How To Use Knowledge To Transform Yourself

welcome back to another episode of the quirky inquiry and I sincerely sincerely sincerely apologize for the delayed episode this week actually tell you what I've recorded this exact same episode on Sunday I believe on Sunday but something happened the room was echoey and the video quality was crap based on the crappy lighting situation that I got back there so when I received the footage on my camera it looked like basically a film from 1976 so it was grainy it was dark it looked like something from from Jason Bourne and the audio was messed up so that clip was unusable so I'm gonna record the stand again in the professional set in this entire extravaganza that I got right here and tried to really improve things and trying to rerecord everything that's the thing with the youtubers and YouTube's contact Hooters is that you have to cut you have to be constantly changing your setup and 9 out of 10 times your setup fails on you so therefore today we're gonna talk about something very very very very important which is gonna come coming handy in a future of your learning experience in the future of becoming a Renaissance man you need this thing right here you need this distinction and this is the distinction between regurgitate of learning and transformative learning this is such an important distinction that we have to make and we're gonna continue this to make this thing a future as I present you guys with more interesting thoughts and more interesting ideas more of this is gonna make sense the further down the track we go so I actually started thinking about this topic as I was reading a book by a French existentialist by the name of jean-paul sock sock was this existentialist philosopher and he was just wandering around cafes after cafes you know writing his book and drinking coffee after coffee and smoking cigar after cigar but some of these some of these writings you have to say that they're pretty darn good and the one that I read was by the name of nausea which is for my understanding from my understanding at least it's the first novel that Mae Sot run into a household name in French existentialist traditions so therefore I was reading that and there is a very very interesting character in the book by the name of the audited act and if you don't know what audited Act means search it up on Google but basically the definition of an audited Act is someone who's self-educated and someone who's very well-read and someone who's well-versed in multiple subjects but from the place of self-education not from a former education so this audited act in John Passats novel nausea he basically committed himself to reading an entire library of books so he basically is gonna go into the library and he's gonna pick up a book with the author's name and E with a and he's gonna work through from letter 8 all the way to letter Z basically read through an entire library in alphabetical order so on one hand I'd take a look at this guy I was like oh man he's exactly what a quark Enquirer should be about turning people into that reading books after books after books like the autodidact turning people into audited acts that bind to the ideologies of audited actus ISM but on the other hand I started to wonder does more information in your brain actually make you a better person or are we just merely doing mental gymnastics are we just merely jerking off in our minds thinking about molecules and thinking about stuff whilst we ourselves are not growing as human beings that got me thinking a little bit thus eating through an entire library actually make you a better person the word does it just not do anything for you at all that's when we are transitive transitive the main crux of today's episode which is the difference between regurgitate of learning or pure information learning and transformative learning I'm gonna define these terms by using a list of examples here that you can easily attach any to any experience that you have and hopefully by the end of this episode these two costs up there are gonna make some sense for you basically regurgitated learning is the form of learning where you have no deep understanding of the information so by understanding here I mean a very specific thing understanding doesn't come from you just knowing the thing I can tell you right now jacques derrida avid advocates that there's no to Centrepointe of depiction or sent a point of interpretation of a specific text I just regurgitated it sounds very smart but I don't understand the damn thing nor do you if you don't if you haven't read a lot of Derrida or if you haven't read a lot about this whole movement of post-modernism you don't understand what the hell I just said of course they can memorize a book full of Shakespearean quotes without really understanding the implications that's regurgitate of learning examples regurgitate of learning occurs when you apply a mathematical formula without understanding what the heck it means I mean it works well on tests give me that question I know exactly what to do on this question let me apply that thing in calculus where you have to switch digits and decrease the power by when that's the essence of differentiation right but why is it like that have you not understood it you're regurgitating how about in English when you present it with essay question uh-huh what happens when you when power corrupts then an individual and now all you remind you're turning quotes you're having the entire structure of an essay you know topic sentence P 1 P P 1 P 2 P 3 conclusion you have this entire shopping list in your head and after you walk out at a se you're like oh what the heck did I write it's kind of strange died wait to think about it you've spent so much time preparing for this essay without really realizing what the heck did I learn besides that bucket list oh what the bucket list is good enough let me just no keeping on my e my pocket and it aced my next essay so you've learned this bucket list in English without really realizing how exactly to argue for a point you see the problem here your bucket list only applies to a specific situation in a