My notes on "transformative tools for thought"

These are my notes on transformative tools for thought (haven't finished it yet) which reminds me of the book "A mind for numbers" by Barbara Oakley.

What's really going on is that they're having a hard time with basic notation and terminology. It's difficult to understand quantum mechanics when you're unclear about every third word or piece of notation. Every sentence is a struggle.

Same with math. If you don't get what notations really mean, even if you have conceptual understanding, you will get lost.

In caricature, they say: “Why should I care about memory? I want deeper kinds of understanding! Can’t I just look stuff up on the internet? I want creativity! I want conceptual understanding! I want to know how to solve important problems! Only dull, detail-obsessed grinds focus on rote memory.”

That's me. I'm caricature.

...when an expert learns new information in their field, they don’t make up artificial connections to their memory palace. Instead, they find meaningful connections to what they already know. Those connections are themselves useful expertise; they’re building out a dense network of understanding. It’s a deeper and more desirable kind of expertise, connections native to the subject itself.

This is why it is easier for me to see connections now that i am older. I create metaphors from seemingly different topics. It's fun, like an aha! moment.

One such idea is elaborative encoding. Roughly speaking, this is the idea that the richer the associations we have to a concept, the better we will remember it. As a consequence, we can improve our memory by enriching that network of associations.

Focus on connecting the dots, not collecting the dots which is counter to how subjects are taught in schools--isolated disconnected bits of information.