Thought#note/thought
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If we practice learning not as a pure accumulation of knowledge, but as an attempt to build up a latticework of theories and mental models to which information can stick, we enter a virtuous circle where learning facilitates learning.
Charlie Munger told us that we need to build a latticework of theory through which to interpret the world around us. If you go through the world accumulating knowledge but failing to develop perspective you are not building that latticework.
I think Charlie is getting at the nature of What it means to understand something. When he says "you've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head" he's really speaking to your ability to put ideas and events into context by applying your perspective and lens (or toolbox of Mental Models) to the situation. If all you remember is isolated facts but you are unable to apply them as context to other ideas then you don't really understand them.
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Munger writes: "Well, the first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form. You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience, both vicarious and direct, on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head." (Munger 1994).
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Learning, thinking and writing should not be about accumulating knowledge, but about becoming a different person with a different way of thinking.
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