specific novel that you're reading for English and by the end you still haven't learned how to argue for a point that's regurgitate of learning how about in chemistry the solubility table that you have to memorize I'm sure most of it are you know scientifically proven fact but why is the case that when you add two things together they tend to precipitate why is it the case that when you put things together and you rearrange these things together they turn out to be two radically different looking things if you don't understand that and you're merely just applying two formulas applying the rules implying two acid bases models you know I'm a terrible chemistry student but I don't have much say on a topic but basically if you don't understand the essence of why things occur and you're still applying two rules regurgitate of learning and by far my favorite favorite example in your regurgitator learning is philosophy you guys all know that I am a pretty avid philosophy reader I love reading philosophy philosophies my love for life that whole book book show over there the bottom compartments full of philosophy books that I have not had the chance to fully depict and because philosophy is very hard to read actually takes you into multiple layers you have to understand a historical context psychological implications societal implications historical implications all that stuff is embedded in one book so these texts are extremely dense sometimes the introduction is even bigger than the content itself tada so therefore when regurgitate of learning gets applied to philosophy it oversimplifies things so when you take a quote by jean-paul Sartre man is what he wills himself to be also has a bit of a Nietzsche and taste to it Oh extreme individuality and then some people would take that one piece of message and just put it in their head Oh Nietzsche said people out to wear themselves to their goals and man must overcome himself because you know most people are not living for themselves and be live for myself and let me go become a rebel so they justified their intellectual position using a very simplified understanding of philosophy without understanding the history without understanding the societal context without understanding anything and they used this intellectual they used this piece of philosophy as an argument oh you shouldn't do that based on morality biasing I'm not too deep in the morality of the topic I'm gonna read more about it but you can see what this entire implication holds to which is you taking a philosophical position without understanding what the heck the philosopher is talking about this also applies to post-modernism because I've been reading a lot of lot of lot about post-modernism and deconstruction lately by Derrida and deconstruction if you if you hear a guy talk about deconstruction like it's a thing that can be defined nine out of ten times a nine out of ten chances he's a quack because deconstruction and post-modernism are things that refuse to be defined they don't have a logo centric definition and logos centrism I can spend hours talking about logos centrism but basically post-modernism is a term that cannot be defined nor is these construction of turn that can be defined so a lot of people take this philosophical position they get go out there and argue with people and that's just a no-go no you haven't fully understood what the philosophers talking about but you're just regurgitating it you're over over overly simplifying the Philosopher's contention which results in a whole big mess so therefore you see regurgitate of learning here you see a regurgitate of implications here it's not negative we're not making a value judgment here regurgitate regurgitated learning has its place and on that note let's move on to transformative learning definition of transformative learning transformative learning is the learning that you take when the piece of information that you've understood so deeply actually transform how you look at the world transforms your perception transforms how you perceive and transform how you interpret things and transforms your character and your identity let's take the list of example that we did before and then apply it to transformative learning first note mathematics if you understood an implication of a piece of mathematics so deep and you can fit it into a societal context for example you've understood the mechanics of calculus so deep that you can see the gradual implications you can see how this fits into the real world you can see how cars run they can actually you can actually apply it a calculus formula to calculate the exact instantaneous acceleration when your worldview gets affected gets infected radder by this piece of mathematics when you see the engineer doing his thing you're like oh calculus fitting the dad I wonder how why is that the case okay I've understood this concept so deeply now I can actually see this perception changing my perceptions that's pretty darn cool if you can deeply understand mathematics in that way but for myself I'm not too big of a math person so I don't go the extra step I stay back and regurgitate learning when it comes out the math second example literature English when you fully grasp the essay structure and why is it a case that it is once you fully see all this is how I argue for a point okay that's kind of cool does that mean I can use this English skill that I not got from high school or university and go on to publish a book published publish an hour article using this exact same structure oh these are literary devices that can actually apply to a whole larger context and if you read an article from online or from a newspaper you see the structure happening you're like oh damn I was never ever aware of this before okay that's kind of cool so literature has a vaster implication then just reading in the English essay and it transforms your whole worldview flips your world upside down brilliant that's kind of cool now you have this English skill you can argue you can write you can form argument so you can really turn yourself into a you can really transform yourself in a literary sense chemistry