> I just want to mention here that "swimming in ideas" does not equal understanding.
> How do you know you are really moving anywhere but not standing?
> OP wants to read "textbooks to learn basic concepts" and "swim in their ideas". That doesn't equal competence.
> The reading/learning you are doing is entertainment. It's not that much better than watching TV - if anything it's worse because you can kid yourself into thinking you are doing work, or that it's important.
> AKA procrastinating.
To clarify, I completely understand these sentiments, and I am fully aware of the distinction between "understanding" vs simply "reading/learning", "swimming in ideas", etc.
I was once a young naive soul celebrating how I was such an honorable keen "learner". But as I matured, I started to become aware that this habit of learning that I (and many others on the internet, including on HN) was so proud of, was (often) mere accumulation of knowledge, without synthesizing or juxtaposing anything together. We consumed "knowledge" like some baby food, instead of actually engaging actively and critically with the material, chewing through it, etc.
Over the past several years, I've spent a very long time thinking through topics just like this, trying to dissect and discern basic concepts like "learning" vs "understanding", as well as a host of other fundamental topics that many people (including intellectuals) seem to misunderstand. The only reason I've been able to do this is because I've jumped from discipline to discipline, getting an overview of how they relate to one another, trying to piece together certain universals, or spotting points of disagreement between disciplines. Of course, I lack actual expertise in any of these topics, but I do understand the nature of complexity that underlies everything (I think my background in ecology and evolutionary biology has trained me well in this regard).
All this was why I specifically used the phrase "swimming in ideas", because I know full well that I am not (currently) doing much to actually understand these concepts and topics. I also stated "moving from ignorance slowly towards understanding" because I am deliberately moving very slowly through topics knowing that my goal is to gradually understand them more, rather than to simply accumulate "knowledge".
This isn't meant to be a hit-piece on people who simply love to learn for learning's sake. It's just my own philosophy and my path in trying to figure things out. Hope this clarifies things. :)