface, and the limits of what you know and don’t know.

For example, you are currently working on this card abstraction technique. You don’t need to understand the proof behind Monte-Carlo methods. You just need to know that it works, and be aware that you don’t know why it works exactly beyond intuitive level. Same with neural networks.

Like the stuff you spent personal time learning with moment, you never actually touched that again. Like sure, you are building foundation, but it is irrelevant. Rather, you could have spent that time actually creating value to society.

2023-08-10: UMMM no, I argue that I find that the best engineers always try to go down the lowest levels of abstractions, and understand from first principles why things work. Never take the fact that something works for granted. Understand why it works. Else, you are just a Terrible Programmer.

• Especially as you are still the stage of learning. I guess it’s a careful balance.

Similar Ideas

• Arrogance, thinking you are the sh-t just because something great happened to you, even though there is still so much to learn.