"But I've been thinking about this for months ... years!" As if that makes it more valuable. Thank you for articulating this beautifully.
I've seen this pattern in my writing. The writing that comes out without thinking sparks conversations, engagement, and impact. The writing that I spent way too much time trying to think through ... crickets.
I like this idea but my understanding of system 1 is that it requires practice and repetition from system 2. What are your thoughts on this? Essentially a point could be that you need to create iterative loops to get the relevant system 1 to the right place.
You’re exactly right. System 1 is the compiled code, and system 2 is the programmer.
You aren't born with the intuition to race a car or code an engine; you proceduralise the slow deliberation of system 2 until the prefrontal cortex hands the task off to the basal ganglia.
Every time you run a system 2 loop to solve a hard problem, your brain wraps that neural pathway in a fatty layer called myelin. It's thickening the wire to make signal move faster with less energy.
The reason schools produce "systematic ignorance" isn't a bug; it's the whole point of mass schooling [1].
When you force 30 children to learn the digestive system of a worm at the same time, you are violating the first rule of effective System 2 work: Interest. Without interest, there is no skin in the game. Without skin in the game, the brain refuses to compress the data. It just stores it in buffer memory (a fancy word for temporary storage) until the exam is over, then deletes it.
The solution is to self-educate with self-directed obsession.
It allows you to abandon the average. ([1] explains why "dumb" is a relative metric of speed calculation (Sc < Sa). Not an absolute one) Mastery ignores the class average and focuses on the feedback loop. [1][2]
It allows you to cherry-pick. You don't need the whole textbook; you need the specific components that solve the problem you are obsessed with right now. It is about the utility of the knowledge to solve problems and not the futility of the knowledge to regurgitate it.
It allows you to externalise and automate it. Once you've figured it out, you don't keep "revising" it; you turn it into a reflex, a writing, or you code it, and move on to the next problem.
I’m not sure I entirely agree with the idea that the academic system will change just because students become independent.
The system doesn't have to change. It was built for the average, and as long as they tolerate the numbness, the average will stay. Most people have no incentive to change their cognitive architecture if the current one is "good enough". It’s a deterministic game rooted in credentialing; as long as an employer uses a degree as a filter for 10,000 applicants, the school has no incentive to stop the bloat.
If a student isn't "hurting", they don't perceive a problem. And if there is no problem, there is no drive to create a solution. You cannot "train" self-education because that is an academic intervention in a non-academic process. You learn to self-educate by realising by yourself what doesn't work for your self: the school system, the 9-to-5 grind, and the "50-variable" mess.
I have tried telling people that they need to self-educate. They simply aren't interested. You might inspire them, but they’ll never get the point because they can’t resonate with what you’re saying.
I don’t title my essays "Why You Need to Increase Your Intelligence"; it won’t convince anyone that doesn't already know why, and if they already know why, then the essay would be pointless. I title them "How to Increase Your Intelligence" because that attracts the people who are already aware of the problems. Problems make you think. When you think, you will identify the cause of your problems by yourself and solve them.
[In monk voice]: "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."
You can't lecture birds on how to fly. Progress only starts with a problem.
Once you realise that you need to self-educate (Someone else cannot tell you unless you already know, they can only drive a thumb into the wound). Then "what should be done" is to self-educate. Just as the understanding of a problem reveals its solution.
If you're looking for a list of steps, here is a summary of some I've mentioned before:
The school gives you a syllabus to follow; you need to build a feedback loop to iterate.
Don't read to finish; read to extract. Treat every book or essay as a search for the solution. If you're a maestro in the mediaeval ages and your friend is dying of a cancer, you don't read malaria because it's part of the book. You look for what you need and use it.
Externalise your thinking. Don't keep your insights in your head (where they are lossy and prone to bias). Write them down, code them, or explain them to someone else. It’s the only way knowledge compounds.
Solve "Hard-to-Vary" Problems: In school, you solve problems where the answer is in the back of the book. In the real world, you should solve problems where the answer is physically or logically constrained.
Learn a language by needing to survive in a foreign country.
Learn to code by needing to automate a task that is currently stealing 4 hours of your day.
Because when the problem is real, the feedback is objective. You can't "fake" an explanation when the code doesn't run or the car doesn't start.
Your attention is your only finite resource.
If a book isn't giving you a high selection score, drop it.
Don't be a completionist. You don't owe anybody anything; you don't have to finish their book, or their essay, or their movie, or their podcast. Be a Surgical Extractor. Take the 1% of the signal you need and leave the noise for the "average" students who are still trying to look smart with highlighters and sticky notes.
My summary is that these are only some models I deduced for myself just to inspire you. Self-education is the process of figuring it out for yourself.
