Saved by Tanuj
Vocabulary as a Meta Mental Model
This matters, because language is a form of power. It creates categories that help us interpret the world, and that which is not easily available in language is often ignored in thought itself. A shared vocabulary makes ideas more accessible while a lack of language can render an experience illegible. It can isolate.
Angela Chen • Ace
Some researchers argue that it may be that trying to find knowledge that hasn’t been learned yet—say, by trying to solve a problem you haven’t learned the answer to yet—nonetheless helps reinforce search strategies that are put to use once the knowledge is encountered later. An analogy here is that trying to retrieve an answer that doesn’t yet exis
... See moreScott Young • Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career
The standard tool to find webs of language are synonyms & antonym, but these are lossy devices. Consider a word like “uproar:” the antonyms are obvious (“harmony”) and if you look up the definitions of the synonyms (“bedlam, tumult, pandemonium”), they all say “uproar.” It’s circular!
In reality, every synonym should have a distinct meaning: be
... See moreIf you are the expert, it’s likely that you have the first kind of mental model—pretty orderly, with a lot of different categories, distinctions, and a sophisticated way of organizing the information. If you are the novice, you have a lot less structure around your limited information. If somebody hands an expert a blue sweater to put in the closet
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