When I was studying STEM subjects for my A-Levels, not accepting anything until I'd understood it was really rewarding. I was forced to constantly go back to first principles, and so on.
I went on to study law, though, and things weren't so simple. I kept getting sucked into rabbit hole after rabbit hole, looking for stable foundations on which to theorize about society, politics, morality, human nature (all of which are deeply implicated in the law, even if they are mostly unnecessary for doctrinal legal scholarship). I mean, although the professor gave us Hobbes' argument in our very first lecture, I couldn't even convince myself about law's necessity for social order. (To this day I'm still a bit of an anarchist). Moreover, I was convinced that legal concepts were "transcendental nonsense", as one American jurist put it several decades ago. Reasoning from precedent seemed extremely shoddy. Judges seemed all too human. Value judgments and political preferences abound disguised in "legal reasoning". Frustratingly, there were hardly any "first principles" one could speak of. To study law at all, then, required that I bracket off my concerns about the assumptions underpinning much of the field.
Example concerns: What even is law, the object of our enquiries? How should lawyers grapple with the indeterminacy of language, meaning, and interpretation? How might we distinguish right and wrong? How about understanding society—the realm of law's application and origin? How might we think clearly about the law today, given our growing understanding that humans lack the kind of agency assumed in law and Enlightenment humanism?
In the end, social reality is such a massive, incomprehensible beast where everything is chaotically intertwined, unlike mathematics/science where you can advance your understanding in little, isolated chunks at a time with reasonable confidence. In sociology you can spend years investigating Marxist theories only to decide that, hmm, maybe "ideology" or "base/superstructure" are not theoretically fruitful terms.
Not sure where I am going with this comment so I'll just leave it here as a reflection on the applicability of "not accepting what you don't understand" to certain domains. Sometimes it pays to just start writing without obsessively trying to figure out how meanings are generated through text...
"I couldn't even convince myself that central governments and legislatures were necessary for order" - That is probably because they aren't. My own sense is that an enlightened despot is good enough for order, except for two problems. The corruption problem and the succession problem. The corruption problem basically says that a powerful tends to grow power for itself and use it for personal gains. And the succession problem says that power transfer can be events that lead to a significant amount of disruption. When people say that democracy is the worst form of government except everything that has been tried before, they probably mean that in theory it is difficult to justify it, but nobody knows of any better alternative.
"(Social) reality is such a massive, incomprehensible beast where everything is chaotically intertwined" - Do consider reading "The legal analyst" by Ward Farnsworth. As an engineer, I read it considering each chapter as a principle - a hypothesis or an axiom and that in practical situations, the interplay between these principles leads to the outcome it leads to. The author calls them tools and calls their implementations in the real world as principles and as an engineer this seems confusing and the other way round. Maybe that is what is bothering you as well.
“At the time, I was infuriated by these inadequate proofs, but I was under time pressure to just learn the operations so that I could answer exam questions because the class needed to move onto the next thing.
And since you actually can answer the exam questions and mechanically perform calculus operations without ever deeply understanding calculus, it’s much easier to just get by and do the exam without really questioning the concepts deeply -- which is in fact what happens for most people. (See my essay on education.)
How many people actually go back and try and understand this, or other such topics, in a deeper way? Very few. Moreover, the ‘meta’ lesson is: don’t question it too deeply, you’ll fall behind. Just learn the algorithm, plug in the numbers, and pass your exams. Speed is of the essence. In this way, school kills the “will to understanding” in people. “
Great insight. I’ve said similar before and people don’t often understand how there could be a difference between acing a Calc III exam and having a conceptual understanding of it. Many people understand math only through the lens of rote algorithms and techniques; some people understand other subjects through this perspective as well.
