Happy Sunday!
These are, no doubt, testing times. I hope you are doing okay. I hope you are out of COVID-19’s harm. I hope that you will be out of harm in the future as well. My best wishes are with you.
The next couple of weeks (if not months) are crucial, not only for a country, but also for the world, and for the human race as well. But I’m hopeful. I believe that we’ll get through this. I believe we’ll come out stronger than before.
Like me, if you are spending most of your time at home, I’ve added some extra content in this newsletter to make your time a bit more interesting. If you are practising social distancing, regularly washing your hands, avoiding touching your face, kudos! Here’s a virtual high ten from me. 🙌
Now, it’s time for your weekly dose of multidisciplinary reading to upgrade your thinking and decision making. And if you’re seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here.
Q: What’s the difference between knowledge and illusion of knowledge?
When it comes to better ways of learning, no scientist, let alone a Nobel laureate, gets mentioned more than the great Richard Feynman.
Feynman is the most curious and high-spirited character I’ve read about who believed that the world is much more interesting than any one discipline. Therefore he was curious about almost everything he came across.
In this short clip, Feynman articulates the difference between knowing the name of something and understanding it.
Following is the important part where I wish to draw your attention:
See that bird? It’s a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it’s called a Halzenfugel, and in Chinese they call it a Chung Ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way.
The point that Feynman’s trying to make is that simply knowing the name of something doesn’t mean you understand it. In order to talk to each other, we have to have words, but we often talk in fact-deficient, obfuscating generalities to cover up our lack of understanding.
In Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, he illustrates this very problem with regards to a science book for kids.
“For example, there was a book that started out with four pictures: first there was a wind-up toy; then there was an automobile; then there was a boy riding a bicycle; then there was something else. And underneath each picture it said, “What makes it go?”
I thought, “I know what it is: They’re going to talk about mechanics, how the springs work inside the toy; about chemistry, how the engine of the automobile works; and biology, about how the muscles work.”
It was the kind of thing my father would have talked about: “What makes it go? Everything goes because the sun is shining.” And then we would have fun discussing it:
“No, the toy goes because the spring is wound up,” I would say.
“How did the spring get wound up?” he would ask.”
“I wound it up.”
“And how did you get moving?”
“From eating.”
“And food grows only because the sun is shining. So it’s because the sun is shining that all these things are moving.” That would get the concept across that motion is simply the transformation of the sun’s power.
I turned the page. The answer was, for the wind-up toy, “Energy makes it go.” And for the boy on the bicycle, “Energy makes it go.” For everything, “Energy makes it go.”
Now that doesn’t mean anything. Suppose it’s “Wakalixes.” That’s the general principle: “Wakalixes makes it go.” There’s no knowledge coming in. The child doesn’t learn anything; it’s just a word!”
“What they should have done is to look at the wind-up toy, see that there are springs inside, learn about springs, learn about wheels, and never mind “energy.” Later on, when the children know something about how the toy actually works, they can discuss the more general principles of energy.
It’s also not even true that “energy makes it go,” because if it stops, you could say, “energy makes it stop” just as well. What they’re talking about is concentrated energy being transformed into more dilute forms, which is a very subtle aspect of energy. Energy is neither increased nor decreased in these examples; it’s just changed from one form to another. And when the things stop, the energy is changed into heat, into general chaos.
But that’s the way all the books were: They said things that were useless, mixed-up, ambiguous, confusing, and partially incorrect. How anybody can learn science from these books, I don’t know, because it’s not science.”
I hope you can understand where his frustration is coming from. There is, however, a simple way to test whether you know something or only know the name of something. It’s a popular learning method named after Feynman himself: The Feynman Technique.
If you have to test your knowledge about the concept of something, say energy, then without using the word “energy”, try to rephrase what you know about it in your own language. Without using the word “energy,” explain in simple words what makes the toy, the bicycle, and the automobile go. If you cannot, you may have learned nothing about science. Truth it, most of us have not. Most of us simply know the jargon, not the meat.
