How To Grow Better "Knowledge Trees"
Summary
TLDRThis video script explores a systematic approach to self-improvement and learning, inspired by Elon Musk's advice to understand fundamental principles. It introduces a three-step strategy: using the 'why' ladder to break down complex issues, purposeful procrastination to gather information and identify consensus, and explaining concepts to a five-year-old to ensure a solid grasp of the fundamentals. The script uses physical fitness and evolution as examples to illustrate how understanding the basics can transform one's approach to learning and self-improvement.
Takeaways
- 🌳 The importance of understanding fundamental principles before delving into details, as suggested by Elon Musk, is emphasized.
- 🔍 A systematic approach to learning involves 'going down the Y ladder' to break down complex issues by asking 'why' until reaching a foundational understanding.
- 🌫 Tim Urban's method of 'finding the foggy spots' in understanding a topic is highlighted as a way to identify areas of confusion and work through them.
- 🏗️ The concept of 'purposeful procrastination' is introduced as a means to explore a topic broadly by skimming various sources to understand consensus and disagreement.
- 📚 The idea that the body adapts according to the demands placed upon it (SAID principle) is presented as a fundamental principle of physical fitness.
- 🧬 The significance of understanding evolution as a 'trunk' of knowledge for grasping human biology and fitness is underscored, with an example of how it relates to protein consumption.
- 🤔 The script challenges common fitness beliefs by encouraging critical thinking through the lens of evolutionary biology.
- 🌐 The process of learning is likened to building a semantic tree, where the trunk represents fundamental principles and the leaves are details or specifics.
- 📝 The three-point strategy for learning includes using the Y ladder, purposeful procrastination, and explaining concepts to someone else to ensure a deep understanding.
- 👶 The concept of explaining complex ideas as if to a five-year-old is used to illustrate the importance of simplifying knowledge to test one's own understanding.
- 📈 The video script advocates for a foundational knowledge in any field of interest, using the example of fitness to demonstrate how a lack of it can lead to misconceptions.
Q & A
What is the semantic tree concept mentioned in the script?
-The semantic tree concept is a metaphor for organizing knowledge, where the trunk and big branches represent fundamental principles, and the leaves represent details or specifics. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the foundational concepts before delving into the finer details.
What is the 'Y ladder' and how is it used in the learning process?
-The 'Y ladder' is a method of questioning where one asks 'why' repeatedly to understand the root cause or fundamental principle of a concept. It's used to break down complex issues and to identify the foundational knowledge needed to grasp a subject.
Why does the script mention Tim Urban and his approach to learning?
-Tim Urban is mentioned as an example of someone who uses the 'Y ladder' method to find and clear the 'foggy spots' in his understanding of a topic. His approach is used to illustrate how one can systematically work through a subject to gain a deeper understanding.
What is 'purposeful procrastination' and how does it differ from regular procrastination?
-Purposeful procrastination is a strategic form of delaying where one engages in broad, exploratory learning about a specific topic. Unlike regular procrastination, which is aimless, this method is directed towards understanding the general consensus and areas of disagreement within a subject.
How does the script suggest using the 'purposeful procrastination' method to understand a topic?
-The script suggests starting with a basic foundation, such as a Wikipedia article, and then opening multiple tabs to skim read various articles to get an overall sense of the topic. This helps to identify areas of consensus and disagreement, which are key to understanding the fundamental principles.
What is the principle of 'Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand' and why is it important in fitness?
-The principle of 'Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand' (SAID) states that the body adapts to the specific demands placed upon it. It's important in fitness because it suggests that the body will change in response to the type of exercise and training it is subjected to, whether it's lifting heavy weights or performing high repetitions.
Why does the script emphasize the importance of understanding evolution in the context of physical fitness?
-The script emphasizes the importance of understanding evolution because it provides a fundamental framework for understanding how the human body responds to exercise and nutrition. It helps to evaluate various fitness practices and theories in light of how our bodies have adapted over time.
What is the script's stance on the common belief that the human body can only absorb a certain amount of protein at a time?