Even if you try to understand them , in todays real world you will be lagging behind in the workplace and you would be stuck like the others. Also when money is involved you would be unable to pay for anything
I love how you reframe intelligence as more about habits and character - the willingness to look stupid by asking questions, the drive to really understand rather than just get the "right answer," and the patience to examine things from multiple angles. The contrast between stopping at the first proof versus finding multiple approaches is such a clear illustration of this. Your examples of the equals sign and the brick story are perfect reminders that even seemingly simple things contain depths when we're willing to look closer and think longer. It's a refreshing perspective on what real understanding requires.
Thank you! I think it's worthwhile for both -- some of the very best non-fiction I've read has unforgettable specifics (see John McPhee's book on Oranges, for example...)
That said, non-fiction often deals in abstractions and concepts, where this is maybe less important overall.
My wife says she was the top of her class for Calculus and 10 years later couldn't tell you a single thing about it. She excelled at school because she was good at memorizing, not because she understood things well -- she had good hardware, but never learned to load in the software she really needed to be an expert. I guess it doesn't matter. Her field doesn't require Calculus. Makes me wonder if we're wasting people's time on subjects that don't actually matter instead of doubling down on the ones that will for them.
In true spirit of the article I thought about it and wrote about it in my own way. It helped me understand it more. It proved the words you write, to me.
Cultivating Depth in a Distracted World
In an age of rapid information, the true challenge is not just acquiring knowledge but thinking deeply about it. The ability to think—to truly engage with an idea—requires three key elements: the will to think, the time to think, and the energy to think. Without all three, intellectual progress is stifled, and clarity remains elusive.
The Will to Think
Thinking is not a passive act; it is an intentional pursuit. The will to think is the commitment to engage with difficult concepts, to seek understanding beyond surface-level interpretations. It requires the courage to confront complexity, the discipline to resist easy answers, and the humility to accept that learning is a continuous process.
The Time to Think
Modern life is filled with distractions, demanding our attention in countless ways. Yet, thinking cannot be rushed. Understanding a concept deeply means allowing ideas to marinate, questions to arise, and connections to form. Creating dedicated time for thinking—free from interruptions—fosters clarity and insight.
The Energy to Think
Just as physical energy is required for movement, mental energy is necessary for deep thinking. This means prioritizing sleep, nutrition, and mental well-being. Fatigue breeds complacency; alertness fuels curiosity. A well-rested mind is far better equipped to wrestle with complexity.
Intellectual Honesty: The First Rule of Science
'The first rule of science is that you do not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.' Intellectual rigor demands honesty, a willingness to challenge one’s own biases, and a readiness to accept when one is wrong. To think well, we must be vigilant against self-deception and remain open to evidence that contradicts our assumptions.
Writing Forces Clarity
If you cannot explain an idea clearly, you do not understand it well enough. Writing is a tool for refining thought, forcing us to articulate what we think we know. It exposes gaps in understanding and compels us to think more deeply. The process of writing is not just about recording thoughts—it is about shaping them.
The Power of Asking Questions
Never let intellectual insecurities prevent you from asking when you do not know. True learners embrace curiosity and discard the fear of appearing uninformed. Every expert was once a beginner, and every insightful thought begins with a question.
The Art of Slow Thinking
Speed is often mistaken for intelligence, but real understanding comes from patience. Read slow. Think slow. Dwell on questions rather than rushing to answers. The more time you spend with a problem, the clearer it becomes. Zoom in, then zoom in again, then once more. The deeper you go, the more profound the insights.
The Discipline of Focus
In a world of endless notifications and fleeting distractions, the ability to focus is a superpower. Cut out unwanted and unneeded distractions. The mind cannot hold multiple complex thoughts simultaneously—depth requires singular attention. The deeper the focus, the greater the clarity.
When in Doubt, Go Closer
Confusion is not a dead end but an invitation to look more closely. If something does not make sense, break it down further. Examine the details. Reconstruct the argument. Clarity emerges not from avoiding difficulty but from engaging with it at a granular level.
