I'm a very slow thinker (2016)
I&#x27;m a fast thinker and good at debating but I&#x27;m a relatively slow learner.
It&#x27;s probably because I tend to initially disbelieve everything I&#x27;m taught - I need to see a lot of cross-references and utility value before my brain will accept new information and it will still not seem like it is a sure fact. I never feel like I know anything with 100% certainty. Every piece of knowledge I have is more like a probability in my mind.<p>I have great memory when it comes to useful or interesting things but if I can&#x27;t figure out the utility of some information, my brain struggles to learn it and will quickly discard it.<p>The most interesting experience I remember was at school when I was a small child. I didn&#x27;t understand the concept of school or education at that point. I remember after I moved up a grade, the teacher was referencing concepts which I had learned the year before (I think it was related to alphabet and reading) but because I was in a different class (and different teacher), I did not make the (supposedly obvious) assumption that the teacher was referring to concepts from the previous year (which came from a different source). In my mind, because I didn&#x27;t understand the purpose of education or school, I had fully compartmentalized the knowledge from the previous year&#x2F;grade and I couldn&#x27;t make sense of the content from the later grade which built on top. Once I learned the purpose of school and figured out that knowledge from previous years was still relevant and that knowledge wasn&#x27;t supposed to be compartmentalized based on the teacher&#x2F;class, I was able to start learning faster. At least fast enough to be a slightly above average student throughout all my school and university years. I remember being surprised that all other kids seemed to know intuitively that knowledge &#x27;stacked&#x27; regardless of the teacher or context. It was a big revelation to me.<p>I still think I have a tendency to compartmentalize information&#x2F;knowledge provided to me by different people. My brain compartmentalizes everything based on source until there is enough consensus&#x2F;synthesis between the sources and then it gets merged into the trunk.<p>But now that I think of it, it doesn&#x27;t seem that ridiculous for a child to think that knowledge taught by different people isn&#x27;t compatible... If you think about modern education, it&#x27;s actually quite amazing and weird that two different teachers who never met might have the exact same knowledge as each other to the extent that they can reference each other&#x27;s thoughts and ideas... To a child, it can seem like telepathy.