The Feynman Technique involves four steps:
When you learn something, learn its concept, not just its name.
Then explain it in simple words so that even a 10 year old can understand.
Now, identify the gaps in your explanation. Most likely you won’t get it right the first time, and that’s OK. Go back to the source to better understand it.
Next, simplify further, and try again.
You should try it. It’s actually not as simple as it sounds. As a kid, Feynman’s father gave him a problem many years ago which beautifully illustrates the technique.
He said, “Suppose some Martians were to come down to earth, and Martians never slept, but instead were perpetually active. Suppose they didn’t have this crazy phenomenon that we have, called sleep. So they ask you the question: ‘How does it feel to go to sleep? What happens when you go to sleep? Do your thoughts suddenly stop, or do they move less aanndd lleeessss rraaaaapppppiidddddllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? How does the mind actually turn off?’
We take other men’s knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle and superficial learning. We must try to make them our own. Otherwise, it’s like having a belly-full meal that has been chewed but not digested, and hence cannot nourish us.
I’m a huge fan of Richard Feynman. If you are a fan as well, here’s another video where he talks about the differences of merely knowing how to reason mathematically and understanding how and why things are physically analysed in the way they are.
💡 An Idea For You
You can give others advice, understanding, compassion, and encouragement. But what they eventually do with it is completely up to them.
You are like a gardener scattering seeds and caring for them, but only they can drive their own growth.
You don’t save others, unless they want to save themselves.
📑 I Enjoyed Reading
Modi’s Coronavirus Speech: Straight Out of The Digital Marketer’s Playbook — “On Thursday evening, Prime ister Narendra Modi made a televised address to the nation about the coronavirus pandemic. While there were only skeletal details about India’s preparedness to combat the crisis, what was particularly illuminating and interesting is how much Modi thinks like a digital marketer.”
The Black Death: The Greatest Catastrophe Ever — “Ole J. Benedictow describes how he calculated that the Black Death killed 50 million people in the 14th century, or 60 per cent of Europe’s entire population.”
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy — This was written by Paul Graham back in 2008, but this makes lotta sense now as well. Economy is cyclical after all. “The economic situation is apparently so grim that some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the mid seventies. When Microsoft and Apple were founded.”
📹 I Enjoyed Watching
The Coronavirus Explained & What You Should Do — “In December 2019 the Chinese authorities notified the world that a virus was spreading through their communities. In the following months it spread to other countries, with cases doubling within days. This virus is the ‘Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2’ that causes the disease called COVID19, and that everyone simply calls Coronavirus.”
🎙 I Enjoyed Listening
Balaji Srinivasan: Exploring COVID-19 — “In this special episode, we explore the origin of COVID-19, what’s being done to contain it, (including possible second and third-order consequences,) how to find reliable information in a constant stream of sensational news headlines, and how we can thoughtfully prepare for what’s coming with a rational and level head.”
📑 Worth Rereading
Here’s a bunch of my previously written articles that I think you would enjoy reading.
Hanlon’s Razor: Why Not Everybody is Out to Get You — “When you spend a large part of your day communicating with others and making choices based on that, somewhere or the other things are bound to get out of control, or go against you.”
The Role of Luck, Skill, and Serendipity in Your Success — Here I discuss two very different takes on the dichotomy of luck and skill by two eminent personalities—Peter Thiel and Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
The Just-World Fallacy: There is No ‘Just’ Plan For The World — “Do you believe in karma? Then you most likely believe that one day all the good karma you are generating will lift you higher up in the social hierarchy to join the others who have what they deserve.”
A list of all the articles I’ve written can be found here. And the past three editions of Sunday Wisdom are here: 29, 28, and 27.
🤔 Worth Thinking About
This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.
— Seneca
🙏 Thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to someone who’d enjoy it.
📭 My email address is hellocoffeeandjunk@gmail.com. I love talking to individuals and small businesses at any time, for any reason. So please feel free to drop me an email.
Until next time.
Best,
Abhishek
P.S. Buying coffee in the time of Coronavirus
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