Conclusion: Thinking as a Discipline
Thinking well is a deliberate practice. It requires will, time, and energy. It demands honesty, clarity, patience, and focus. In a world driven by speed and superficiality, deep thinking remains a radical act—one that leads to genuine understanding, original thought, and intellectual growth. The challenge, then, is simple: cultivate the will to think, and the rest will follow.
Truly fantastic read. I feel like it has put into words many thoughts I’ve had for so long.
I would like to add that, even though I agree that first-hand experience is an amazing vehicle for understanding, it is inherently limited and should be taken with a grain of salt. Besides the concern that human senses can fool us, I think it is even more concerning that our own human experience is very limited in size, speeds, and time scales. We humans are unable to experience first-hand the very small, the very fast, and processes that take several millions of years to happen. Hence this empirical-data approach can sometimes limit us to exclusively think about concepts that are inherently tied to the human experience.
I would imagine that a being that is several orders of magnitude larger than us and lives over many millions of years instead of mere decades will be inclined to think about physical systems that operate on these scales.
You seem stuck in the depths of left hemisphere reasoning, a very worthy and fine example of it I think, thank you. If you can now move on to right hemisphere thinking, and perhaps how to synthesise the two modes of intelligence, then with your obvious talent as a writer, you could produce something wonderful indeed. I recommend reading The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist if you haven’t already done so, I really think you could produce something magnificent.
What worries me is most people delegate many things in their life, most importantly their understanding of it. Energy and will are directed to instant rewards.
When I was studying STEM subjects for my A-Levels, not accepting anything until I'd understood it was really rewarding. I was forced to constantly go back to first principles, and so on.
I went on to study law, though, and things weren't so simple. I kept getting sucked into rabbit hole after rabbit hole, looking for stable foundations on which to theorize about society, politics, morality, human nature (all of which are deeply implicated in the law, even if they are mostly unnecessary for doctrinal legal scholarship). I mean, although the professor gave us Hobbes' argument in our very first lecture, I couldn't even convince myself about law's necessity for social order. (To this day I'm still a bit of an anarchist). Moreover, I was convinced that legal concepts were "transcendental nonsense", as one American jurist put it several decades ago. Reasoning from precedent seemed extremely shoddy. Judges seemed all too human. Value judgments and political preferences abound disguised in "legal reasoning". Frustratingly, there were hardly any "first principles" one could speak of. To study law at all, then, required that I bracket off my concerns about the assumptions underpinning much of the field.
Example concerns: What even is law, the object of our enquiries? How should lawyers grapple with the indeterminacy of language, meaning, and interpretation? How might we distinguish right and wrong? How about understanding society—the realm of law's application and origin? How might we think clearly about the law today, given our growing understanding that humans lack the kind of agency assumed in law and Enlightenment humanism?
In the end, social reality is such a massive, incomprehensible beast where everything is chaotically intertwined, unlike mathematics/science where you can advance your understanding in little, isolated chunks at a time with reasonable confidence. In sociology you can spend years investigating Marxist theories only to decide that, hmm, maybe "ideology" or "base/superstructure" are not theoretically fruitful terms.
Not sure where I am going with this comment so I'll just leave it here as a reflection on the applicability of "not accepting what you don't understand" to certain domains. Sometimes it pays to just start writing without obsessively trying to figure out how meanings are generated through text...
*Note: Edited for cleaner writing.
"I couldn't even convince myself that central governments and legislatures were necessary for order" - That is probably because they aren't. My own sense is that an enlightened despot is good enough for order, except for two problems. The corruption problem and the succession problem. The corruption problem basically says that a powerful tends to grow power for itself and use it for personal gains. And the succession problem says that power transfer can be events that lead to a significant amount of disruption. When people say that democracy is the worst form of government except everything that has been tried before, they probably mean that in theory it is difficult to justify it, but nobody knows of any better alternative.