If you want to be average at driving a car, you can ask everyone for advice and get teachers and gurus and steps. But if you want to be world class and race a car faster than everyone else, you can't follow anybody's steps. You have to be at the forefront of that frontier and create the knowledge that's required.
Once you realise that you need to self-educate (Someone else cannot tell you unless you already know, they can only drive a thumb into the wound). Then "what should be done" is to self-educate. Just as the understanding of a problem reveals its solution.
If you're looking for a list of steps, here is a summary of some I've mentioned before:
The school gives you a syllabus to follow; you need to build a feedback loop to iterate.
Don't read to finish; read to extract. Treat every book or essay as a search for the solution. If you're a maestro in the mediaeval ages and your friend is dying of a cancer, you don't read malaria because it's part of the book. You look for what you need and use it.
Externalise your thinking. Don't keep your insights in your head (where they are lossy and prone to bias). Write them down, code them, or explain them to someone else. It’s the only way knowledge compounds.
Solve "Hard-to-Vary" Problems: In school, you solve problems where the answer is in the back of the book. In the real world, you should solve problems where the answer is physically or logically constrained.
Learn a language by needing to survive in a foreign country.
Learn to code by needing to automate a task that is currently stealing 4 hours of your day.
Because when the problem is real, the feedback is objective. You can't "fake" an explanation when the code doesn't run or the car doesn't start.
Your attention is your only finite resource.
If a book isn't giving you a high selection score, drop it.
Don't be a completionist. You don't owe anybody anything; you don't have to finish their book, or their essay, or their movie, or their podcast. Be a Surgical Extractor. Take the 1% of the signal you need and leave the noise for the "average" students who are still trying to look smart with highlighters and sticky notes.
My summary is that these are only some models I deduced for myself just to inspire you. Self-education is the process of figuring it out for yourself.
If you want to be average at driving a car, you can ask everyone for advice and get teachers and gurus and steps. But if you want to be world class and race a car faster than everyone else, you can't follow anybody's steps. You have to be at the forefront of that frontier and create the knowledge that's required.
"But I've been thinking about this for months ... years!" As if that makes it more valuable. Thank you for articulating this beautifully.
I've seen this pattern in my writing. The writing that comes out without thinking sparks conversations, engagement, and impact. The writing that I spent way too much time trying to think through ... crickets.
I like this idea but my understanding of system 1 is that it requires practice and repetition from system 2. What are your thoughts on this? Essentially a point could be that you need to create iterative loops to get the relevant system 1 to the right place.
You’re exactly right. System 1 is the compiled code, and system 2 is the programmer.
You aren't born with the intuition to race a car or code an engine; you proceduralise the slow deliberation of system 2 until the prefrontal cortex hands the task off to the basal ganglia.
Every time you run a system 2 loop to solve a hard problem, your brain wraps that neural pathway in a fatty layer called myelin. It's thickening the wire to make signal move faster with less energy.
The reason schools produce "systematic ignorance" isn't a bug; it's the whole point of mass schooling [1].
When you force 30 children to learn the digestive system of a worm at the same time, you are violating the first rule of effective System 2 work: Interest. Without interest, there is no skin in the game. Without skin in the game, the brain refuses to compress the data. It just stores it in buffer memory (a fancy word for temporary storage) until the exam is over, then deletes it.
The solution is to self-educate with self-directed obsession.
It allows you to abandon the average. ([1] explains why "dumb" is a relative metric of speed calculation (Sc < Sa). Not an absolute one) Mastery ignores the class average and focuses on the feedback loop. [1][2]
It allows you to cherry-pick. You don't need the whole textbook; you need the specific components that solve the problem you are obsessed with right now. It is about the utility of the knowledge to solve problems and not the futility of the knowledge to regurgitate it.
It allows you to externalise and automate it. Once you've figured it out, you don't keep "revising" it; you turn it into a reflex, a writing, or you code it, and move on to the next problem.
[1] https://crive.substack.com/p/how-mass-schooling-invented-smart
[2] https://crive.substack.com/p/your-work-is-replaceableunless-you
[3] https://crive.substack.com/p/hard-problems-are-easier-once-you
[4] https://crive.substack.com/p/how-to-know-everything-the-creative
I’m not sure I entirely agree with the idea that the academic system will change just because students become independent.
The system doesn't have to change. It was built for the average, and as long as they tolerate the numbness, the average will stay. Most people have no incentive to change their cognitive architecture if the current one is "good enough". It’s a deterministic game rooted in credentialing; as long as an employer uses a degree as a filter for 10,000 applicants, the school has no incentive to stop the bloat.
