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The structure of human knowledge - by Kasra

bitsofwonder.substack.com · 1,957 words · saved by 1 readers

My evolving understanding of how different fields relate to each other.

One of the best ways to understand something is to learn it from first principles. You start with some axioms—basic premises that you know to be true—and derive everything else from those. This way you figure out why things are the way they are, rather than memorizing rote facts. You learn things rigorously. When I entered college, that is exactly what I tried to do. I had an obsession with rigor that drove me from an intended major in biology to one in physics and pure math. I imagined that all of human knowledge was constructed like a building: at the foundation were the "formal" sciences…

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