# Learnings to Unlearn

![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/images/article4.6bc1851654a0.png)

## Metadata
- Author: [[arjunkhemani]]
- Full Title: Learnings to Unlearn
- Category: #articles
- URL: https://arjunkhemani.com/2022/03/27/learnings-to-unlearn-149/

## Highlights
- Unlearning is the new meta-skill. Though it doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves.
- “All growth requires loss. A loss of your old values, your own behaviors, your old loves, your old identity. Therefore, growth sometimes has a component of grief to it.”
- Even though unlearning corresponds to growth, we’re hesitant toward it for the reasons put forth by Mark above.
- What most think: “I know it’s going to continue because it’s always been that way.”
  What’s really going on: You can never know for sure.
- – Happiness
- What most think: “I’ll be happy when…”
- What’s really going on: If you can’t be happy with a cup of coffee, nothing ever will make you happy unless you shift perspective.
- goal seeking mind which never gets off the hedonic treadmill and that buries our happiness under excuses of getting something or somewhere in the physical world at play.
- Even though our instinct doesn’t crave it, we need to value criticisms and other angles over clinging to a (perhaps) false belief of reality we traditionally had.
- What most think: “If I get $80 working for 8 hours a day, I can get $100 only by working for 10 hours.”
  What’s really going on: Most (non-logarithmic) graphs do not depict straight lines. They come in all sorts of curves and other uncertain patterns.
- – Linearity
- It obviously isn’t natural for us to question what we believe to be true
- – Certainty
- – Education
  What most think: “Getting good grades is the most important thing in the life of a student.”
  What’s really going on: Grades mess up the whole perspective of learning.
- truth” can become false as new facts or criticisms against that idea emerge
- You can’t really learn evolution without unlearning creationism (the idea that the Universe was created by a supernatural power). You can’t really learn quantum theory without unlearning that the laws of physics must deal with only those things large enough for us to be able to perceive. [1]
- There is literally so much to condemn about traditional education but I won’t go into all of that here.
- – Authority
  What most think: “If they’re saying it, it has to be right. We must follow them.”
  What’s really going on: They can be wrong and any authority that impresses ideas upon you and does not allow for questioning of those ideas is dogma which is an “undeniable” path to ignorance.