Lesson Introduction

What is knowledge? This question lacks a definitive answer though philosophers have debated the question for thousands of year.

This lesson provides a definition of knowledge and more importantly, explains how to acquire knowledge.

Knowledge (What)

Knowledge refers to good information (i.e., useful, accurate, justified, and so on) that is stored at some level in person’s brain through the biological processes called long-term memory.

So there are two requirements for knowledge.

1. Good Information. The information must be true, accurate, justified, useful, and so on.

2. Stored in long-term memory. This means the information must be in the brain’s long term memory. When information is in the brain’s long term memory, the information can be either non-declarative or declarative.

   1. Non-declarative knowledge. The learner is not able to verbalize the information and may even be unaware that the information is in their brain. For example, most of us can talk but it would be hard for us to explain how we do it. Non-declarative knowledge is often automatic.

   2. Declarative knowledge. The learner can verbalize the information to some degree.

Rationale for Knowledge

Acquiring knowledge is worthwhile because it equips you in part achieve the trifecta: feel great, accomplish great things, and make the world a better place.

In addition, having knowledge is useful when you want to teach others.

Acquiring Knowledge (How To)

Framework

Systematic and Distributed Repetitions. While your knowledge is growing, repeat the following actions.

1. Get the new information for one source or more than one source. Document your findings.

2. Figure the new information out.

   1. Connect it to what you already know.
   2. Determine why you should figure this information out; that is, determine the rewards you’ll get for doing the work of learning.

3. Engage in Repetitions

   1. Application Reps. Apply the info to do useful things.
   2. Teaching Reps. Practice teaching or explaining the information to others. Or write the information up people to learn from.

4. Improve you knowledge in terms of depth, breath, accuracy, connection, and so on. Typically this is done by reading, asking questions, and writing the information in your own words.

Tips

1. Prioritize performance over knowledge because this will naturally lead you to the information that is the most useful.

2. Multiple sources of information are much better than one source.

3. Documentation is the process of capturing the information you are striving to learn. This is super useful. Write things in your own words. Strive for accuracy first, clarity second, and completeness third. Organize the information so that it is super easy to CRUD (create new information, retrieve information you already have, update information you have, delete information.)

4. Re. teaching reps, don’t teach real people until you are knowledgeable and skilled. Most teaching reps, involve rehearsal as if you were teaching.

5. Be patient. Getting knowledge into long term memory takes many reps. Space these repetitions out over time.

6. Use the nomenclature of the subject that you are striving to learn.

7. Strive to get your knowledge to the grok level.

8. Acquiring knowledge when you have a in-person teacher (great, intermediate, or otherwise) or when you are learning on your own without an in-person teacher is the same.

Guiding Others

After you are skilled with acquiring knowledge, guide others by structuring the leaning experience for them using the framework. The most important thing is to get the learner to engage in systematic and distributed repetitions of applying and teaching the information.

Grok Information

To grok information means to have a deep and intuitive understanding of the information as measured by the following criteria:

1. You can teach or explain the information to just about anyone.

2. You easily apply the information.

3. You can remember the information, at least the main structure, basically forever.

4. The information seems easy and obvious; it just makes sense.

Grokking information occurs after you have applied the information many times and the neural connections in your brain have strengthened in response to these experiences.

When a person has knowledge of a topic they can do one or more of the following things:

• Teach the topic
• Explain the topic
• Connect the topic to their everyday world
• Apply the topic
• Recall info from the topic
• Answer questions about the topic
• Remember the main ideas of the topic

Here are the main ideas:

Topic:

A category of information. Examples: Calculus, chemical equations, US history, traffic laws, winemaking, engineering, grammar, and so on.

Information

Examples of Knowledge

1. A person knows the addition facts or times facts for single digit numbers.

2. A person knows the German language.

3. A person knows the main ideas about electricity that are taught in a freshman level college class.

4. A person has a masterful level of knowledge of critical thinking.

Rationale for Knowledge

1. Application: Knowledge is essential for application. One cannot play the guitar if they don’t know how to do this.

2. Ease: A high level of knowledge makes things much easier to do. For example, a person with a high level of knowledge about programming have an easier time writing code.

3. Teaching: Having a high level of knowledge about something is essential for teaching it.

Grok

To grok a subject or topic means to have a high level of knowledge as measured by the ability to teach, explain, apply, remember, and answer questions about this topic.

Typically, grokking is also associated with a high regard or even love for the associated information. The word philosophy means “love of wisdom.”

Declarative and Non-Declarative Knowledge

Knowledge exists in the brain in two way.

1. Declarative knowledge: This is information that a person can explain, describe, teach and so forth. They are aware of it and they can describe it.

2. Non-Declarative Knowledge: This is information that is in the brain but cannot be verbalized. In some cases, the person may lack awareness of this knowledge. For example, I can speak English but I cannot tell you very much about how I do this. Also, I can ride a bicycle but I cannot describe much about how.

has stored in their brain such that they can remember it, recall it, apply it, explain it, teach it, answer questions about it, or similar.

Knowledge exists on a scale that spans from no knowledge to a high level of knowledge. For example, I might have no or little knowledge of chemistry, a medium level of knowledge or masterful knowledge.

When a person has figured out this information and can skillfully apply it, teach it, answer questions about it, and so on, then we say that they have knowledge of chemistry.

When a person has knowledge of something, we say that they Grok this thing as in my friend groks chemistry.

Information is all over the place. Example: There are many great chemistry textbooks, many great chemistry teachers who can explain the relevant information, many great YouTube videos that explain the main ideas of chemistry, and so on.

Knowledge is not common in the sense that only a tiny percentage of people Grok chemistry. People who do not grok chemistry includes most people who have successfully completed college classes in chemistry, including myself.

The two most important outcomes of learning are Performance and knowledge in that order. Note that it is possible to perform well but lack knowledge. For example, some people are really good at something but they cannot explain why they are or what actions that they are taking that make them awesome. Similarly, can have great knowledge of a topic but be lousy at performance.