Asklemmy

Or like consumptive knowledge vs. participatory knowledge or something.

I notice a huge difference between things that I consume alot of content for but don't engage with, vs. things where I actually try to apply the knowledge. Your brain makes connections in a totally different way when you try to apply the knowledge.

I watched piano tutorials for like a year before I finally saved up for a decent digital piano to play at home. I had tons of little facts and ideas rattling around my head, which were actually very helpful, but completely disorganized. Every time I learned a new piece, some of that loose knowledge would Tetris into place, and things would get a little more coherent.

But there's always this gap between my pool of ingested information and my ability to do something with it.

A TON of people irl have their literal jobs based on / revolving around making a show that they know stuff. Don't forget that confidence is not the same thing as capability.

An example is the crowd of people that showed up at the January 6 riot in the USA Capitol - how many of them truly knew what they were doing, or even so much as glanced at the document (the Constitution) that they claimed they were trying to protect?

At the absolute highest levels of capability, ironically you find the lowest levels of needing to engage in showing off behaviors, e.g. Jon Stewart is at the top of his game, and it shows.

I will add also: it is worth learning to explain things to people, bc in the process you also should find out that you improve your own knowledge. For one thing, it is a bit like compiling code: you may think it will work, but until you put it into practice, you can never truly be certain. And for another, there is the famous quote most often attributed to Albert Einstein (possibly it wasn't him but it doesn't even matter really):

Professor Google is not the best teacher. Gotta educate yourself with books and practical knowledge to get the rest of the way there. Don’t be discouraged, seeing a gap in your knowledge is how you start to learn.

I find coming in low and simmering into a shared Convo is the way. I'm not baiting people or humble bragging, just underplaying my involvement or experience until necessary. Once invited i will dive in with the explicit understanding that I have. Taking a step towards my limit, they should pick up if i hit my limit.

I find physics fascinating and sometimes, I definitely feel like I understand certain topics. I took a lot of physics courses in college despite ultimately majoring in something else and I’ve read a bunch of papers and books. I can’t even count the number of YouTube videos I’ve watched from physicists (especially PBS Spacetime, Dr. Don Lincoln on the Fermilab channel, Sixty Symbols, and now Angela Collier).

But I have not done the math. I don’t understand shit. When I talk to a real physicist, I pretty much immediately get reminded of that. It feels like I have the vocabulary words memorized but none of the actual knowledge.

I don't think I see knowledge in a digital vs non-digital sense. People often learn things in different fashions - I'm sure you've heard people say they are visual learners vs auditory or something like that. There is some truth to that, but overall it's easier to remember and retain things when we're exposed to them in a variety of ways. Teaching someone or explaining something you just learned is a great way to retain things- yes, it may come out all over the place at first, but you'll often find it becomes easier as you revisit the topic or try explaining it again later. There's also a difference between knowing something and understanding something. You can watch tutorials on something, but until you start applying that knowledge, it might not feel as tangible. Oftentimes, there's a point with any knowledge where we hit a wall and mentally spin our wheels trying to understand it- super normal, else everyone would be experts on everything. Overcoming that wall usually means taking some steps back and picking up some pieces of knowledge which we might not have been exposed to previously. This is one of the reasons we're seeing more education efforts focused on Project-Based Learning.