The Metadata of Learning - A theory of learning better, more, and faster

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I picked up Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, some 5-6 years ago. Reading the book was a magical experience. It blew my mind and I kept telling people about it (I am doing it right now ??).

However, once the reading was done and the book went back on the bookshelf, it just sat there for a couple of years. After a couple of years, I stumbled on Thaler's Misbehaving, a book that mentioned Kahneman a lot. The same happened when I read books by Dan Ariely or by Nassim Taleb. I picked up Kahneman again and a framework of sorts started developing in my mind about the organization of Kahneman's thoughts. Here are a few nodes of the framework:

• I figured out he (and, his friend Amos) pioneered the field of Behavioural Economics that had a shot of shifting the current economic paradigm.
• I figured out that he talks about heuristics and biases a lot. I knew they were two terms and that they were connected, but wasn't quite sure how exactly.
• I figured out that he used the experimental techniques of behavioral psychology to judge how they made choices and judgments. In other words, instead of assuming that people would act logically, he judged them on their actions and their behavior.
• I learned a lot of words like Anchoring, Affect, Two Systems, Prospect theory, etc.
• I also learned that he has a theory of "Two-selves" that he talks about in the final part of the book.

These nodes of thought existed in my mind but they remained majorly disconnected. They lacked any interlinking or context. That is, I did not know how they connected with each other or, how Khaneman's thoughts fit in the wider cluster of ideas in the world. I lacked the metadata of my learning. Metadata of learning is learning more about the topic, not the topic itself.

Without metadata, I could not optimally utilize and grow these ideas. In simple words, without the metadata, I couldn't understand Kahneman better. The nodes of thought about Kahneman kept floating aimlessly in the ocean of my mind, occasionally popping out in conversations.

"That's Availability Bias" I would spontaneously say either in a conversation or while reading an article. "But people don't act rationally, economics doesn't work" I would say when I saw people making plans.

But on the whole, if you asked me 3 more questions or even examples about the bias I just spoke about, there was nothing to say. There was no unifying structure in my learning of Kahneman. Questions like these kept popping up:

• Where does Khanemen fit in economics, in psychology, in social sciences?
• What are the general patterns of his thoughts?
• How do his theories connect with each other?
• What theories existed before Kahneman? Where do Kahneman's theories fit?
• Who are the critics of Kahneman? etc.

These questions demanded that I learn the metadata of learning.

Metadata of Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow

In my learning of Kahneman, the process of metadata collection happened organically. Over several years I figured out the answers to most of these questions one by one.

Here is the current metadata model of my understanding of Kahneman.

Majorly, there are three types of theories in the world

1. Normative theories: Explain how things should happen ideally.
2. Descriptive Theories: Explain how things actually happen in the real world.
3. Prescriptive Theories: Explain how to get from real to ideal. These are prescriptions.

Current Economics is a normative theory called Expected Utility Theory. According to this, humans make choices rationally.

Kahneman experimented on real people and created a Descriptive theory of economics that explains how humans actually make choices in the real world. This theory is called the Prospect theory.

While doing his work on human behavior, he also found that humans use shortcuts to make choices. These shortcuts are called heuristics. These shortcuts ie, heuristics are mostly useful but sometimes lead to systematic errors in thinking called biases. Most of the biases in human behavior can be explained by underlying heuristics.

To explain the "Why" of this theory, he created a System 1 and System 2 model of human behavior. This is almost a prescriptive theory.

Also sometime in the 1990s, he started work on 'happiness', asking the question, "What makes people happy in the long term?". This happiness research led to the creation of the "Two-selves" model of how people perceive pain and happiness.

So coming back to Thinking Fast and Slow. It is essentially 2 books in one.

Book 1: Choice Theories of Kahneman

Book 2: Happiness Theories of Kahneman

Mapping these books to the actual table of contents of the book, the following structure emerges.

In italics is the metadata I have inserted. In bold are the actual contents.

Book 1: Choice Theories of Kahneman

• Part 1: Two Systems: Explanation of irrationality.
• Part 2: Heuristics and Biases: work on systematic irrationality.
• Part 3: Overconfidence: the reason why current probabilistic models are not followed.
• Part 4: Choices: Kahneman's theory of choices.

Book 2: Happiness Theories of Kahneman

• Part 5: Two Selves: an exploration of happiness theories.

The Use of Metadata for Learning Better, More

Once I structured my learning with the essential metadata, I could now extend my thought about Kahneman.

For example, I could ask questions like:

• Is the two-systems approach the only explanation for irrationality?
• Can biases exist without heuristics?
• Are there any alternate descriptive theories of economics?
• What do the critics of Behavioural Economics say about it?
• Is there more work being done in happiness research?

Over time, these questions and metadata led me to the learning:

• Utility Theory, Utilitarianism.
• The concept of Flow (A part of happiness research)
• Gerd Gigerenzer and Nassim Taleb's critiques of Behavioural economics
• Richard Thaler's work in Behavioural Economics
• Taleb's critique of Thaler's work
• ... and many more ideas.

This made my learning process a lot better and I ended up learning a lot more ideas.

The Use of Metadata for Learning Faster

The title of the post also includes the word faster. Till now, this whole process seems slow. How does this make learning faster?

Learning grows exponentially. In other words, the speed of your learning a topic depends on the content of your current learning of that topic. Collecting metadata doesn't just help you learn better, it also makes future learning faster. The metadata lays a solid foundation for learning more on the same topic.

In Kahneman's case, after I was done collecting the metadata, it cut my learning time for other behavioral economics books by up to 50%. For instance, I could read books like Nudge, Predictably Irrational, and Happiness by Design, ... faster.

A major portion of a book, even Kahneman's book, is just the setup that gets you ready for the Punchline. Collecting the metadata eliminates the process of reading the setup again and again.

Chance to Design

In the case of Kahneman, the whole process of metadata collection happened organically, by chance. I went where my curiosity led me and discovered more.

However, I think that it is easy to learn this way, by design. It might seem overkill in the short term, but if your aim is to truly understand or learn something, this process will save hundreds of hours of your time.