On learning

A fun part of learning is when you spend 15 years fiddling with a topic, come up with a conclusion, start arguing it...and discover that folks you've been reading loosely for 10 years already solved the problem...but you didn't understand when you heard them say it.

The most recent version of this in my life:
In the last 2 days, I re-read Sarah Fitz-Claridge's introduction to TCS (warning: if you're not already mostly nuts...this article makes how I think seem positively mainstream, except that I agree at 95% with what she says), and I read the introduction to David Deutch's recent book (not advocating for the book. Not there yet...just friendly with 1/2 the introduction). While I'm not 100% in the exact same place as they are...they're fundamentally folks who have been working on the fallibilist problem for >10 years. I half wish I'd understood it back when I ran into it long long ago. But I'd have missed the learning process, which would have made it not worthwhile. Now I can approach TCS, Deutch, and Popperian Epistemology from the point of view of someone who's made the journey himself, and has something to contribute to the thought-space...not someone who read some words, and agreed.