How My Views on Learning Have Changed Over Time

[@Ooo0990]

Your older videos have helped me in the process of creating my clothing brand which has made me over $250,000 this year

[@Bruh89865]

Hi glad to see your succed,Can you give me a bro few bucks ;) I'm at level 0 now

[@LostinMango]

​@@Bruh89865Nice way to Beg

[@gurl_nrvana]

which videos? that's cool!

[@fire-wn6dj]

really appreciate your ability to constantly develop your ideas. many people will often stick to an opinion their whole life but your ability to reflect and develop really shows a great aspect of your character ! cheers

[@iainmackenzieUK]

I am a British teacher of A-level Physics working in China. As you can imagine, there is a tension between Western and Traditional teaching methods here. I think your video here, actually supports the skills and values of the traditional way of learning. But also, and for me, more importantly, encourages us to trust the student more in their learning journey and to ask how we might facilitate it rather than habitually manage it for them...

[@Ceorious]

Hi I'm Leon! Just found you Mr. Young, via the YT recommendation system, as a result of watching a lot of Jim Kwik's content. So far I've learned that - Memory is strengthened with recall better than review - practice is important, examples and explanations at the right time is also important. - mental intensity is needed, but in the sake of being more effective in learning (not using too much energy, to the point effectiveness/efficiency is decreased). (Edit:) - Ok so memory is powered more by recall than by review. - practice is good, yet explanations and examples are also needed. - mental intensity/hardness is good, but shouldn't go to the extent of decreasing learning-optimization - Objectives when learning is important. (Ask the right questions, know your 'why') - more practice is better for low difficulty, more examples+explanations is better for high difficulty work - Keep asking questions about the educational system, teachers, and especially students for their perspective. We want the best results and it's a work in progress. Thanks, Mr. Young I learned a lot, just used the visualization technique.

[@ScottHYoungVid]

I think the point about mental intensity is more complicated. I would say that there are "desirable" difficulties, or things that increase the effortfulness of practice and make it more effective, as well as "undesirable" difficulties, or things that make learning harder for no particular benefit.

[@Neador20]

It's only normal and human to learn, revise and improve. Very nice to see this video and get an update on your thinking. Even if you may not have always been on point with academic literature in the past, you were and continue to be a lot more accessible for a non-academic audience and that is why your blog and channel have been great!

[@joaoalegria7578]

Your humbleness is amazing, if we thought exactly now like we did 10 years we have wasted 10 years. Keep up the great work! 💪

[@markpelayo]

"If you want to be better then change, if you want to be perfect then change often". I heard that quote before I forgot who said it. But it made sense. The only constant in this world is change. Thank you Scott, I still appreciate your effort that you are aware the your previous assumptions can be improved. I'm glad I discovered your channel this year. Thank you for the quality videos.

[@deeplife9654]

Because of you, I have lunched an ultra learning project of java programming and believe that I will be one of the best coders soon.

[@juanperez-morenodelavega7955]

Thanks for sharing, and for your opinions, i still I'm gonna ready the book, I'm sure ill improve, so thanks again

[@chikemcarthur]

Just the fact that you do SIEVE through so much information to give us DIRECTION... THIS alone makes you an expert Scott. I truly respect your work. Thank you for what you do. ❤️

[@BadalSharma-bv2sm]

I love your books they are very simple to read!

[@gcingia]

Great talk. We definitively mature our knowledge with time. I knew about you through Barbara Oackley's *"Learn Hot to Learn"* massively successful MOOC. Saw you there in an interview. I *think* that you have focused in the last years on that specific topic (How to Learn, very important). The "MIT Challenge", your language studies (Spanish et Al), I perceived them as "proofs of concept" on the matter of Learning for yourself and you kindly sharing your honest thoughts. I myself benefited strongly from Barb's teaching. I felt I could learn and study anything _in where I had some real interest to learn_ (Mandarin, Maori, Advanced Physics, etc) using *"Deep Work"* , procrastination management tools (Pomodoro), Deliberate Practice, Eating my Frogs Early in the Morning, the importance of Rest and valuing it, the Anky tool... etc Many thanks for Sharing

[@shiftyparadigm7049]

1. Everything you learn could be wrong in 5 years. 2. The best strategy for learning depends on the person's ability ie bloom's analysis, synthesis or evaluation. You need 3 different constructs for these 3 groups of people. 3. Health is the key. Oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria. Jing qi. Saturated fats for myelin.

