How to Understand Things - Readwise Highlights

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Highlights

  • Intelligent people simply aren’t willing to accept answers that they don’t understand — no matter how many other people try to convince them of it, or how many other people believe it, if they aren’t able to convince them selves of it, they won’t accept it. (View Highlight)
  • you can internalize good intellectual habits that, in effect, “increase your intelligence”. ‘Intelligence’ is not fixed. (View Highlight)
  • A competent thinker will be reluctant to commit himself to the effort that tedious and precise thinking demands — he will lack ‘the will to think’ — unless he has the conviction that something worthwhile will be done with the results of his efforts. (View Highlight)
  • Feynman said that the first rule of science is that you do not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool (View Highlight)
  • looking stupid takes courage, and sometimes it’s easier to just let things slide (View Highlight)
  • Read slowly, think slowly, really spend time pondering the thing. Start by thinking about the question yourself before reading a bunch of stuff about it. A week or a month of continuous pondering about a question will get you surprisingly far. (View Highlight)
  • nothing beats direct experience. Get the data yourself. (View Highlight)
  • understanding is not a binary “yes/no”. It has layers of depth (View Highlight)