-The script challenges this belief by suggesting that from an evolutionary perspective, it would make sense for humans to be able to absorb more protein at once, especially considering scenarios where food was scarce and protein intake needed to be maximized.
What is the final step in the script's three-point strategy for understanding a new topic?
-The final step is to explain the topic as if to a five-year-old, which helps ensure a firm grasp of the fundamentals. This method forces one to simplify complex ideas and verify their own understanding.
How does the script relate the concept of evolution to the understanding of protein consumption in fitness?
-The script uses evolution to argue that the ability to absorb a large amount of protein at once could have been an evolutionary advantage, especially in scenarios where protein-rich food was consumed in large quantities during a single meal.
What does the script suggest as a method to evaluate new knowledge in the field of fitness?
-The script suggests using the foundational knowledge of evolution as a 'trunk' to evaluate new fitness knowledge, ensuring that any new information can be properly assessed and integrated into one's understanding.
Outlines
🌳 Building a Knowledge Tree: The Fundamentals
The video script starts by referencing Elon Musk's advice on viewing knowledge as a semantic tree, emphasizing the importance of understanding fundamental principles before delving into details. The speaker admits the lack of clarity on how to achieve this and introduces their three-point strategy for systematic learning. The first step involves using the 'Y Ladder', a method of questioning why repeatedly to uncover the basic understanding of a topic, as illustrated by Tim Urban's approach to understanding complex issues like AI and Fermi's Paradox.
🔍 Purposeful Procrastination: Finding the Consensus
The second step in the learning process is termed 'purposeful procrastination', which, unlike regular procrastination, has a clear purpose: understanding a specific topic. The speaker explains that this involves initial broad research, such as skimming multiple articles to grasp the general consensus and areas of disagreement within a subject. This step is crucial for identifying the 'walls' of understanding, or the agreed-upon facts, and the areas of uncertainty that require further exploration.
🦒 Evolution as the Root of Fitness Understanding
The final step is to explain concepts to someone else, ideally in a simple manner, as a test of one's own understanding. The speaker uses the example of evolution to illustrate this point, explaining that evolution is not just about survival but about successful replication of organisms. They discuss how understanding evolutionary principles can shed light on various fitness concepts, such as protein consumption, and dispel myths by providing a more fundamental understanding of the human body's response to exercise and nutrition. The video concludes by encouraging viewers to apply this method to other areas of interest and to share their insights.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Semantic Tree
💡Fundamental Principles
💡Y Ladder
💡Foggy Spots
💡Purposeful Procrastination
💡Consensus
💡Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand (SAID)
💡Evolution
💡Survival of the Fittest
💡Protein Absorption
💡Explain Like I'm Five
Highlights
Elon Musk's quote emphasizes the importance of understanding fundamental principles before delving into details.
The speaker's personal quest to develop a systematic approach to learning new things.
Introduction of the three-point strategy for understanding fundamentals.
The 'Y Ladder' technique for breaking down complex issues by asking 'why' repeatedly.
Tim Urban's approach to identifying and clearing 'foggy spots' in understanding a topic.
The process of understanding electric cars by tracing back to the finite nature of fossil fuels.
Purposeful procrastination as a method for gaining a broad understanding of a topic.
Using Wikipedia and skimming articles to identify consensus and disagreement in a subject area.
The importance of identifying the 'trunk' of knowledge in a subject, exemplified by physical fitness.
The SAID principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand) as a fundamental concept in fitness.
The role of evolution in understanding the human body and physical fitness.
The concept of explaining complex ideas in simple terms to ensure understanding.
The evolutionary perspective on protein consumption and its implications for fitness.
The evolutionary advantage of being able to absorb more protein in a single meal.
The necessity of a baseline knowledge of human body responses to exercise and nutrition.
The final recommendation to start with the fundamentals when learning any new skill or subject.
Invitation for viewers to share their thoughts on the foundational knowledge in various fields.