[@QUI2Clean]

I came from your old channel and I’m happy you’re still making videos !

[@Benchen2]

I'm reading your books and listening to your podcast, because you offer me food for thought and sources I can check out for myself. You don't have to get everything right - just do the best you can. The process of understanding is an approximation with a destination in mind, even though we will only ever get close and sometimes miss the mark.

[@mahmoudwael8935]

listens to you a debt of gratitude 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚

[@keistzenon9593]

Discovered your Blog a long time ago, read your study guides and applied a few methods in my learning, like taking notes with recall style You are an inspiration in my learning journey, I enjoyed your writing and I love your honesty: to this day I remember your blog post about admitting to be wrong on speed reading Kudos to your honesty and integrity, you probably inspired many more to improve and be more conscious of their learning process and perhaps be more humble and careful when sharing ideas

[@TheIllerX]

It is a good thing to realize how and why your views have changed. I see that in myself too after having an interest in learning for decades. Regarding your first point, I would disagree though. I have changed my mind in the opposite direction. This might depend a lot on what subject you study though. My subject has been Mathematics. Connections are everything and the absolute key to understand a concept, why it is introduced and why it is useful. In isolation it can often seem nonsensical and pointless. I have found that drawing large and colorful concept maps helps hugely in understanding the overall structure of the subject. Yes, of course one has to use memory in some way. If we forgot everything the second after we read it we would of course not be able to do much. But memorization is typically the root of all evil in Mathematics. Or rather, you should remember the connections in a natural way (rather than using some silly memory techniques distracting you from the real connections).

[@krimsonsun10]

This is why I love your blog and book. ultra-learning and life long learning is also about constantly taking in new knowledge which also means UNLEARNING old knowledge that is no longer useful or made redundant by new knowledge. Hats off to you sir. You always amaze me and challenge me to be better.

[@hsrboys9993]

Been following you since your MIT challenge. Keep posting on KZbin Scott - you deserve a much larger following!!

[@loridians]

you are such a good person i wish you the best man thanks for helping!

[@Ceorious]

Sometimes I wish that all these masters in meta-learning and effectiveness would all team up. Just imagine, Scott Young, Jim Kwik, Steven Kotler, etc. to create one solid, almost governed community to unite all the best knowledge and methods for implementation.

[@aberwood]

You have a great mindset 👍

[@vishalnangare31]

Thank you for your updated information 🙏🙌

[@andersonl819]

Former teacher turned self taught software engineer. After watching this one video im subscribing! You hit the nail on the head in so many ways. Kudos to reflecting, growing, and being honest about changing your views, and going where the data takes you!!

[@nilsodor]

Damn! How much time until you got jobs? And did you learn much about learning through teaching?

[@fellory]

Hey Scott, you have been a source of great inspiration doing your MIT Challenge. I think I and many others have taken a lot of the advice and infos you gave back then and tried them out for ourselves. Some of it helped, some didn’t. So even if looking back, you’d change some of the advise, it was always helpful for us hearing new perspectives and ideas to experiment with our own ambitious learning journeys!

[@desolatemoon7377]

Thank you for the videos and content.

[@wilfredv1930]

If we are here probably we are all going in the path of personal growth, in any field, so are you. So the path of growing is a never ending path. We can always improve.

[@MineCartable]

It's nice to have this kind of confirmation to the path I've already been walking in my own journey. I made a pretty poor habit out of using brute force intellect, and clever analysis of provided examples to solve problems as opposed to mastering the topics being taught to me. It didn't take long to realize the problem with that, and as of recently I've put a serious effort towards learning Japanese as a project to fixing that. Language learning being a pretty heavy antithesis to the intellectual brute force methodology, making progress kind of forced me to tackle it with a different method. So it's nice to know that it's not considered a step backwards to rely on memory and recall. Though, I've noticed that now that I have a taste of the strengths of using flashcards for Japanese, it's been pretty hard to justify using my previous clever supplemental tricks.

