added by Ajinkya Wadhwa and · updated 2y ago
Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That
- In this form, knowledge is not understanding. It’s merely an abstracted version of someone else’s lived experience; symbols on a page that attempt to summarize the nuances of each discovery.
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Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago
- No matter how much wisdom you gain from the pages of your favorite author, if you haven’t experienced the visceral events that led to that wisdom yourself, then it’s just knowledge. Sure, you can leverage the hard-earned wisdom of others to help you, but understanding only happens when you earn that wisdom in the tumultuous arena of real life.
from Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That by moretothat.com
Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago
- What this means is that the way we absorb knowledge is dependent upon what others have deemed valuable. The scholars that put together these textbooks decide what pieces of information to include, and market forces determine which textbooks make it to each school. What the student is left with is the result of this piecemealing and marketing that h... See more
from Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That by moretothat.com
Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago
- So any textbook you read has the forces of compression and incentives embedded into it. The removal of complexity and the generation of profit guide the distribution of knowledge, however subtly it may be.
from Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That by moretothat.com
Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago
- To explain what I mean here, we have to first delve into the difference between knowledge and understanding. On its surface, it may seem like a game of semantics, but if you explore this further, you’ll see that the nuances make all the difference.
from Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That by moretothat.com
Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago
- When you’re given a textbook, you’re effectively given a history of discoveries. What you have in there is a distillation of theories and findings that other humans have happened upon.
from Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That by moretothat.com
Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago
- The pursuit of knowledge is heralded as a virtue, but the attainment of understanding is far more important.
from Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That by moretothat.com
Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago
- I recognize the irony here of describing understanding through words, and you being the person that’s internalizing it as knowledge. But with that said, therein lies the value of writing. Writing is an attempt to share your lived experience with others, which makes you face the blind spots in your own thinking in real-time. When you write, it becom... See more
from Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That by moretothat.com
Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago
- Because in the end, it’s only through self-exploration where lasting wisdom can be found. No book – regardless of its profundity – can act as an adequate substitute for that.
from Knowledge Is Not Understanding - More to That by moretothat.com
Ajinkya Wadhwa added 2y ago