"(Social) reality is such a massive, incomprehensible beast where everything is chaotically intertwined" - Do consider reading "The legal analyst" by Ward Farnsworth. As an engineer, I read it considering each chapter as a principle - a hypothesis or an axiom and that in practical situations, the interplay between these principles leads to the outcome it leads to. The author calls them tools and calls their implementations in the real world as principles and as an engineer this seems confusing and the other way round. Maybe that is what is bothering you as well.
You should really write more and share more of your experiences on this, enjoyed reading your comment and now I'm super curious
“At the time, I was infuriated by these inadequate proofs, but I was under time pressure to just learn the operations so that I could answer exam questions because the class needed to move onto the next thing.
And since you actually can answer the exam questions and mechanically perform calculus operations without ever deeply understanding calculus, it’s much easier to just get by and do the exam without really questioning the concepts deeply -- which is in fact what happens for most people. (See my essay on education.)
How many people actually go back and try and understand this, or other such topics, in a deeper way? Very few. Moreover, the ‘meta’ lesson is: don’t question it too deeply, you’ll fall behind. Just learn the algorithm, plug in the numbers, and pass your exams. Speed is of the essence. In this way, school kills the “will to understanding” in people. “
Great insight. I’ve said similar before and people don’t often understand how there could be a difference between acing a Calc III exam and having a conceptual understanding of it. Many people understand math only through the lens of rote algorithms and techniques; some people understand other subjects through this perspective as well.
Even if you try to understand them , in todays real world you will be lagging behind in the workplace and you would be stuck like the others. Also when money is involved you would be unable to pay for anything
Sometimes, I too feel that we tend to skip a lot of things due to time constraints.
I love how you reframe intelligence as more about habits and character - the willingness to look stupid by asking questions, the drive to really understand rather than just get the "right answer," and the patience to examine things from multiple angles. The contrast between stopping at the first proof versus finding multiple approaches is such a clear illustration of this. Your examples of the equals sign and the brick story are perfect reminders that even seemingly simple things contain depths when we're willing to look closer and think longer. It's a refreshing perspective on what real understanding requires.
Hi Nabeel,
Enjoyed this!
Question: Why is going closer only good fiction writing advice? How is it different with non-fiction?
Thank you! I think it's worthwhile for both -- some of the very best non-fiction I've read has unforgettable specifics (see John McPhee's book on Oranges, for example...)
That said, non-fiction often deals in abstractions and concepts, where this is maybe less important overall.
My wife says she was the top of her class for Calculus and 10 years later couldn't tell you a single thing about it. She excelled at school because she was good at memorizing, not because she understood things well -- she had good hardware, but never learned to load in the software she really needed to be an expert. I guess it doesn't matter. Her field doesn't require Calculus. Makes me wonder if we're wasting people's time on subjects that don't actually matter instead of doubling down on the ones that will for them.
Phenomenal! Thank you so much!
Brilliant Nabeel! Thank you. 👏
"People who have not experienced the thing are unlikely to be generating truth. More likely, they’re resurfacing cached thoughts and narratives."
Seems like LLMs. 🙂
That was the case but we're slowly moving away from that paradigm: https://nonint.com/2024/06/03/general-intelligence-2024/
I love this essay so much. Thanks for writing this.
What a nice, warm and welcoming and thoughtful essay. Will check Kolmogorov‘s Essay on the equal sign.. I love stuff like this.
Thank you!
Thank you Nabeel,
In true spirit of the article I thought about it and wrote about it in my own way. It helped me understand it more. It proved the words you write, to me.
Cultivating Depth in a Distracted World
In an age of rapid information, the true challenge is not just acquiring knowledge but thinking deeply about it. The ability to think—to truly engage with an idea—requires three key elements: the will to think, the time to think, and the energy to think. Without all three, intellectual progress is stifled, and clarity remains elusive.
The Will to Think
Thinking is not a passive act; it is an intentional pursuit. The will to think is the commitment to engage with difficult concepts, to seek understanding beyond surface-level interpretations. It requires the courage to confront complexity, the discipline to resist easy answers, and the humility to accept that learning is a continuous process.