[@mcee555]

What were your previous methods and techniques? Thanks!

[@MineCartable]

@@mcee555 One of my previous methods for trying to learn Japanese was through strict context. Listening and hearing speech in its original context, either by consuming media or by playing games alongside Japanese speaking individuals. The real problem with that was that I didn't have a foundation for vocabulary. So while I'm really good at listening, and pronunciation. My vocabulary and grammar is comparatively falling behind. This is why I was saying that brute force pattern recognition is effective to a certain point, but there are just some things that it can't do. I'll never be able to reason my way into learning more vocabulary, the verb conjugations, or other necessary grammatical structures. In order to make up for my previous lack of study habits I've been fixated on understanding how habits are formed. Making studying a habit rather than a conscious effort made it comically easy. A good reference point for how it's going is that I've been studying 45 minutes a day for 25 days and I haven't had any trouble with sticking to it after the first week. I'm using spaced repetition which I've tried using before, but it requires the kind of effort and commitment that you can only get out of a good and proper study habit.

[@ZeliWipin]

i love your work

[@allakhani309]

Scott, my suggestion is that you redo most of your videos and update with your current views. That way, we have current views and avoid some of the mistakes you may have made. Thanks for the work you have put in for us. Thank you.

[@VivekSingh_ias]

Change is the only Way of Life

[@odallard]

Surely, there’s formal education where, if you land with a proper teacher, start earlier in life, and are committed all the way, you will get the most benefit in a large number of cases. If you’re a disciplined researcher and have the right methodology mastered, you’ll also learn much. These are the traditional approaches I learned all the way up to my master’s degree, but I wanted to be on the frontline and got a job, where I felt stifled with the monotony of work and the obvious lack of guidance. This is where I’ve benefited from Ultralearning because it’s at the very least an original proposal for an evolving learning framework that continues to highlight the need to develop learning and practice skills, especially for situations where there’s not many out there who can adequately teach them (say, emerging technologies). It’s not the only book I’ve read for my professional development, but it does stand on its own as a guide for structuring your own learning approach. I’ve always considered myself a fast learner, but with the material from this book, I’ve learned a path to being an effective one, too.

[@johnpaul7846]

Please make more longer videos

[@bobcocampo]

Hope you can be a consultant in our Dept of Education and create a course or subject on how to learn.

[@clarafuentes2119]

Great

[@gregrifiedaursmc]

very nice video i accidentally clicked because i thought you were Scott cawton

[@kagepoker]

Just because you don't have a PhD does not mean you're not an expert.

[@aldorodriguez7310]

It would be very interesting to know your take on Chat GPT and it’s role in the new way of learning.

[@Silverlotus101]

The study of how people learn and how we rely on a variety of 'mental models' to have a specific idea of what an abstract concept is vs. how it interacts with the rest of it's related neighboring ideas, is really complex. All I know as a student is that I'm terrible at making my own mental models... I barely remember that comparative tables are a thing, and can replace 4 paragraphs of notes just fine 😢 That, and whoever made the addition table, the value/plavlceholder zero, and the long division shortcut for polynomials is the real brainiac and we should've been asking THEM some important questions

[@erikzelmer9026]

Did you go to University of Manitoba back in the day?

[@ScottHYoungVid]

I did!

[@erikzelmer9026]

@@ScottHYoungVid I remember, in residence living. Good to see you making it out here

[@会供価]

does your 206 page books (learn more, study less" still apply in 2023? idk if i should get it

[@ScottHYoungVid]

I generally recommend Ultralearning over Learn More, Study Less. I keep it around because I don't try to delete my older work, and a lot of people still like it, but I think it's further away from my current thinking.