it's kind of similar to math but let me just gloss over it once you understood that chemistry so well on theory and if you're observing the laboratories instead of just applying formulas yeah you actually see that thing precipitating in the little beaker we actually see the implications of the soporte precipitation in chemical reactions in technology in engineering in society and how society advances when you actually connect the dots have you understood the subject so deeply a whole new world opens up and that's sort of the appeal to learning that I'm advocating here and then lastly my favorite example philosophy once you actually understand a piece of philosophy so deep not just memorizing quotes it literally opens your eye well for me I'm Asian I couldn't really open my eye but it literally opens your eyes up to a whole field of possibilities I'm not kidding if you read a philosophical text and you understand it so deeply it's gonna leave you jaw dropped it's gonna transform how you look at things because recontextualization is so important one set of stimulus interpreted in different ways can result in radically different psychological effects and how do I notice existentialism existential is I'm being reading a lot existential is that I really if you fully understand what the guy is talking about it really tears your world apart and some philosophies I recommend that you stay away from and some motive philosophy I recommend that you read more of stoic philosophy for example it literally opens your worldview up it shifts you between perspectives and then you can become this per sec perspective ninja jump from one perspective to the next to the next to the next without getting attached to any of them and actually in the future I'm gonna talk about a very important concept very important Renaissance men skill of spiral dynamics you have to understand this model to become a full integrated Renaissance man so that's in the future something to be excited for it but philosophy if you understand something so deeply and it transforms your entire view of the world that's that's transformative learning that's what's actually freakin cool about reading philosophy it's not about you know sounding smart and existentialism man existence precedes essence Sartre argued that man is not that of which he conceives himself to be but wills himself to be sounds kind of cool makes the sound kind of smart but at the end what is it gonna do for you but once you understood it so deeply young when you were through changes oh holy crap my world is falling apart I'm understanding this thing deeper than I ever thought and then the thoughts start to connect transformative learning so what's the interplay between the two how do you reconcile between reconcile - because it sounds kind of wacky it sounds kind of messy regurgitated which ones better tell me which ones better now you have to be very careful because transformative learning in its essence is impossible without regurgitated learning you have to memorize what the heck this thing is and we call it a memory before you can move on to transformative actually deepening your knowledge in this area so let's come back to the autodidact in the beginning of the episode the reason why I think the mindset of eating an entire library is not that smart of an idea is that it basically promotes this image of you being that super well-read guy we're not much transformative learning how to occurred so what I would argue here is the end goal of all learning not all of learning but you can have some facts up there to keep yourself happy but the end goal of productive learning is at the end to reach the state of perception change to reach the state of perception change where your worldview gets blown apart where everything you've ever new gets recontextualized where everything that you wanted to know and the implications of linguistics implications of history implications to philosophy once you memorize it and you deepened that knowledge so much data reaches the stage of transformative learning that's in essence where the satisfaction of learning coming from that's in essence what becoming a Renaissance man is all about it's not just about stuffing information in your head it's all about letting that information percolate through you and in making you into a better person so both to learning are important don't let don't get lost in either or unis regurgitate of learning of course the passer test but also you need regurgitate of learning to get to know the class that in the first place and now after regurgitate of learning don't be afraid to go a step further into transformative learning where this thing actually transforms how you look at the world and that's in the sense what's really exciting about being a Renaissance man da Vinci didn't learn just because he owe it now to me is kind of cool let me cool let me go cut open a bunch of bodies let me go have a bunch of that bodies in my basement he didn't do that he was actually fascinated actually excited by the information and then that understanding transformed him over time and turned him into this Renaissance man human humanist artist so that's the distinction I'm gonna be getting out of here this video is kind of long and if you stuck through it it's gonna be a pretty valid weapon so for you ending in future don't be afraid or don't be afraid to stick through longer videos because dear a lot more delicious a lot more thoughtful a lot more intentional so to speak take a lot longer to render but I think it's worth it I really enjoy doing these longer forms of shows anyways we're all them here from the quirky inquiry I'll be signing off right now peace out

Channel: R.C. Waldun

Views: 26,155

Rating: 4.9740906 out of 5

Keywords: learning, how to learn better, robin wu, the quirky inquiry, how to become a renaissance man, how to learn like a renaissance man, how to read more books, what's the point of education?, how to educate oneself, autodidact, renaissance man learning, how to keep a commonplace book, commonplace book, holisic learning

Id: -9y6x2vmhM4

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 21 2018