If I’m understanding your question correctly (it seems clearly written, but the answer seems so obvious I’m doubting myself)… yes absolutely and it’s the standard tool for doing so! That’s the basis of personal journaling, or tech blogging, or many other forms of writing.
Ah, now I know how to phrase my question, it’s really two questions:
1. What distinguishes understanding from knowledge (or even passion about a topic)? 2. How can I write for the express purpose of understanding better? Presumably, not all manners of writing and jouralling are equally conducive to promoting understanding. And as such it’s not enough to write, or not-out-source to an LLM, there’s a particular method or way of thinking and composition of text which will improve the results.
On the first point—there’s plenty of things I can geek out about and wax lyrical—but it comes out as a mess and impossible to compose into a linear structure suitable for a virgin reader. Does this mean I don’t understand?
On the second point—I haven’t seen or enjoyed the benefits that others get from journalling or other forms of writing in understanding. I gain a lot more from dialogue (see how I finally figured out what my question was above), and FAFO: just doing the thing. I presume this means I’m doing writing wrong.
I’d loosely describe the difference between knowledge and understanding as the difference between being able to say what something is vs being able to describe why it is, or how it is, which often comes through being able to describe the thing in different ways. See the concept of “you don’t really understand something until you can explain it to a child (or lay person, I’d say).”
I know what a GPU is—I don’t understand how it works on a physical level.
Passion seems orthogonal although it csn drive knowledge and understanding.
About writing, well, our brains are all different—no technique will work equally well for everyone. Dialogue is a great way to generate understanding. And it has precedence as a writing technique too—have you tried writing fictional dialogues to hash out your ideas?
If I’m understanding your question correctly (it seems clearly written, but the answer seems so obvious I’m doubting myself)… yes absolutely and it’s the standard tool for doing so! That’s the basis of personal journaling, or tech blogging, or many other forms of writing.
Ah, now I know how to phrase my question, it’s really two questions:
1. What distinguishes understanding from knowledge (or even passion about a topic)?
2. How can I write for the express purpose of understanding better? Presumably, not all manners of writing and jouralling are equally conducive to promoting understanding. And as such it’s not enough to write, or not-out-source to an LLM, there’s a particular method or way of thinking and composition of text which will improve the results.
On the first point—there’s plenty of things I can geek out about and wax lyrical—but it comes out as a mess and impossible to compose into a linear structure suitable for a virgin reader. Does this mean I don’t understand?
On the second point—I haven’t seen or enjoyed the benefits that others get from journalling or other forms of writing in understanding. I gain a lot more from dialogue (see how I finally figured out what my question was above), and FAFO: just doing the thing. I presume this means I’m doing writing wrong.
Re: understanding,
I’d loosely describe the difference between knowledge and understanding as the difference between being able to say what something is vs being able to describe why it is, or how it is, which often comes through being able to describe the thing in different ways. See the concept of “you don’t really understand something until you can explain it to a child (or lay person, I’d say).”
I know what a GPU is—I don’t understand how it works on a physical level.
Passion seems orthogonal although it csn drive knowledge and understanding.
About writing, well, our brains are all different—no technique will work equally well for everyone. Dialogue is a great way to generate understanding. And it has precedence as a writing technique too—have you tried writing fictional dialogues to hash out your ideas?
Paul Graham has some good pieces on this:
https://paulgraham.com/words.html
https://paulgraham.com/essay.html