Learning hard topics §

Philosophy. AI. Another engineering field. The barrier seems so high, almost unachievable. How should I focus on understanding hard stuff when my mind and routine are fill to the brim with other stuff. Important stuff, but, nevertheless, other stuff.

I find it hard to commit learning new things. But I know the value of doing so. When I do so, I feel different and see the world with different lenses - almost always clearer ones.

A topic of interest of mine has been philosophy. And this is a topic where you can not cut corners. In order to enter the conversation you have to deeply understand the work done so far; only then you can better you assessment of your own thoughts. They certainly aren’t novel, but they certainly pertain to a certain epoch of human thinking.

It is therefore frustratingly hard to get going in it. To understand what I am talking about. To be able to contribute to something.

I don’t want to force a non-natural routine into myself. Anki my way into philosophy. I am also not smart enough to just start understanding Hegel just by reading his books. What I’ve done so far I’d call soft-learning. Getting to know important terms, thinkers - even if just superficially. For this process I’m thankful that Philosophize This! exists: a podcast for learning philosophy chronologically. I gained a lot just by understanding a bit of the context that originated world-changing thoughts.

This knowledge, however, didn’t stick well. Everything stayed there as a soup, fluid, fragile, forgetful. There are no existing roots where ideas of Kant could latch on. Everything was new. Conceptually new. I wonder, how do people that are not in a classroom learning philosophy learn it at all? I wish there was a how to. Maybe there is.

• Found, of course, awesome-philosophy. I appreciate the author’s effort, but a list of books unfortunately doesn’t help me.
• This reddit post seems to tackle the problem more at front. I’ll definitely check it out.

Maybe reading a text-book from an author who can guide you in the hand is the best way to get into hard topics. My challenge would be to make it work for my routine. Pick up a text-book about philosophy read it, ponder, and distill my takes and insights in notes.

I’m still not sure about whether all this is the best method. But I’m sure that looking sporadically in YouTube, Reddit, {any-other-site} for knowledge will never suffice for deep understanding of a topic. I’m curious how language models can be made efficient at teaching; this could theoretically personalize the text-book for you. Theoretically you can let it apply the Socratic Method on you ad nauseam.