Focusing Your Unconscious Mind: Learn Hard Concepts Intuitively (And Forever)（原声文稿）

Hi, I'll get straight to the point.

great at learning a bunch of random garbage that nobody ever actually uses.

But even though I never use it, I'm still good at that stuff.

be able to remember them for a long time, even years on end. And this video is gonna show you how I do that.

Now let's start with what it means to understand some concepts intuitively.

accept that concept as a fundamental truth without needing to justify it.

your intuitive understanding of addition.

Try adding two plus two The answer was so obvious that you didn't even have to question it of reasoning with it and for something like more complicated addition and it's still pretty intuitive how to get to the answer.

make sense to you because it's also embedded in your thinking.

goes against what you've learned previously and you need to fix that. So what if you don't have that hard wiring?

accept the concept as an absolute truth and that's the learning process. And it's worth noting that there's no actual magic here. Ultimately, it's up to your brain to do this rewiring.

for success by optimizing the information it receives and works with.

first, we'll briefly touch on some core principles.

to understand the reasoning behind certain things in this method. So first, you want to generate as many insights as possible.

particular example that helps illustrate the concept. And mostly, you only gain insights from experience.

experience with the concept in different ways.

brain to work, generating insights, like an insight machine.

thinking and remembering, and you want to be able to take full advantage of that.

about what you're doing, because caring helps for a lot of reasons. Overall, it'll just make your life easier. If you don't know how to, I'll talk more about that later too.

So break the concept down into small pieces if possible, and then tackle those pieces one by one also if possible.

This is rewiring your brain to accept this concept you're used to just memorizing, get ready for a whole new level of understanding.

the methods so you can see it in practice with a live example.

the concept because otherwise it just won't be important to you. It'll just be like what is this, why does any of this even matter? And you won't really be able to try as hard. The big picture puts everything else into context.

but not necessarily the details or how it works.

little information as possible to understand what the concept is all about.

We'll call this stuff to the right, the magic box, or a black box, if you prefer. But you have no idea what's going on inside. All you know is that it works, somehow.

going to see if you can figure it out before I say it. But notice what I've written here.

It's a simple sentence in plain English explaining what the method does.

That's what we were looking for. Simple explanations of big picture ideas.

And as you learn and understand more, expand on the details of certain things. To learn a specific detail, there are three steps.

Understand the detail in context, understand it by itself, and reinforce it.

So the first step is understanding the detail in context.

understand at every step how the pieces fit together. So ready for that pun?

Here it is. You have to think outside the box.

should understand everything outside the box.

sense, even if you don't know the details of how each part works.

And if it's not obvious, maybe you have to break the abstraction far ahead.

You can help this understanding by figuring out how break the whole process down into a bunch of small steps.

abstraction, understand in context, and break it down further.

little as possible because it'll just make it unnecessarily harder.

individual piece is so simple that they can't be broken down further.

a single piece of the puzzle, since you'll have to do that a lot of times.

so you should put in the effort for each one.

use of a very ancient brain technique from the early 1400s.

It's called giving a damn. Yes, you have to convince your brain to care.

and I'll talk more about it later.

And finally, if you can't invent it, you can read and process the details of the piece.

insights, and it means to just generally have an easier time learning.

So how do you care? And the easiest way is just to be passionate about the subject.

subject, you can be motivated by the end result like a job or a prestige. But if you don't even have that, there are other ways too.

understand this concept doesn't bother you, well, why not? It should, because you don't understand it.

How can you allow this tiny little speck of information to make a fool out of you? It should bother you that you don't get it.

but in that case you should learn those things first anyway.

simple, it's just the prerequisites that are the issue.

of learning it, and that means you're capable of learning this.

For whatever reason, you can't, and that should bother you.

So take that annoyance personally, take it as a hit to your ego.

should defend yourself like in the concept.

do, but even if you don't, you should still take that defeat personally. And now that you care, you can put your brain to work.

the point of the piece of the concept you're trying to learn.

that works for a lot of fields, but really it's just like, what is this piece about? What does it accomplish, or what does it describe?

And what does it do? So what problem does this piece try to solve?

you sear the problem into your head, then the solution will be much more natural.

So you ultimately want a deep, insightful understanding of the problem.

should try and solve the problem for yourself.

Try to invent the piece before you even try to understand how it works.

like looking at examples and trying to reverse engineer the rule.

can do to try and invent the piece from scratch, and you should try.

avenues and deeply internalize the problem.

for a hard time because you convinced your brain that it's important. And you should give yourself time. Work on it with both your conscious and unconscious brain.

developing intuition, so you have to give it some exercise too.

about the problem enough to have it be the main focus of your brain.

late to even be remotely useful. That's your unconscious brain.

that because you cared about that argument.

So you have to do the and putting in the effort is how you convince your brain to care.

benefit from trying anymore, then you can look at the solution pieces and slowly absorb each of those pieces.

You may also consider having especially for those very hard concepts that require a new way of thinking.

love to gap in your brain for that solution to fill, gap, and you'll be able to retain the knowledge for much longer, to be mentally capable of processing the problem and its solution.

problem, you convince your primal brain that it's important to survival.

solution very well, since your brain is convinced it's absolutely necessary.

trying to figure something out, you'll just remember it better. So another thing, how do you actually process a solution?

complicated too. And ultimately the strategy is the same.

