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How To Understand Things - Nabeel S. Qureshi

nabeelqu.substack.com · 3,615 words · saved by 12 readers

The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking. After he’d prove a theorem, or solve a problem, he’d go back and continue thinking about the problem and try to figure out different proofs of the same thing. Sometimes he’d spend hours on a problem he’d already solved. I had the opposite tendency: as soon as I’d reached the end of the proof, I’d stop since I’d “gotten the answer”. Afterwards, he’d come out with three or four proofs of the same thing, plus some explanation of why each proof is connected somehow. In this way, he got a much deeper understanding of things than I did. I concluded that what we call 'intelligence' is as much about virtues such as honesty, integrity, and bravery, as it is about 'raw intellect’. Intelligent people simply aren’t willing to accept answers that they don’t understand — no matter how many other people try to convince them of it, or how many other people believe it, if they aren’t able to convince them selves of i

How To Understand Things The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking... Nabeel S. Qureshi Jul 02, 2020 19,882 137 3,832 Share I. The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking. After he’d prove a theorem, or solve a problem, he’d go back and continue thinking about the problem and try to figure out different proofs of the same thing. Sometimes he’d spend hours on a problem he’d already solved . I had the opposite tendency: as soon as I’d reached the end of the proof, I’d stop since I’d “gotten the answer”. Afterwa

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