> how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even though we don’t
The way I try to avoid this is to remind myself that knowing the name of something is not knowing about something, only about the existence of that something.
There are lots of things I know the names of, but relatively few things I actually know about.
The classic example is asking people to describe the process that causes the phases of the moon. Most (myself included the first time) describe an eclipse, which is wrong.
I was just talking to a friend about moon phases the other day, saying that I'd never really understood why it does what it does, only that vaguely things rotate around each other and this waves hands does things.
He explained it like this which really helped: you can choose all sorts of frames of reference when you think about this stuff, so choose one where the sun and earth are stationary compared to each other, and then only the moon is rotating - less stuff to think about!
Now you've got the earth spinning very fast in the middle, the sun sitting off to one side, and the moon then goes in a slow circle around the earth. If it's on the opposite side of the earth to the sun, then it's going to be fully lit up, but it's also only going to be visible at night. If it's on the same side as the sun, then the side that's facing us is going to be dark and difficult to see, but it will be in the sky during the day, which is why occasionally the moon is visible in daytime, even though we all know the moon comes out at night.
I think that idea of changing your perspective - in this case, literally, by changing the frame of reference - is really helpful when it comes to understanding things that we only know about. Like, I've known about the solar system since I was a kid, I've seen all of the models, I surely made my own as a schoolchild - the knowledge is all there! But for understanding, I needed to find a new perspective.
That's probably true of the bike thing as well, thinking about it. Knowledge of a bike is easy: it's two wheels, handlebars, a seat, and pedals. But understanding how a bike is made requires thinking about the frame, and that's just a squashed parallelogram with a stick coming out of it. Once you visualise that, it becomes really obvious how the rest of the bike gets put together, but the frame is necessary for understanding. Otherwise, you just put together the things you know about and then have to draw awkward lines in between to connect them.
> He explained it like this which really helped: you can choose all sorts of frames of reference when you think about this stuff, so choose one where the sun and earth are stationary compared to each other, and then only the moon is rotating - less stuff to think about!
Even easier: choose one where the sun and moon are stationary, and place the Earth somewhere near the moon. The side of the moon facing the sun will always be fully brightly lit, and the proportion of that which is seen from the Earth is based on where we place the Earth.
Of course the Earth doesn't orbit around the moon, but for the purposes of this model it's irrelevant.
I would explain it like this: take a tennisball and shine a flashlight on it from one side. Make sure you do not see the origin of the light by holding it just right of your shoulder.
I 100% agree with your comment however in regards to it's relationship to the parent comment I have to disagree somewhat in the usual nitpicky hackernews fashion:
Asking someone to draw "a bicycle" is different to asking them to draw a specific bicycle or a functional bicycle. Also what does it mean to "know something"?
If you ask someone to draw a house and they draw a square with an overhanging equilateral triangle centred on top, it's not that they don't know what a house is. That's just a symbol representation of their own personal definition of a house.
The equivalent here would be if you drew that same stick-figure house but put the door adjacent to the roof rather than the floor, or the triangular roof along one side rather than opposite the ground.
This happens to me alot. Motivated by curiosity I will make the effort to acquire a piece of knowledge but since I don't have a functional use for such knowledge parts of it slip out of memory..
..then some time after I will have a functional need for the knowledge I learnt previously but relearning something that is already somewhat familiar isn't that captivating so it ends up being a struggle the second time.
What a great example! As a recent astronomy enthusiast, I found myself doubting this comment initially ("well, eclipses ARE related"), and this despite the fact that I have a toy tellurion right by my desk.
But hearing a particular phrase in the below video helped correct my model. One sanity check is that you can see non-full moons during the day (although I definitely would have just assumed it was still a matter of angles).
Side comment: This is the first time I've seen my preferred username used for its actually meaning. And I've been using it for almost 3 decades. Neat.
I was going to use tellurian, which means an inhabitant of the earth, then saw that tellurion was sometimes used as an alternate spelling in an old Webster's dictionary I was looking through, and preferred it.
And yes, I did search through a dictionary to find a username.
> The classic example is asking people to describe the process that causes the phases of the moon. Most (myself included the first time) describe an eclipse, which is wrong.
To me, a neat consequence of this is that if you know what part of the cycle the moon is in, you know where it will be relative to the sun in the sky (and vice versa).
The way I try to avoid this is to remind myself that knowing the name of something is not knowing about something, only about the existence of that something.
There are lots of things I know the names of, but relatively few things I actually know about.
The classic example is asking people to describe the process that causes the phases of the moon. Most (myself included the first time) describe an eclipse, which is wrong.