Emile comments on On learning difficult things - Less Wrong
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Comments (44)
I'm glad to hear I'm not alone with the "getting stuck on stupid stuff" thing!
My favorite brand of wasted effort is when I'm reading a technical text, the text says something that I feel doesn't make sense, I spend half an hour backtracking and trying to figure it out, until I finally move on - and realize that if I had just kept reading, they would have explained it in the very next paragraph. Anyone else do that?
Yeah, sometimes, though I remember more cases where I was "wait a minute, there's a mistake here!" or "this is completely sub-optimal" and would put that in my notes, and a few paragraphs later he would explain the mistake or how to do it more optimally etc. But I don't see it as wasted effort, more as a small opportunity to pat myself on the back at how well I understand the material - I guess it's the difference between thinking about it five minutes versus half an hour.