If a student isn't "hurting", they don't perceive a problem. And if there is no problem, there is no drive to create a solution. You cannot "train" self-education because that is an academic intervention in a non-academic process. You learn to self-educate by realising by yourself what doesn't work for your self: the school system, the 9-to-5 grind, and the "50-variable" mess.
I have tried telling people that they need to self-educate. They simply aren't interested. You might inspire them, but they’ll never get the point because they can’t resonate with what you’re saying.
I don’t title my essays "Why You Need to Increase Your Intelligence"; it won’t convince anyone that doesn't already know why, and if they already know why, then the essay would be pointless. I title them "How to Increase Your Intelligence" because that attracts the people who are already aware of the problems. Problems make you think. When you think, you will identify the cause of your problems by yourself and solve them.
[In monk voice]: "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."
You can't lecture birds on how to fly. Progress only starts with a problem.
Once you realise that you need to self-educate (Someone else cannot tell you unless you already know, they can only drive a thumb into the wound). Then "what should be done" is to self-educate. Just as the understanding of a problem reveals its solution.
If you're looking for a list of steps, here is a summary of some I've mentioned before:
The school gives you a syllabus to follow; you need to build a feedback loop to iterate.
Don't read to finish; read to extract. Treat every book or essay as a search for the solution. If you're a maestro in the mediaeval ages and your friend is dying of a cancer, you don't read malaria because it's part of the book. You look for what you need and use it.
Externalise your thinking. Don't keep your insights in your head (where they are lossy and prone to bias). Write them down, code them, or explain them to someone else. It’s the only way knowledge compounds.
Solve "Hard-to-Vary" Problems: In school, you solve problems where the answer is in the back of the book. In the real world, you should solve problems where the answer is physically or logically constrained.
Learn a language by needing to survive in a foreign country.
Learn to code by needing to automate a task that is currently stealing 4 hours of your day.
Because when the problem is real, the feedback is objective. You can't "fake" an explanation when the code doesn't run or the car doesn't start.
Your attention is your only finite resource.
If a book isn't giving you a high selection score, drop it.
Don't be a completionist. You don't owe anybody anything; you don't have to finish their book, or their essay, or their movie, or their podcast. Be a Surgical Extractor. Take the 1% of the signal you need and leave the noise for the "average" students who are still trying to look smart with highlighters and sticky notes.
RR: https://crive.substack.com/p/school-taught-you-to-study-not-to
My summary is that these are only some models I deduced for myself just to inspire you. Self-education is the process of figuring it out for yourself.
If you want to be average at driving a car, you can ask everyone for advice and get teachers and gurus and steps. But if you want to be world class and race a car faster than everyone else, you can't follow anybody's steps. You have to be at the forefront of that frontier and create the knowledge that's required.
Once you realise that you need to self-educate (Someone else cannot tell you unless you already know, they can only drive a thumb into the wound). Then "what should be done" is to self-educate. Just as the understanding of a problem reveals its solution.
If you're looking for a list of steps, here is a summary of some I've mentioned before:
The school gives you a syllabus to follow; you need to build a feedback loop to iterate.
Don't read to finish; read to extract. Treat every book or essay as a search for the solution. If you're a maestro in the mediaeval ages and your friend is dying of a cancer, you don't read malaria because it's part of the book. You look for what you need and use it.
Externalise your thinking. Don't keep your insights in your head (where they are lossy and prone to bias). Write them down, code them, or explain them to someone else. It’s the only way knowledge compounds.
Solve "Hard-to-Vary" Problems: In school, you solve problems where the answer is in the back of the book. In the real world, you should solve problems where the answer is physically or logically constrained.
Learn a language by needing to survive in a foreign country.
Learn to code by needing to automate a task that is currently stealing 4 hours of your day.
Because when the problem is real, the feedback is objective. You can't "fake" an explanation when the code doesn't run or the car doesn't start.
Your attention is your only finite resource.
If a book isn't giving you a high selection score, drop it.
Don't be a completionist. You don't owe anybody anything; you don't have to finish their book, or their essay, or their movie, or their podcast. Be a Surgical Extractor. Take the 1% of the signal you need and leave the noise for the "average" students who are still trying to look smart with highlighters and sticky notes.
RR: https://crive.substack.com/p/school-taught-you-to-study-not-to
My summary is that these are only some models I deduced for myself just to inspire you. Self-education is the process of figuring it out for yourself.
If you want to be average at driving a car, you can ask everyone for advice and get teachers and gurus and steps. But if you want to be world class and race a car faster than everyone else, you can't follow anybody's steps. You have to be at the forefront of that frontier and create the knowledge that's required.