Learning by Building

What is the purpose of learning?

I think that this question is the most important question when it comes to education.

We intuitively know that we need more knowledge to live better lives.

Modern societies are built to facilitate education, and spend enormous amounts of money on this.

But just as the math student doesn’t know why he has to learn this stuff, the student in general doesn’t know why he has to learn at all.

So why do we even bother learning anything?

Well humans have specific, subjective goals they want to achieve and need knowledge to achieve them.

Education means change of behavior to achieve a goal, and the method is downloading information into the brain.

But three things can go fatally wrong in that process:

Ⅰ

The first one is that the information we consume might be false or useless for our specific situation.

Changing behavior due to downloading that information would lead to an outcome that doesn’t produce progress toward the goal.

You can’t read books about ancient Mesopotamia and expect to be able to build a humanoid robot as a consequence.

It just doesn’t make any sense.

Ⅱ

However it can also be the case that the information is correct and fits your goal perfectly, but the actions aren’t changed accordingly.

In that scenario, you know what to do but you either don’t do it or don’t do it in the right way for whatever reason.

This can be a discipline issue for example.

Ⅲ

The third thing that can go fatally wrong when learning something is that the goal might be detrimental.

This is a weird problem.

You might think that you need to learn because knowledge is good but the goal you are pursuing by that will just harm your life and the life of others.

This doesn’t only lead to a negative future, but will also prevent learning success because the goal doesn’t mean anything to you.

You basically have no intrinsic motivation.

Many things need to be done right when approaching education.

You have to take ultimate responsibility and self-educate like a maniac.

Schools aren’t built to get those three aspects of education right.

They are built to make you achieve a very specific goal, in a very specific way, with little respect for the implementation of knowledge.

If you don’t become your own teacher you are lost.

Now let’s attack Information Download, Changing Behavior, and Goal Of Education one by one.

In my opinion, education starts with the goal, not the information.

So I will walk you through the three steps backwards.

The curriculums that are offered by traditional education institutions are very effective.

They prepare a person for a very specific role in the economy.

By consuming the information that these institutions provide you automatically stop pursuing your own unique goal and, at least partially, pursue a goal someone else made for you.

The information schools and universities provide are obviously legit but if you don’t decide where you want to navigate towards you will be navigated by someone else.

If you’re fine with living a life you didn’t chose to live, ignore this. If not, visualize a major life goal and figure out the proper education afterwards.

Goal Of Education

This is where education begins. With a goal.

If you don’t form your own goal you can’t control your future. You will either become a tool for someone else or you will live a life you don’t want to live.

Both are things I personally want to avoid.

To make things maximally meaningful and exciting, ask yourself:

“What is the highest goal I can visualize?”

This is extremely important.

You need to think for yourself and clearly define what the best possible version of life is for you.

This should take some time and answering the question should never stop.

This is so important because if you don’t have the most positive goal possible as your goal you logically have a less positive goal. (high is equal to positive in that regard)

As a result, you will do stuff and download information that will lead to a less positive life. A life far below your potential.

It’s brutal rationality to take the highest conceivable goal as your primary goal and work towards that.

I recommend writing a lot. This will lead to figuring out what is most positive.

Changing Behavior

Now it gets interesting and obvious why the goal was the first step.

By having formulated the most positive goal you now have more energy, focus, and motivation than 99% of humanity at your disposal.

Most people pursue limited, small goals that don’t bring much meaning.

But you are building something of ultimate purpose. Progressing towards your goal becomes the purpose of your life. It is the antidote to nihilism.

So now you have to take raw action.

Your goal doesn’t fulfill itself.

We live in an age where people are weak. We have unlimited entertainment at our fingertips. We seek something that makes life easy.

But the reality is that life isn’t easy.

Life is hard, and setting the highest possible goal doesn’t have the purpose of making your life easy. It has the purpose of purpose. Of making you do as much positive stuff as possible, no matter how painful the action is.

Information Download

Once you’ve started taking raw action on your goal, you need to get mathematical.

Which actions are most likely to produce progress towards your goal?

Which information might serve you to actualize your goal?

Nothing should be passive.

Consuming random YouTube videos, podcasts, and books might give you a certain education, but since you have a goal that requires specific actions, you need to select your information specifically as well.

And that is why information download comes last, not first or second.

Because you have to start building something to figure out what you need to know to build it.

Feedback from reality will correct you, and your information download will be much more useful.

We have limited time on this planet. It only makes sense to be cautious as hell about what you consume, or you leave reaching your goal to chance.

We learn best when our goal is maximally meaningful, and when we act more than we consume.

Hope to see you around for next Saturday’s letter.

-Ömer

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