How to understand things

Big Think

Center

Factuality

Ownership

How to understand things

I. The smartest person I’ve ever known had a habit that, as a teenager, I found striking. After he’d prove a theorem, or solve a problem, he’d go back and continue thinking about the problem and try to figure out different proofs of the same thing. Sometimes he’d spend hours on a problem he’d already solved.  I had the opposite tendency: as soon as I’d reached the end of the proof, I’d stop since I’d “gotten the answer.” Afterwards, he’d come ou…