Learning, Unlearning, and Seeking out the Best

We are told that winning isn’t everything. That it matters more whether we learnt something even when we lost. That’s true. But there’s the danger of taking that approach too far, like the time the Scottish Grand Master, Jonathan Rowson Rowson lost a game of chess. He narrates what followed in his book, The Moves that Matter. When asked what just happened, he replied (in what he thought was a clever response), “I learned”. Upon which his well-wisher snapped back:

“You know this has to stop. This is not a university now.”

 

Rowson took a while to understand the point being made:

“Deep learning requires us to play the game “as if” the result really mattered. Without that commitment, we risk remaining in a self-fulfilling narrative of being a learner.”

 

The other side of the coin to learning is “unlearning”. The latter becomes the only way to make progress once you plateau at a certain level at anything:

“You realize that most of your mistakes are based on things you thought you understood, but did not.”

 

Unlearning aside, to improve, one also needs to remember:

“They say if you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room.”

After all, what would you possibly learn in that room?! Instead, you need to find people who are smarter than you. Not a pleasant experience obviously, but hey, who said learning was easy?

“(Garry Kasparov sought out then world champion Karpov repeatedly). Anand sought out Kasparov, as (current world champion) Carlsen sought out Anand, and everybody now seeks out Carlsen.”

Rowson ends on a humorous note where this infinite loop leads to:

“And so it goes on. Each David becomes his own Goliath.”