The Time to Think
Modern life is filled with distractions, demanding our attention in countless ways. Yet, thinking cannot be rushed. Understanding a concept deeply means allowing ideas to marinate, questions to arise, and connections to form. Creating dedicated time for thinking—free from interruptions—fosters clarity and insight.
The Energy to Think
Just as physical energy is required for movement, mental energy is necessary for deep thinking. This means prioritizing sleep, nutrition, and mental well-being. Fatigue breeds complacency; alertness fuels curiosity. A well-rested mind is far better equipped to wrestle with complexity.
Intellectual Honesty: The First Rule of Science
'The first rule of science is that you do not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.' Intellectual rigor demands honesty, a willingness to challenge one’s own biases, and a readiness to accept when one is wrong. To think well, we must be vigilant against self-deception and remain open to evidence that contradicts our assumptions.
Writing Forces Clarity
If you cannot explain an idea clearly, you do not understand it well enough. Writing is a tool for refining thought, forcing us to articulate what we think we know. It exposes gaps in understanding and compels us to think more deeply. The process of writing is not just about recording thoughts—it is about shaping them.
The Power of Asking Questions
Never let intellectual insecurities prevent you from asking when you do not know. True learners embrace curiosity and discard the fear of appearing uninformed. Every expert was once a beginner, and every insightful thought begins with a question.
The Art of Slow Thinking
Speed is often mistaken for intelligence, but real understanding comes from patience. Read slow. Think slow. Dwell on questions rather than rushing to answers. The more time you spend with a problem, the clearer it becomes. Zoom in, then zoom in again, then once more. The deeper you go, the more profound the insights.
The Discipline of Focus
In a world of endless notifications and fleeting distractions, the ability to focus is a superpower. Cut out unwanted and unneeded distractions. The mind cannot hold multiple complex thoughts simultaneously—depth requires singular attention. The deeper the focus, the greater the clarity.
When in Doubt, Go Closer
Confusion is not a dead end but an invitation to look more closely. If something does not make sense, break it down further. Examine the details. Reconstruct the argument. Clarity emerges not from avoiding difficulty but from engaging with it at a granular level.
Conclusion: Thinking as a Discipline
Thinking well is a deliberate practice. It requires will, time, and energy. It demands honesty, clarity, patience, and focus. In a world driven by speed and superficiality, deep thinking remains a radical act—one that leads to genuine understanding, original thought, and intellectual growth. The challenge, then, is simple: cultivate the will to think, and the rest will follow.
Truly fantastic read. I feel like it has put into words many thoughts I’ve had for so long.
I would like to add that, even though I agree that first-hand experience is an amazing vehicle for understanding, it is inherently limited and should be taken with a grain of salt. Besides the concern that human senses can fool us, I think it is even more concerning that our own human experience is very limited in size, speeds, and time scales. We humans are unable to experience first-hand the very small, the very fast, and processes that take several millions of years to happen. Hence this empirical-data approach can sometimes limit us to exclusively think about concepts that are inherently tied to the human experience.
I would imagine that a being that is several orders of magnitude larger than us and lives over many millions of years instead of mere decades will be inclined to think about physical systems that operate on these scales.
Shockley was also a proponent of eugenics. He must have twisted many, many facts to arrive at that belief.
You seem stuck in the depths of left hemisphere reasoning, a very worthy and fine example of it I think, thank you. If you can now move on to right hemisphere thinking, and perhaps how to synthesise the two modes of intelligence, then with your obvious talent as a writer, you could produce something wonderful indeed. I recommend reading The Matter With Things by Iain McGilchrist if you haven’t already done so, I really think you could produce something magnificent.
Thank you this masterpiece. You’ve struck something in me!
What worries me is most people delegate many things in their life, most importantly their understanding of it. Energy and will are directed to instant rewards.