[@scrunt62]

i disagree that memorizing would be necessary to understanding complex ideas. an ability to approximate solutions with a high degree of accuracy is a trait associated with geniuses like albert einstein or stephen hawking. in general, scientists need to be capable of forming good hypotheses, (basically by imagining how things work to get to a result to plan a test for), and anticipate any possible exceptions that could otherwise be accounted for in order to keep those factors from obscuring their conclusions, and to maximize how helpful/applicable its findings can be in other research. i first noticed my ability to approximate solutions as a young kid, and i've thought a lot about how this works for me, since it's fascinating being able to tell how things are happening or predict them in advance. you grow up feeling mystical, like you have supernatural powers or a shamanistic intuition. you try to talk to people about it, no one takes it seriously. you get in trouble for not showing your work or having citations. or you're taken as a passionate self-learner for having good guesses about topics you never studied before. or your explanation is dismissed when you describe how something functions without having the offcial vocab for the items. other times, you realize you were still recognizably correct when a teacher asks you after class about how you knew that already, and you don't know how to explain without sounding stupid, or having a guilty conscience or imposter syndrome as if you were lying or overexaggerating when explaining that you just thought about it and described what felt right. i felt like i was doing something bad because it was like i was humoring the possibility that something could be special about me. as an abused kid, i had developed a disgust response to praise or compliments based off how i accepted my parents' verbal abuse. my inner critic told me i was just amping myself up wrongfully, that it was just a lucky guess, that i'm good at bs'ing. so i have some understanding of how thinking works for me, since i've often wondered about it. an earlier example i can remember well enough to be legit would be: in 4th grade, i was able to guess what clouds were made of and how their particles change through different phases of the weather. i think environmental sensitivity or hypervigilance plays into it too; i can tell when it's going to rain even if the forecast says it won't. picking up on what cues relate to certain outcomes, why, and what the exceptions are, gives you a bunch of tiny little "if X then Y" conclusions. as you get more and more of them branching out, adjacent trees eventually connect with others, and your connections become more expansive and intuitive. you get an understanding specific to the base behaviors and relationships between different factors of a situation. you just automatically test or apply those observations to similar situations when trying to understand how something works, or make sense of what's really going on based off how different factors react or relate to each other, and come out with even more conclusions about how things work in the world. when a guess doesn't make sense, or when thinking about your conclusion you have a feeling of doubt or a void, you take that as a sign you're not considering enough of the factors, which is bad, since, certain pieces in combination with each other at the expense of other pieces' integration with your understandings can completely change what conclusions you come to. you compensate by always observing as much as you can, and a natural curiosity for how the world works in general often keeps you conditioned to pursue each question you have in full force; meaning, all of this information becomes more salient and accessible as it gets used and your neurons' connections become strengthened. the difference in what information you pick up on subconsciously VS consciously seems to become tailored to what clues you implicitly recognize as being more pivotol to potential questions and conclusions. so, going from an earlier stage of development where you're caught off guard by certain reactions; to being able to intuit different reactions and outcomes, even if the situation is new to you; and then being able to consciously recognize what specific factors seem suspicious, and having easy access to the contextual observations that taught you why exactly this situation could be odd, too, and what you can look for in the present situation in order to narrow down the possibilities, gets you coming to strong conclusions about anything very quickly. basically, you observe and remember enough about what you've seen to learn how it works well enough to re-enact your observations when imagining and testing it. that information you absorbed gets universalized enough to where you can implicitly understand the parallels between a lesser-known situation and a familiar one, and use them to intuit an outcome. it's about recognition, and your capacity for it is probably developed by how detailed and expansive your observations are, and how well the relevant/matching pieces come to connect in your head. that's assuming they need to be connected to other ideas in order to be more readily accessed consciously when you give yourself a query, anyway. like reaching for a written letter vs a shredded piece of paper with just a couple characters on it. when you reach, you're much more likely to miss the shredded piece, and even if you grab it, there's not much to gain from it, anyway. as an observation or memory, it didn't realize much of its potential for nuanced context.

[@scrunt62]

- brought to you by my family trauma and an edible

[@scrunt62]

oops, i got excited and had stopped the vid at 2:57 to write that, so it wasn't written with the subsequent points from the video in mind. i realize my strategy was the exception he described, of noticing analogies based off my (paraphrased) "abstract mental representations of the deep structure of ideas." i'm still leaving that comment in case there's still something interesting or valuable in it. i don't know if i personally subscribe to the mbti system, but i might have provided a good description for how an intuitive or feeling type thinks, while i wonder if his interpretation might more closely represent the thinking process of a sensing or thinking type. i'm going to bed now.

