hatena
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*1350698182*Tweet about understanding
Reprinted and organized from my own Twitter remarks.
Feeling "understood" is not the same as "understanding. Therefore, "I thought I understood, but in fact I did not understand.
The only way to confirm understanding is to output and observe whether the system outside of you reacts as you understand. If it does not respond as understood, the error of understanding is confirmed. Reacting as you understand does not guarantee that your understanding is correct. It may be a fluke. No matter how hard you try, you will never achieve 100% understanding.
This is a story on a different layer. Each individual has a finite amount of resources (money, time, etc.), so he or she must decide for himself or herself what and how much to allocate resources to. How best to allocate them depends on your objectives and the amount of resources you have.
This is not to say that consulting with others about resource allocation strategies is entirely futile, but it is difficult to have a useful discussion without clarifying the resources you have and the objectives you want to achieve.
Let's say I want to understand X. Is this "understanding of X" the end goal? Is this "understanding of X" the ultimate goal? If the devil appeared to you and said, "I will give you the understanding of X, but you will die as soon as you understand X," would you sign the contract? However, as soon as you understand X, you will die. Would you not? Then "understanding X" is not the final goal. It is merely a means to another end.
The suffering of "there are so many things I should learn that I can't catch up with my understanding" stems from one's mind pursuing an unrealistic ideal. The gap between the real me and the image of "the me who understands difficult books smoothly" is the same composition as the gap between "the me who lives forever" and "the me who does not grow old".
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Hatena Diary 2012-10-20
This page is auto-translated from /nishio/Hatena2012-10-20 using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.