On learning

Knowing and understanding are different. On the road to deeper learning, you sometimes find that you’ve gained knowledge while losing understanding. The nature of unlearning reshapes the “learning curve” and our expectations of how knowledge and understanding grow over time.

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The inability to connect a new piece of information with the world as we already know it–this is a classic problem of the unlearning that is required for deeper learning. Deep learning often involves a period of understanding less than we did at the start.

Fascinating piece on the paradox of unlearning. Also see my thoughts on the difference between information, knowledge, and wisdom and astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser on how to live with mystery in the age of knowledge.
(via explore-blog)

Another excerpt from the article.

“The apparent of paradox of deeper learning is that you can grow to know more at precisely the same moment that you understand less.”