Understanding Is Not the Same as Learning

Excerpt from Andrej Karpathy’s post on X:

“Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn’t have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that ‘10-minute full-body’ workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating.”

I actually disagree with his opening statement that learning isn’t supposed to be fun. Some of my most memorable learning experiences have been deeply enjoyable. But I completely agree with what comes next. The best learning often feels like a serious workout for the mind.

AI has become incredibly good at creating the feeling of understanding. But the feeling of understanding isn’t the same as understanding.

Psychologists have studied this long before AI existed. We often mistake familiarity for mastery. Reading something that makes sense gives us confidence, even when our brains haven’t done enough work to retain or apply it.

AI amplifies this effect.

The explanations are so polished that it’s easy to confuse “That makes sense” with “I now know this.” Those are very different things.

To me, the real test of learning is answering these three questions:

1. Can you explain it without looking?
2. Can you apply it somewhere new?
3. Can you spot when the answer is wrong?

If not, you probably borrowed someone else’s understanding instead of building your own.

Reference: Andrej Karpathy’s post on X