The gist of things is not enough to attain mastery.
Feynman further added that unless you create it, you don’t understand it. The gist of things is not enough to create anything, not even a summary.
To summarize, you need to understand the different levels of a topic. LLMs give summaries after scouring mountains of data. Today’s search engines give AI summaries for search queries. The offshoot? We get the gist, while the details continually get further from our grasp and interest.
Rusticus told Marcus Aurelius, “Don’t be satisfied just getting the gist of it.” His point was for Marcus to have an in-depth understanding of things.
One way to diagnose oneself of this “gist-syndrome” is to ask how many questions one can ask you before you get stuck. For instance, you’ve heard about AI. How many questions can you ask yourself before being stumped?
The fewer the questions, the higher the likelihood that you only know the gist, the surface, and the details elude you. The more questions you are ready to answer, even by giving an opinion, the more layered your understanding.
So, what kind of person are you? Are you a one-question person?