Understanding
Understanding may be one of the most powerful things — and one of the hardest to describe. This page is my attempt to circle it.
The spark
Two things pointed me here. Working through the book Learn to Program, I noticed that doing the exercises gives me a better understanding of coding than reading ever does. And there's a line Andrej Karpathy keeps citing that I keep returning to:
"You can outsource your thinking, but you can't outsource your understanding."
Thinking is labour you can hand to a model. Understanding is what stays in you — it can't be delegated.
No understanding without work
Understanding is like a trained body: you don't get sporty without exercising, and there is no shortcut here either. The effort isn't incidental — it's the price.
That's why shortform content can't produce it. Reels, headlines, gossip — you can consume any amount and understand nothing. Books, podcasts, deep talks work precisely because they're costly: the effort you spend going in is what lets the dots connect afterward.
And it compounds. The more you understand, the easier further understanding gets.
What I can't answer yet
I can describe what understanding costs and how it accrues — but not what it is, as distinct from knowing, or from being able to do. That question stays open.
Links
- Andrej Karpathy on X — the outsourcing line (one he cites, not necessarily coined).