Cool write-up, thanks! Mostly interesting in the “learning how to learn” aspect, rather than the “how that relates to Logseq” aspect. Some stuff there I already know well, lots of new bits, or pieces that I kind of know that you’ve reframed in useful ways. I reckon I’ll come back to this.
Couple of points to add:
- I think there is a lot of difference between learning knowledge and learning a skill. I think there are some general things you can say about each.
- Knowledge is:
- Understanding processes (e.g. by building models), and
- Remembering facts
- Being able to communicate or use that information is what makes knowledge useful
- Knowledge questions are things like “Why?”, and “How?” and “How much?”
- Skill is:
- Understanding how to do something
- (which is largely pattern recognition, I think - in situation A, do B), and
- Having the muscle memory to do it well.
- (many skills don’t really involved much actual muscle control in a meaningful way, e.g. writing, in those cases, this is more of a metaphor - it’s the understanding of how to apply what you know)
- Some skills also have a creativity component,
- which I think is something like the ability to combine known patterns in novel ways, to produce a new situation.
- Skill questions are “How do I …?”
- Understanding how to do something
- Knowledge is:
- I suspect thinking about how to approach those two things differently is worthwhile
- I haven’t really got any solid thoughts on this bit yet, but:
- Knowledge doesn’t have a practical component, so practicing is not very meaningful,
- although memory building exercises may be with specific types of knowledge
- Conversely, reading and understanding the how of something will not help build a skill if what you’re missing is the muscle memory component
- rote learning and memorisation is useless for most skills
- I also think there is substantial overlap between them, for instance
- Understanding how a thing works (knowledge) can help you learn how to do a thing (skill)
- Conversely, doing a thing and receiving feedback on it can help you to better understand how it works
- Pattern recognition in particular is relevant to both
- in knowledge, it’s what tells you that a particular process is happening (and that your mental model is applicable)
- in skill, it’s what tells you what do do next
- Pattern recognition building can often really benefit from a tight theory-practice cycle.
- I learned this best when learning to play Go. The process there is:
- Play a few games. Lose a lot.
- Pay attention to what happened that lead to your loss (review the game, ask opponents for feedback)
- Go to the theory libraries, and read up on pattern knowledge, and think about how it would have helped
- Play more games. Lose a lot (but less). Repeat.
- Go is almost archetypal in this regard, because the game is basically pure pattern matching, with no temporal component.
- I learned this best when learning to play Go. The process there is:
- Communication is also a skill in itself
- and it feeds back into learning and solidifying knowledge, as you mentioned in your “sharing knowledge” section.
- All patterns/models (and thinking in general) boils down to analogy-making (see e.g. Hofstader and Sander’s Surfaces and Essences), and being able to apply a pattern/model from one situation to a substantially different situation can be incredibly useful, both in learning to understand something, AND in learning to do something.
- Examples are really killer when learning new complex knowledge, because they root difficult-to-grasp concepts in the real world and in narrative, which makes it easier for the human brain to grasp.
- I think learning projects are an analogue to this in skill-building.
- For example, it’s common in wood-working to start out by making a simple box. In doing so, you learn a lot of basics about cutting, measuring, joining, and finishing. Next time you do a more complex project, you can think back to that example and relate aspects of it to your new project by analogy.
- I think learning projects are an analogue to this in skill-building.
I guess you could use my list when considering any given new thing that you want to learn, in order to know which aspects of your lists are the most important.
Also, there are other things you can learn, like habits, values, and preferences. Not sure, but I think those are slightly different things. Maybe they align with skill building more, because they would have a practice component? There are books focussing on some of them, like James Clear’s Atomic Habits, or Redirect by Timothy Wilson (focus on learning new self-narratives).