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You're making a false dichotomy. Learning is a combination of guidance and own hard work.

Maybe you prefer to figure out everything yourself, but you have just one lifetime, and having access to guidance while grinding will allow you to learn things faster (and thus more).

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What I argue is that there is no approach to guidance that will substitute for own hard work.

I do not argue that guidance is not needed, it also is, but there is no shortcut that lets people skip own hard work by telling someone incantation of words or sentences in special order that will make things click.

This is quite an old book. I wish I had an access to or even knew about this book during my school days 40 years ago. When I discovered this book, I was already a middle-aged engineer and was just looking for books for my kids. The first two pages blew my mind. If only I had this book back then... However, I remember now the several sleepless days and nights in sequence when I tried to make sense of finite fields at university. I could not sleep; I could not rest... And then I understood that you can create your own algebra whenever you want; you just need to follow the rules. This was so mind-blowing, and at the same time, no single teacher even tried to point out this wondrous fact that actually changed my mind in such a significant way. It could literally have saved a couple of years of my life if I had read this book back in high school. I'm not a mathematician; math exists for me only when it is applicable to what I have at hand. But you realize that you missed a HUGE AMOUNT OF TOOLS, too late in your life.

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