'How you know', good essay by Paul Graham

[Liberty]

I enjoyed this essay and thought that others here might enjoy it too:

 

http://paulgraham.com/know.html

 

Some choice cuts:

 

Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.

 

[...]

 

For example, reading and experience are usually "compiled" at the time they happen, using the state of your brain at that time. The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life. Which means it is very much worth reading important books multiple times. I always used to feel some misgivings about rereading books. I unconsciously lumped reading together with work like carpentry, where having to do something again is a sign you did it wrong the first time. Whereas now the phrase "already read" seems almost ill-formed.

[jschembs]

Thanks, that is a great read. Very Mungerian. I've become a huge proponent of this as well. In the last couple of years I've deemphasized finance and valuation books for anything under the sun that helps deepen or broaden understanding of a given subject. Here's a good starting point: http://mungerisms.tumblr.com/tagged/Munger-Pick.