Overlearning in Modern Education | Generated by AI
Question: In modern times, do people overlearn? What are some unpopular opinions about learning?
Answer:
Yes, in many areas of life today—especially in formal education, corporate training, and self-improvement culture, and credential-chasing—people massively overlearn relative to what actually gets used or produces real-world results.
Unpopular (but increasingly evidenced) opinions about learning:
-
Most formal education is overlearning in disguise
The majority of what is taught in high school and even university is never used again by >90 % of graduates. People spend 12–20 years memorizing facts and solving artificial problems that have almost zero transfer to adult life or work. -
“Learn to learn” is largely a myth
There is very little general “learning skill.” Most learning is highly domain-specific. Being great at learning anatomy does not make you great at learning Python or negotiation or guitar. The meta-learning industry (speed-reading courses, memory palaces, “learn anything in 20 hours” books) oversells transferable skill. -
Deliberate practice > talent, but only within narrow bounds
The famous 10,000-hour rule is misunderstood. Deliberate practice makes you world-class only if you are already in the top percentile of genetic potential for that specific skill. For almost everyone else, diminishing returns kick in extremely early (often after a few hundred hours). -
Credentials are negative-sum signaling games
Getting a master’s degree or another certification often signals conformity and tolerance for boredom more than intelligence or skill. In many fields, the smartest people exit formal education as fast as possible and learn on the job or independently. -
Spaced repetition and Anki are overrated for most knowledge work
Great for medical school facts and language vocabulary, terrible for understanding systems, creative work, negotiation, leadership, or any domain where the knowledge changes quickly or requires judgment. -
Reading 100 books a year is a flex, not an advantage
Beyond ~20–30 high-quality books in a domain, additional volume mostly serves identity and status, not deeper understanding. Rereading the same 10 great books slowly beats speed-reading 200 mediocre ones. -
Motivation beats method
The biggest predictor of mastery is not which app, technique, or curriculum you use—it’s how obsessed you are with the domain. People who are intrinsically love something will outlearn “optimized” but uninterested learners by orders of magnitude, even with inferior methods. -
School trains obedience, not learning
The hidden curriculum of modern schooling is teaching people to sit still, obey bells, seek external validation, and confuse grades with mastery—traits that are actively harmful for real-world learning later. -
Most “lifelong learners” are actually credential or hobby hoarders
They accumulate courses, books, and certificates the way others accumulate shoes—mostly for the dopamine of starting, rarely for the transformation of finishing and applying.
In short: society currently rewards the appearance of learning far more than actual mastery, so yes—massive overlearning is the norm, and many of the most praised learning habits are either inefficient or outright counterproductive.
References:
- Caplan, Bryan. The Case Against Education (2018) → https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174655/the-case-against-education
- Ericsson & Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise (2016) (the original deliberate-practice research, often misquoted)
- Newport, Cal. Various works on “deep work” and the shallowness of most knowledge work learning