Stages of Understanding

What does it mean to Understand? While washing dishes, I suddenly thought about the question [What is Understanding?] and quickly jotted down my thoughts.

In response to the question “What is X?”

Level 0 Understanding:

• Unable to answer the question at all.

Level 1 Understanding:

• Can quote something written in another book or source in response to the question.
• Personally, I would like to categorize this as ‘not understanding’ and place it in Level 0.
• However, I refrained from doing so to avoid confusing readers before getting to the main point.
• In school exams, if you remember the textbook content and can quote it in response to a time-limited question, you can get good grades.
• This has created a social convention that such behavior equates to ‘understanding’.
• It was only a training method useful when humans had no computers to install knowledge.
• It’s merely measuring ‘installation efficiency’.
• If we consider this as ‘understanding’, then search engines is entities with higher levels of understanding than humans.
• When you don’t understand, you can only quote
  • Quote from “Phenomenology as non-logical steps” by Eugene Gendlin (1989).

Level 2 Understanding:

• Can answer the question in your own words, not just with quotes.
• Feynman
  • You can test if you understand the meaning of words by explaining without using those words.
• Being able to answer ‘in your own words’ and ‘whether the explanation is true’ are unrelated.
  • “Combustion is the process of releasing a substance called phlogiston” --- An incorrect explanation of combustion: Phlogiston Theory - Wikipedia
  • Understanding is a hypothesis and ‘whether the hypothesis is correct’ requires verification after the hypothesis is formed.
    • There are people who can and cannot create hypotheses.
    • The ability to create a hypothesis is considered a deeper understanding.

Level 3 Understanding: - Can express the question in a form of an experiment that is verifiable. - Level 2 focused on whether it’s possible to explain in words. - There’s room for choice in these ‘words’: - Can explain in natural language. - Can implement in a programming language. - When implemented in a programming language, the behavior of the implementation allows for verification of the correctness of the understanding. - Falsifiability is introduced to understanding. - It’s not limited to programming; the important thing is being able to ‘express it in a form of a verifiable experiment’. - It’s a clearer form compared to unverifiable discourse.

This page is written because I have reached a ‘Level 2 Understanding’ of ‘Understanding’.

• Whether what I have written here is correct or not will be verified after reaching Level 3 Understanding.

Translated from Stages of Understanding

---

This page is auto-translated from [/nishio/Stages of Understanding](https://scrapbox.io/nishio/Stages of Understanding) 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.