What It Means To "Know"

The Feynman Learning Technique is a way to supercharge your learning.

Learning doesn't happen from browsing through a book or remembering enough to pass an exam. We learn information when we can explain it and use it in several situations. The Feynman Lear...

The Feynman Technique can also be used for a different way of thinking that allows you to break ideas apart and reconstruct them.

When you have a conversation, and the other person uses words or relationships that you are not familiar with, ask them to explain to y...

The technique is based on the method Richard Feynman originally used.

There are four steps to the Feynman Technique:

1. Pretend to teach a concept you want to learn about to a child.
2. Identify gaps in your explanation. Fill the gaps ...

When we investigate if something is true or not, new evidence and methods of experimentation should show a stronger effect, not a weaker one.

We must refine the method for getting at the real truth. If re-tests get weaker and weaker effects, it's likely not true to the magnitude we...

Michel de Montaigne said, "What good does it do us to have our belly full of meat if it is not digested, if it is not transformed into us, if it does not nourish and support us?"

We learn from books, but also from people we talk to, and the various positions, ideas, and opinions ...

• Take out a blank sheet of paper.
• Write the name of the subject as your heading.
• Then write down everything you know about the subject as if you were teaching it to a child. Try and explain as simply as possible.

When you have written down notes containing simple explanations, organize them in a narrative that you can tell from start to finish.

If the explanation is not clear, identify your gaps, look up definitions, augment with other sources, then organize and simplify again. You...

Many of the errors that people make come because they don't know they're missing the information they need.

Unless someone can demonstrate a truth to you with real experiments, there's no point in considering their knowledge.

The areas where you are struggling to explain the points in simple terms or forget something important are where you have some gaps in your understanding.

Now that you know your gaps, go back to the source material. Look up definitions. Augment with other sources. When you...

The last step is to run it past someone who knows a little of the subject. You can read what you've written or present the material like a lecture. Ask your friends for a few minutes over dinner. The idea is to attempt to transmit the material to at least one person who i...

Decide whether someone else really knows their stuff or is just copying others.

Ask them naive but relevant questions. When you apply your knowledge of the Feynman Technique, you know they should be able to explain it to you in simple terms and must be able to make educated analogi...

The problem is not what is possible - it's what's probable, what is happening. It's impossible that everything that is possible is happening.

You can also not judge the probability of something happening if it has already happened. You have to run ...