What are the limits in one's capacity to learn?
How many subjects could one reasonably expect to learn up though at least an undergraduate level of understanding in their lifetime?
Of course, there are the time constraints. What about the "energy" or "emotional" constraints? Is it possible to constantly learn while avoiding "burning out," "losing focus," etc.? And what about physiological constraints? Is there a limit to how much information or understanding a human brain can store?
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Most of this is subjective but the human brain has an enormous capacity, as in you could have someone digest information for over a thousand years and it would only account for more or less 50 percent of the brain's overall theoretical maximum capacity
>someone digest information for over a thousand years
So like how much information/second we talking about here?.. like 3bits/minute ? 20terabytes/year ?
bump. would like to know, too
For reasons unknown your subconsious brain is many times more intelligent than your consious brain.
I know a bit of everything and a lot of nothing.
I play five instruments, I am an amateur physicist/mathematician, I train with weights, I trained kick boxing for two years, I know about medicinal herbs, I am a carpenter, I speak five languages, I am a writer....
And yet, I suck at every single one of those things when compared with an actual professional.
The thing is I am not that bad. I am impressive for total amateurs in the respective subject.
So it's up to you. Do you want to be a master at something, or an apprentice of a lot of things? For me it was clear, I can't think of myself focusing on one single thing.
It's feasible for a person to get through 15 textbooks in a year, which is length of most undergrad majors after generals. Don't know how that lines up with grad studies...
Going through 15 textbooks for any normal person with a job and a normal life woud be hard even being extremely inteleligent. Assuming we are talking about science textbooks of course. Depending on your familiarity with the subject, you can get stuck an entire day with two pages.
Would this mean that there's some scientific merit to speedreading, depending on what you use it for and how it's done?
So should I act on instinct rather then my feelings?
>you can get stuck an entire day with two pages.
No, It can get worse that that.
You could spend days stuck on a trivial problem.
To learn is to save experience and being able to recall that memory when needed.
To more you experience something , the more easy it becomes to recall that data.
Reading books only is not a good idea if you wish to master something.
The best way for learning is having fun with it. Attach a good experience on a new moment of discovery.
You remember your first orgasm right?
Learning is easy, creating memories is what are used of doing for years. Now enjoy creating new memories and have fun with whatever it is you try to master.
That's the key! ! To really enjoy it.
>That's the key! ! To really enjoy it.
According to quora, you've got about 100bn neurons which form about 1000 connections each. At 1 bit per connection, it works out to 100TB
But the strength of each connection is more analog than digital, so multiply that number by however many bits you can stick in a synapse.
>If you multiply each of the 100 billion neurons by the 1,000 synapses, you get 100 trillion data points, or 100 terabytes of info.
quora.com
quora.com
>I am an amateur physicist/mathematician
no you aren't. people with physics/math degrees aren't automatically mathematicians or physicists
>15 textbooks in 365 days
lol. assuming they are 800 pages each, a typical length, that means you'd need to read ~33 textbook-tier pages every day. that means all of the problems associated, note taking....
nobody does that. nobody. that'd be a fucking nightmare.
you could do this. it would just take 99% of your time so yeah it'd be a nightmare. you're better off getting a degree and doing this but only like 4 extra textbooks per year so it's like 10 pages per day.
I participated in a 6 month study designed to test the rates of human learning.
I was part of a group that had 10 hours of guided learning of new matter a day, with daily light exercise and nutrition, and sleep(naps) for 2 hours after the first block of 7.5 hours of learning, 2.5 more hours of learning, and 7 hours of sleep at night. Subjects were taught in 40 minute chunks. The learning was broken into the rather standard interactive lecture to mentally develop a concept, rote learning, practice application of the concept through sequentially more challenging problem sets, and then in later cycles an alternating return to a concept to reinforce it with even more repetition. Learning was checked by timed written exams, and at the conclusion of the 6 months we were evaluated individually by a surprise oral board interview.
We had one day a week completely free, and each day had roughly 2.5 hours of free time after exercise, eating, etc. Being so swept up rate of learning I actually started a personal study of literature in that free time and often felt restless rather than overworked on the free day off.
Other groups had slower learning rates by using less overall learning hours or by slower progression but the same number of hours. All other groups at our same rate(the highest rate) of progression and hours had less regulation on exercise and nutrition. My group had the most sleep. We had 20% failure rate and covered 8 semesters of college material in 6 months, which was the most success out of all of the groups. All participants were between the ages of 18 and 29, male and female. There was no significant relationship between sex/age with failure rate.
The failure rate was low enough to suggest that an even more aggressive learning rate is very possible.
Afterwards, my biggest regret was that the study wasn't more ambitious.
>things that didn't happen
There is actually. The cognitive psych prof I had as an undergrad recommended speed reading the textbook that he himself wrote.
I don't remember his justifications, this was years ago.
Are geniuses just better at utilising their subconscious mind for particular tasks?
>How many subjects could one reasonably expect to learn up though at least an undergraduate level of understanding in their lifetime
a huge number
the issue would be remembering them
by the time you even get to your 3rd subject, you'd have forgot most of the finer points of the first subject
by the time you're at your 10th subject, the first few subjects would be completely forgotten
You're not that special user, get over yourself. It's not like you're a math God like gigga nigga Terrence Tao
w-what if someone hasn't orgasmed before, there are lots of people like that. r-right guys?
thats bullshit. i cant recall everything i've ever known but if i reexamine what i've learned it almost instantly comes back
Name the study then.
>You remember your first orgasm right?
wait
does anyone really remember their first orgasm?
>i cant recall everything i've ever known but if i reexamine what i've learned it almost instantly comes back
thats bullshit.