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Notes on Learning How to Learn

These are the notes I took when completing the Learning How to Learn course, available here .  I got a lot out of this course. Prior to completing it, I had always viewed learning difficult subjects as something intimately related to someone's intelligence, and thus an implicit value judgment (my attitude toward that has changed too!). After completing it, I viewed learning as much more formulaic - a process that most people can go through and perform well at, provided they do so in a logical way. Through completing the course I learned much more about how the brain actually works to learn and retain new concepts and information, as well as lots of techniques to help be a more effective learner in future.  Frankly, I wish I'd had access to this in high school - it would have made high school and undergrad far easier and far less stressful.  These are just quick notes I took at the time, they'll be more useful as a refresher to someone who has taken the course before than as
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Why write?

I started this blog because I have a bunch of ideas for essays and other things I wanted to write up and communicate. I think this has several advantages for personal growth.  Writing about your ideas forces you to communicate them in a way which is logical and coherent. It exposes weaknesses in your arguments and gaps in your evidence. Assumptions that you may have made without deeply considering them are exposed to criticism. Peculiarities of your own experience and upbringing - which you may assume are universal - can be contrasted with the different experiences of your audience. In short, writing about your ideas can make them stronger. Another thing: have you ever noticed how easy it is to act intelligent and 'above it all' if you never really have to defend your position? This is a trap I've fallen into in the past and I notice other people doing the same thing. Writing what you actually believe creates a target for criticism; and that can quickly bring you back down
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Why you shouldn't become emotionally invested in politics

When I was younger, a good deal of my identity was wrapped up in my libertarian political beliefs. As far as I was concerned, many of the problems that society and individuals faced could be solved by less government intervention in our lives. In retrospect this was a mistake. Not necessarily to hold those political beliefs (I still consider myself a libertarian) but getting upset about what I perceived to be government overreach and destructive incompetence - and more upset when the people around me supported or defended those actions.  There are two reasons why you should not get too emotionally invested in government failure: you have almost no control over it, and it probably does not affect your life as much as you think.  As an average individual you have very little power to influence government policy. Even society's elites cannot unilaterally mould a government or population into the exact form they desire. There will always be others with different ideas of how society sh
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