why (I think) anyone can learn almost anything

hey guys - thanks for reading, subscribing, and giving me continuous feedback. it’s been a while, but I have a couple of cool updates to share on what I’ve been doing and what I’ll be working on in the near future. In this blog, I’ll do a deep dive into a chevGPT post: cognitive load and why I think anyone can learn almost anything. let’s get into it.

cognitive load - why you can learn almost anything - and why you should try to be curious

I hear this all the time when I’m in a lecture, or in a meeting at work, or on a youtube video: it’s not rocket science. I studied that, so I think I have a more informed opinion than most when it comes to this. truth be told, some things are much harder for me than rocket science, and I don’t think rocket science is necessarily harder than finance, or most subjects for that matter.

when I talk to people about their max capability to learn something that they don’t think they’re that good at (let’s say math if you sucked at math in school), they usually think something along the lines of the left circles in the beautiful graphic below (I made for you, my glorious reader). a PhD, to that same person, would probably be the middle circles, and thus, the gap between them and a superstar Andrej Karpathy is so big. I think more along the lines of everyone is like the right group of circles:

let me explain why.

background: I work in a machine learning team where we build models for finance, using all sorts of financial information. loans, amortization, interest rates, all this haram stuff (yes, interest is illegal in islam). looking back, it was harder for me to learn all these financial terms; not because it was actually more difficult than calculating the fuel burn of a rocket due to intricate nozzle geometry, but that the funnel of information was much worse. There isn’t clear documentation online (at least for me) to learn all of this stuff from. I don’t have textbooks like I did in college, nor a professor with a thick accent, nor do I have the time to have another degree in finance and economics. I just sent it and learned on the fly. so what I came to realize was, I brute forced all these concepts into my head. Sometimes I think - maybe I’m not cut out for this. I’m not that good at it. It’s not natural to me.

in reality, what increased the difficulty was that a clear explanation wasn’t available.

in reality, when I realized that by thinking out loud, re-framing things in analogies that make sense to me, I could understand it much easier. And then it hit me - I’ve been doing this for nearly everything I learn.

in reality, I’ve been setting myself up for failure, when really, I should be resetting and re-framing myself.

so: cognitive load.

cognitive load, basically, is the notion that you can only process / take on so much information at a time, especially when learning. let’s face it - maximum brain power percentage wise, understanding 1+1 is easier than understanding rocket science. Learning to dance salsa is easier than learning advanced rocketry. these make sense, since the cognitive load is much lower for the former vs. the latter. However - has anyone tried to teach you something difficult? Math in high school? And then you get it and think, I’m actually smarter than I thought, but I can’t go much further. I think that moment was a mistake - you’re a lot smarter than you think you are; you just don’t really try to set yourself up for success as much as you should.

when you’re learning something, the actual difficulty of learning is broken down into two parts: Intrinsic load and Extraneous load. Intrinsic load is, theoretically, how much information you’re taking in and how hard something actually is. learning a new language is more difficult than learning how to cook arepas (fun update in my next post on both of these things). Extraneous load is how much additional effort you need to put in because of an additional difficulty due to the method of learning / decision making. I needed to put in a lot more effort into financial loans since the topics I was learning didn’t have great explanations.

what is your intrinsic limit? really - if you had no extraneous load - if you had no barriers, if you had the perfect explanation - do you really think you could not learn most things?

I believe that the intrinsic load of 80% of tasks is manageable for 80% of people. you should minimize the level of extraneous load; by doing that, you’ll see that almost everything intrinsic load wise is manageable for you. sure, PhD level people have more understanding than you in their field and probably can understand 95% to your 80%. sure - as you can see - some people are more naturally gifted at things than others. however - is the whole difference between you and them just that they’re that much smarter, or moreso that they’ve studied in the field longer? did you ever stop and think, did they have to brute force somethings as well? you can learn most things they know - you just don’t have the will to, so don’t sell yourself short by saying you can’t learn it. you just don’t really want to. sure, it might cost you more effort than others - of course, that happened to me. I didn’t get a 4.0 in undergrad. I scraped by. However, I know that I can learn most things, and I think I realized that with trial, error, and a lot of brute forcing concepts into my brain. I’m not saying you can be a PhD in anything, but you can probably reach a bachelors or masters degree in anything.

let’s face it - there is no system that is perfect according to thermodynamics. there will always be extraneous load. you won’t be able to learn everything. however - you can be 80% at everything and probably 99% in others. if it comes easy to you in your topic, you’re not pushing your limits hard enough.

learn your best styles of learning - use chatGPT, deepseek, Claude to explain things for you in a way that you can understand. You can learn almost anything - at the very least, I think you can, and that’s kind of my life philosophy. I try to apply it to everything I do, for better or for worse. Naval said it best:

Sophisticated foods are bittersweet (wine, beer, coffee, chocolate). Addictive relationships are cooperative and competitive. Work becomes flow at the limits of ability. The flavor of life is on the edge.

next posts

i’ve kept a list of posts that I think i’ll be writing, but let me know if you thought anything was cool / something sucked / etc. let me know if you agree, disagree, or think I’m just too optimistic about people. if you want to subscribe, click the button on my home page to subscribe. thank you for reading!

next post will be a small life update - cooking, reading, travels, creativity. see you soon!