The illusion of knowing
Knowledge is but a gray scale. Studying and reading are not the same as developing real, meaningful knowledge.
Obs.: this is a refined thought from my personal notes, and was originally published here — https://www.timelesscraft.org/illusion-of-knowing
Knowledge is not black or white, but a gray scale. You can know many things by name, but never actually know how they work, or how to perform them.
The illusion of knowing is the phenomena of believing you know something more than we actually do. This is a result of Mere-exposure fact. When we read and reread text books, or keep being exposed for the same situation, you tend to think that we know it well — and we may do know it in certain levels.
But true knowledge is that which you can readily recall and use for different situations. By mere repetition, you may feel like you know the subject, but you rarely can recall it by memory — thus you can’t use it for problem-solving or any sort of situation.
That’s why the kind of knowledge we should pursue is the Explicit knowledge.
To attain it, we need more than mere repeating and mindless reviewing subjects, because We don’t learn by mere repetition. We need actual engagement, deeply understanding, mental rehearsals, and using Tests as a learning tool.
Without Appropriate learning systems there is no Meaningful knowledge. And Learning without meaning is pointless.
Quotes:
The illusion of mastery is an example of poor metacognition: what we know about what we know. (Make it stick, Loc 289)
