Do Not Start with Fundamentals

Do not start with fundamentals. This is an awful approach to learning.

Start with so-called “advanced” topics and ask questions until every term/concept is understood.

This is the correct, rigorous, scientific way to learn, because the advanced topics are embedded in larger, more convoluted, more abstracted constructs. This embedding is what gives the individual pieces their *meaning*.

Foundational studies have removed this embedding, and present only the isolated, sterile pieces. They have no meaning. They have no context.

The notion that students will piece together fundamentals into some eventual synthesis down the road is absolutely incorrect. It is literally information-theoretically obtuse.

Children don’t learn language using pieces. They mumble *fully*. They are never not fully embracing the complexity. It is the juxtaposition between their naive attempts and the full picture that imbues their mind with learning.

Prerequisites are the dumbest approach to learning. It is utterly indefensible using any scientific argument. The basics-to-advanced directionality is diametrically opposed to how information is encoded, comprehended and used.

Prerequisites are why most computer scientists and whiteboard exam-passers can’t make software themselves; they can only be cogs in a company. It’s why a Princeton math PhD can write the update rule for gradient descent but can’t draw the actual process with circles and lines on a damn chalkboard (true story).

Idiot level stuff because their learning was all basics to advanced. They never defined terms and concepts in an embedded fashion. It was all disconnected. Meaningless muscle memory with no understanding.

It does not work both ways. Only pieces that are seen inside the bigger picture are understood.

Do not start with fundamentals.