Transcripts
all right so if you've spent much time
thinking about self-improvement or the
process of learning you've probably
heard this quote before it's important
to view knowledge as a sort of semantic
tree make sure you understand the
fundamental principles i.e the trunk and
big branches before you get into the
leaves or details or there is nothing
for them to hang on to so that comes
from elon musk and it gets quoted
everywhere and what's always bothered me
about it is that nobody ever actually
explains how you're supposed to do that
like you're supposed to understand the
fundamentals of whatever it is that
you're interested in but how do you
actually start to understand what those
fundamentals are this is something
that's important to me because i love
learning new things and so a few months
ago i sat down to try and work out a
systematic way for doing this and my
three-point strategy for doing that is
what i'm gonna explain in this video
okay step one is going down the y ladder
okay so if you've spent much time around
small children you already know what the
y ladder is it's the thing where a child
asks why once and then every answer you
give leads to another why until you get
to something you can't explain and at
that point you either look up the answer
ask them why they think it happens or
you tell them because i said so
hopefully you don't do that last one too
often and so if you're a grown-up the y
ladder is often a good way to pull apart
something that you don't understand
about a complicated issue tim urban
who's put together some amazing book
length blog posts about topics like ai
fermi's paradox and tesla talks about
finding the foggy spots in the story
that make him kind of glaze over because
he doesn't fully understand them and as
tim says when you clear away the fog
from the surface you often find more fog
underneath so then you keep repeating
that process or going down the y ladder
until you clear away all the fog and you
hit what feels like the bottom in the
case of understanding why electric cars
are important that might be
understanding where fossil fuels come
from and why that makes them a finite
resource and then that leads you to an
understanding of the fact that we are
going to have to get ourselves away from
our reliance on them eventually and also
an understanding that it's better to
speed that process along for various
other reasons so start with a concept
you don't understand and keep asking why
until you haven't got a clear answer and
that's where you start with the next
stage okay step two is what i'm going to
call purposeful procrastination
and procrastination gets a bad rap
especially among like self-improvement
circles but what makes this different
from the regular kind is that there is
actually an overarching purpose to it
you're not just randomly clicking around
online or on social media you are trying
to understand one specific topic so
urban talks about how he always starts
by feeling like he's blindfolded in a
room and at the start of the process
he's just feeling his way around trying
to work out where the walls are so he'll
start a wikipedia for a basic foundation
and to kind of understand the topic in
general and then he also talks about
something that i do a lot which is just
opening tab after tab on his computer
and skim reading a whole bunch of
different articles to get an overall
sense of the topic and you might be
worried that you're going to end up
reading things that contradict or that
don't agree or that are inaccurate but
at this stage that doesn't really matter
because all you're doing is reading a
whole bunch of stuff to get an idea of
where there's disagreement and where
there's consensus on what we as like a
species broadly agree on about whatever
it is you're trying to learn so ask
yourself where do all these articles and
videos agree that's where the walls are
and that's where you've started to find
what the consensus on the topic is and
then you can start to map out the places
where there isn't so much consensus
which lets you understand the topic more
broadly so as an example of how this
might work let's talk about working out
for a second working out is something
that a lot of people have strong
opinions about even though almost nobody
has a strong trunk of knowledge backing
up the things they think they know so
over the course of their lives people
accumulate a lot of leaves or twigs kind
of disconnected facts about physical
fitness that they're based on something
they tried once or something a friend
once told them or something they think
they once read somewhere and this is why
most people can't agree should you train
to failure or not should you mostly run
fast or slow how much protein should you
eat these are things a lot of people
have an opinion about but that almost
nobody can back up with a solid trunk of
knowledge so what should be the trunk of
your knowledge about fitness i think one
good answer to this is the said
principle or specific adaptation to
impose demand so that basically means
that your body will adapt to whatever
you frequently ask it to do whether that
means lifting one heavy thing once or
lifting a light thing a whole bunch of
times but i actually think there's a
better place to start an understanding
of physical fitness and how the body
works and you can even call out the
roots of your tree if you like i think
