How close are you to physics?

There is one realization that I internalized, which sorta helped me to learn things deeply and understand the mistake that I made earlier in learning new things. So the realization is: "how close are you to the physics of the thing that you are trying to get intuition for?"

Let me amplify it. For anything that you learn, it's really important to remain close to the thing that you are learning.

--- If you're learning physics itself, then the learning that you do by observing nature, being there in reality, and seeing will give you more data instead of remaining in textbook definitions and what people call those objects. It's important to learn structure, but before structure there needs to be reality.

--- If you are learning to do code, then are you writing code or not? Are you even surrounded by code or not? Code is your physics, so if you're not touching that, how will you even learn? Books and docs are simulations that are not going to make you good at code.

--- You can't get good intuition for math if you're just consuming borrowed knowledge and explanations. You need to look through it and feel reality by yourself.

When you are close to reality, then you will derive a lot instead of recognition. For example, one is observing waves in water and internalizing those first, and then realizing that humans call it "sin" and "cos." Most people and schools do recognition first and never realize it or be there in reality.

Even if you're learning names and definitions (recognition) first and then trying to realize through being in reality or generating a lot of questions and imaginative scenarios, then it's fine. But when recognition is there, when you just learn what this thing is called by people, then that castle of words has no utility.

I still remember the words of Feynman when he said (paraphrase): people don't learn science; people are learning "how science is said by people." Many people are living in words and definitions.

Adjacency != competence

One more thing I realize is that it's easy to fake progress and get a feel for learning. Through the internet and then frontier models, anybody can get access to information. People can be on X and then become that inner-ring person and feel they have internalized all the things. This is a subtle maya that many people get trapped in.

Being close to information doesn't mean you understand or have internalized that thing. For example, instead of knowledge that comes from research papers, code, math, and deep technical discussion, people's knowledge is mostly coming from tweets, Hollywood movies, or some podcasts. People are just learning the buzz of a domain instead of going deep in it.

This principle generalizes in everything you learn.