[@ultrahdgood]

If Ryan Gosling and Aaron Paul ever had a son he would look like you!

[@heythere9554]

I think your initial views were more accurate . There is a major problem with active recall despite it being research proven. The amount of time it takes to learn flashcards is overwhelming. Especially if you have too many fact based flashcards (like in med school). I used to learn an entire chapter with flashcards and at the end of it was unable to connect the dots and summarise what the whole idea was about because i concentrated on memorising the facts and not on how the facts fit into the bigger picture. What is needed is higher order learning (i.e concentrating on the bigger picture first) Justin Sung teaches a method called inquiry based learning which is similar to your ultra learning method. His students like Archer Newton study for less time and score more (which is every students dream) Please do a collab with Dr. Justin Sung if you think he is legit

[@ScottHYoungVid]

I don't think it's so much about my earlier views being "right" or "wrong" but about the usefulness of the advice. The basic truth is that the stuff I advocated for during my early days was genuinely useful to me during my studies at university. Encoding strategies for connecting ideas and understanding them more deeply are very helpful! The issue, which I alluded to, is more of a bootstrapping problem. What do you do when you don't already understand an idea? Then metaphors and analogies are difficult to pursue and may frequently result in buggy concepts. In contrast, practice efforts tend to work a little better since the feedback loops and memory-strengthening that comes from reduced cognitive load is more successful. So it's not that elaborative strategies don't work, but more that they tend to work for concepts you already understand at some level. For someone who is really struggling with a subject, they're not where I'd typically start, but for someone who generally "gets" an idea and wants to remember it better, encoding strategies are often good.

[@yoriichitsugikuni4700]

So I shouldn't buy your ultra learning book because your views changed?

[@downspaced9296]

Wait, Scott, are you telling me I should not have spent $26 on Ultralearning yesterday?

[@ScottHYoungVid]

Ultralearning is pretty close to my current views. I would maybe nitpick a few little details, but I don't think I would change the practical advice in any drastic way.

[@downspaced9296]

@@ScottHYoungVid I'm not done reading it yet but can tell you this. Ultralearning is the text I'll be using to teach my grandkids how to learn how to learn. I'm a high school dropout who has been studying math and chemistry deeply at 59 years old. So much of what you have said resonates with what I have learned about learning through my own experience. Thank you for you efforts and sharing. $26 is cheap for a textbook.

[@melamparithy]

first lol

[@ijack8575]

if really your knowledge of ultra learning works why you dont learn chess and try to be in the top 10 of best players in record time? is the best way to prove your autenticity

[@ScottHYoungVid]

I'm not sure I can offer a real improvement over serious chess players in terms of the studying approach. I suspect current best practices in chess training are pretty close to efficient. I don't really have any "secret" method unavailable to top people. I just try to compile a "what works." My own challenges are definitely cherry-picked for places where I tend to think the average approach could be improved in some way, which is part of the reason for doing them.

[@VivekSingh_ias]

Scott your speech looks like Scripted , try to be on the spot and live , it would be much helpful and understandable, No offence , just a thought

[@ScottHYoungVid]

All the videos are just me reading my blog articles. I might give an impromptu talk for the channel at some point, but I'm first and foremost a writer.

[@VivekSingh_ias]

@@ScottHYoungVid Appreciate it , waiting for you go impromptu .

[@andeemengaming5000]

damn shave your head bro

[@ScottHYoungVid]

😆

[@AR-rg2en]

Have some respect bro, people on the internet think they can say whatever they want.

[@andeemengaming5000]

@@AR-rg2en im sorry i was a little immature then. i apologise to the guy for saying such a thing

[@AR-rg2en]

@@andeemengaming5000 You are the man respect +

[@deuteriumtritium9700]

@@andeemengaming5000 You came to a realisation most people take years to come to. Good on you! Funny af thread tho XD

[@anonix4078]

Your Ultralearning book seems to be written by AI. It reads bad. You need to focus more on your writing logic and sentence structures more. And, you need to widen your POV. Whole book, with just a few examples. Don't you know any other language learners besides Benny Lewis? Do you think attempting to learn a language in 3 months make you expert? I don't think so. You need to dig deeper and write more clearly, otherwise your books are becoming another marketing scam.