that's best explained by this quote from
biologist theodosius dabzhansky nothing
in biology makes sense except in the
light of evolution but to get into that
it's probably time to move on to step
three of growing your knowledge tree and
step three is to explain it like someone
else's five okay so you're probably
already familiar with this concept
there's a quote that's often
misattributed to einstein that goes if
you can't explain something to a six
year old you really don't understand it
yourself and you might have also seen
the episode of the office where oscar
tries to explain office budgeting to
michael by talking about lemonade stands
and obviously you don't literally have
to do this but trying to make something
super understandable for somebody who's
unfamiliar with even the basics is a
great way to make sure you've got a
really firm grasp on the fundamentals of
it yourself and so bearing that in mind
here's my best attempt at explaining why
understanding evolution is absolutely
fundamental to an understanding of the
human body and how physical fitness
works if you want to you can just skip
this part and head to the conclusion
okay so you've probably heard evolution
described as survival of the fittest and
that's true but only kind of up to a
point what actually happens is when
organisms replicate themselves whether
they're plants or animals or whatever
their offspring aren't always exactly
the same sometimes mutations in their
dna result in those organisms changing
in ways that might be beneficial for
them or might not a common example is
that if you live somewhere where the
most nutritious food is up high having a
slightly longer neck and then everyone
else is really helpful and over
thousands and thousands of generations
that means you get some animals with
really long necks there's also a counter
example that not everybody mentions
which is that if there's plenty of food
on the ground then growing and
maintaining that enormous neck might be
a waste of resources and calories that
could come in more useful elsewhere so
in food on the ground land having a long
neck might actually be an evolutionary
disadvantage which is also important to
understand now the really important
thing to understand about evolution is
that it's not about helping the
organisms survive but helping them to
replicate if you have six children then
die as soon as they're capable of taking
care of themselves then you're still
incredibly evolutionarily successful
compared to someone who only has one
child but then lives into really old age
now obviously it's all a lot more
complicated than that but even a
baseline knowledge of evolution like
this can let us consider different ideas
about fitness in a whole bunch of
different ways so for instance look at
protein consumption for a long time the
common knowledge in fitness circles was
that you could only absorb about 20 or
30 grams of protein in one sitting and
that if you took in any more other than
that it would be either excreted or
exhaled or otherwise wasted in some way
that meant there wasn't any point in
taking it in the first place and
obviously this works out great for you
if you're a company that sells
convenient ways to get 30 gram hits of
protein every day um and it's not so
great if people start thinking well
maybe i could just eat a steak for
dinner and get 80 grams in one shot but
does that make sense in light of
evolution not really imagine you're part
of a caveman group that kills a mammoth
if you all eat a huge chunk of that
mammoth meat in one go the guys who
can't use most of the protein they've
just eaten are going to be an
evolutionary disadvantage over the guys
who can use it for growth and repair and
if that scenario happens often enough
over thousands of years then the cavemen
who evolve the ability to absorb lots of
protein in one go are going to be a huge
evolutionary advantage over those who
don't so in evolutionary terms it makes
sense that we would be able to absorb a
decent chunk more protein than like 30
grams at one setting and you would need
really solid reasons or evidence to
explain why the opposite is the case and
it's a lot more complicated than that
but the point is that evolution is a
great trunk of knowledge to start
considering other things you hear about
fitness whether they're about
intermittent fasting stress anything
like that and trying to understand
fitness without a baseline knowledge of
how the human body responds to exercise
and nutrition is like just scooping
leaves and twigs up off the ground
you've got no way to evaluate them and
nothing to hang your new knowledge off
so again the process for growing a
strong knowledge tree is to use the y
ladder procrastinate purposefully and
make sure you could explain it to
someone else i really can't recommend
this enough it's why you want to start
with music at the theory you want to
start with brazilian jiu-jitsu are the
fundamental principles of what you're
trying to do to the other person i'm
going to put a whole bunch of links in
the description that go into more detail
on some of these areas even if you're
not interested in these specific areas i
would love to hear what you think the
foundation of knowledge in other areas
that i don't know anything about i love
learning stuff i would love to hear from
you until the next time good learning
[Music]
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