There is something especially unsettling in learning about a domain with which you have some familiarity but no systematic knowledge or training. In this situation, not only is there the regular challenge of absorbing a significant amount of new information; there is also a confusion that is born out of having your basic understanding called into question. This confusion is less about finding out that something you’ve been doing all along is suboptimal or wrong, that there is an easier or more effective way of achieving the result you want. The confounding experience consists in the discovery that the thing you thought you knew is in fact more layered and complicated.

I had been brewing coffee at home for a long time, but I decided to learn more about it. I started reading How To Make The Best Coffee At Home and immediately seized upon the concept of extraction. Extracting more flavour from the coffee beans was an easily recognizable goal. Since extraction was improved by increasing the fineness of the ground, grinding as finely as possible seemed like the obvious way to go. So far, everything was making sense, but I didn’t feel as if I were achieving much insight. Then the author observed that the finer beans are ground the more difficult it becomes to separate the ground beans from the water at the end of the brewing process. Grinding too finely risked generating a muddy brew. In reading this and recognizing this countervailing factor, I finally felt that I was beginning to have an understanding of coffee brewing. Similarly, I was recently looking for a new tennis racquet and doing research on all the technical dimensions on which racquets differ. Initially, I wanted to get a racquet with a bigger head size. A bigger head size and a bigger sweet spot, like extraction and finer grind, seemed like the obvious objective. Again, I felt that I wasn’t really learning how racquets worked. Then, through the reviews of a knowledgeable commentator, I came to understand that a big racquet is less manoeuvrable and, due to the greater spacing between strings, can offer less control of the ball. As the dangers of less agility and control came into focus, I felt that I was beginning to understand.

Friedrich Nietzsche says in Twilight of the Idols: “Danger alone acquaints us with our own resources, our virtues, our armor and weapons, our spirit, and forces us to be strong.” I once heard this notion paraphrased “to learn is to experience danger“. Danger is powerful not only as a motivating but also as an orientating force. In a sense, it guides us on our quest for knowledge just as much as the goal. We begin with a simplistic vision of the optimal result and pursue it in a naively direct fashion. At this stage, we have only a rudimentary understanding and optimize in a very one-sided way. Our understanding deepens through the discovery and appreciation of inherent dangers, and our enlightened practice exists in tension with them. Only in seeing and experiencing the dangers that are contained within a desirable thing do we really come to know it. We have to find the edge that cuts through the object of our knowledge.