You can also do the same abstraction barrier the solution and gradually getting more detailed.

rest of the concept, and also how someone managed and there's something that inspire that solution.

Understanding that inspiration can help you understand the solution itself.

So you don't even have to solve the problem, you just have to try it. And with the harder concepts, it's unlikely that you will.

fake try because you won't get anything out of that.

because the thing is people invented this stuff.

people and you're a people, so you're capable of inventing them too.

it's fairly possible that you could do it or at least make some done yet.

There's more you have to do to internalize the solution process you can do to reinforce the whole concept are roughly four steps and I'll explain each step using my method as well picked what I think is the best order, for myself at least.

The general idea is you should try to invent the piece or concept.

it, and afterwards, understand it to the point of being able to explain it.

After or during that, you should explore ideas related to the concept.

and get as many insights as possible about it. So let's get more specific about each step. And the first step is to try and invent the concept for yourself.

And if you just did that, great, move on to the next step. And if not, I did already explain that in the previous section.

means applying it, and that means practicing with it.

So try to find other relevant problems and apply this concept wherever you can.

Try to expand on the concept rather than just mechanically applying it. Think about why the concepts fits the problems you encounter. Think about why it might not fit.

And that way, the context of the problems will make more sense.

you couldn't have thought of from just theory.

step, since it forces you to view the concept from a bunch of different angles.

applying the concept and try to embed the concept into your reasoning.

Another useful thing you can try to do is explain the concept.

it to someone who doesn't understand it for themselves.

that your understanding is your own rather than someone else's.

So, confirm your understanding by explaining it to someone else. Start from scratch and work your way through the details.

it means you don't understand it well enough.

you can't explain it, then it means you don't understand it well enough.

understanding and that's something you can improve on.

during a test or contest or interview or whatever. So, relearn that part and come back to the whole thing.

concept, which can simplify your whole understanding as well.

explanation, then you can go to the final step. And that final step is exploring.

should mentally explore random variations of the concept.

As the legend Terence Tau puts it, ask yourself dumb questions. Change one part of the concept and see if it still works.

one part of the problem and see if the concepts still apply.

same scenario and figure out why it does or doesn't. See if some past knowledge you had applies to this concept.

making about the concept and think harder about them.

counter examples and prove that it still works to see how it applies. Try to look at the concept from different angles. Try random stuff and see if it leads anywhere. Talk to others and explore the concept with them.

concept and the insights they've come up with. And just ask why. Why do we do this step?

Think about stuff that's already intuitive to you and apply as understanding of the concept. So do as much of this as possible.

And you should starting to forget the concept or some pieces of it, go through this importantly, try to invent it from scratch again and again.

way that makes sense to you, fine, that means you succeeded.

intuition for that problem is the concept.

It's the thing you again.

Because over time, you're burning a mental association in your head of and over time your brain will rewire itself to accept the process to you trap the concept in your mind You won't have to do it at all.

It would just be permanently seared into your brain reinforcing your understanding And even if you completely master the concept practice with it, etc., to keep it fresh in your mind. So going back to the big picture, here's what the method looks like. First you learn the big picture.

certain ideas and get more and more specific with details.

the solution with the whole that you've made in your brain.

stays in your brain again as many other random insights as possible. Then learn the next thing. So here's another thing I've been thinking of. I'm dubbing it the ecosystem of learning.

might as well post that explanation to the public.

topic, you've likely had some insights about it.

And that means others in the future can benefit from your thinking.

knowledge, and contribute those explanations to the future public.

internet and you'll help some people out.

It doesn't matter how chaotic unlikely to happen, but it's cool.

The world is fairly lacking an It's just like, here's how this concept works and done.

requires some deep thought to be able to contemplate.

Sharing can help them get a much deeper understanding of the concept.

effort for someone to contribute to, so it's somewhat feasible at least. Okay, and let's finish it off by talking about IQ.

certain people better off at learning than others?

And I'm a subscriber of the belief that it's completely useless to believe that.

to believing that IQ is a significant factor. If you're going to learn something, just learn it.

Don't worry about how others do, and don't worry about this innate ability garbage. You're going to do it anyway, so just do it.

brain is more willing to try out random things and generate insights. So honestly, I think IQ is just a form of co-beam.

In most cases, someone who's not learning well is doing something wrong. But IQ offers another, more convenient answer. The issue is not you or what you're doing, but something out of your control.

you can fix yourself if you're having issues look at what you're doing and see if anything's going wrong is human to be human is to be capable of thinking and to be capable of thinking anything it may take a while, but you can do it I anyone is incapable of learning because everything just boils down to neurons there eventually as many others have in the past.

And basically the only from the learning stuff.

But you've watched this video now, so you it doesn't really matter. You'll do fine now.

engaging with the concept as much as possible.

And let me only learning method.

There are likely many others out there, but probably works better on some concepts than others.

very problem solving oriented.

So every concept naturally solves a certain problem, which is why my method is focused on that. So like math is good for it too.

method easy to use, the method could still benefit you.

You can still do concept is universal useful.

So is the idea of breaking it down to easier the hard stuff and take a more quick approach to the simpler, less important things. So this is slow, but it works, and it works really well. And I'll leave it at that. So that's all. Goodbye.