Insight | Build it yourself: why making and reinventing beats consuming knowledge
Grant Sanderson on Feynman's habit of reinventing things, Neil Gershenfeld's fab labs, Joe Liemandt's aim of raising builders, Bret Weinstein on consuming versus doing and Immordino-Yang's teachers who reinvent knowledge in front of students all favor producing over absorbing. It gives learners a simple test for any study method: are you making something or only taking it in?
What you make, rebuild or work out for yourself stays with you, and what you only take in mostly does not. Five people who work on very different problems point at that pattern. It gives a learner a simple test for any study method: what did I produce? The sources also show where the idea needs care. Making works best with guidance, with the basics already in place, and with a reason to care.
Grant Sanderson, a math educator, says the things he has learned best all involved some rediscovery. He admires the habit of working out what problem a paper is trying to solve and attempting it before reading the answer. He warns that an excellent lecture can make perfect sense and leave nothing a week later, and worries that his own videos could be "intellectual candy". How satisfying content feels does not track long-term learning. He is honest about the cost: rediscovery slows you down, so he reserves it for a few core ideas.
Neil Gershenfeld, who directs a lab at MIT, was told as a student that he was too smart to learn welding. His class on making almost anything grew into about 2,500 fab labs in 125 countries. Students built things nobody assigned, because they personally wanted them. He says nearly everything he has worked on failed in ways that led to something better, and his method is to do the homework, try something, then look carefully at where it landed.
Joe Liemandt of Alpha School says "Our education system was built to create consumers" and that children need to be builders. His students spend about two hours a day on academics and the rest building. A weekend hackathon left girls who would not normally program believing they could build. His figures are the school's own.
Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist, argues that people get smart by interacting with a physical world that rewards figuring things out, like building a treehouse. Screens risk turning learning into consuming.
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a professor of education and neuroscience, says the best teachers invent the knowledge in front of the class. She points to schools that assess through long projects where students invent the question.
They disagree on important details. Liemandt rejects discovery for teaching fundamentals and favors step-by-step instruction, while Immordino-Yang's project schools sit on the other side. Sanderson notes that most people do not experiment on their own and that an open sandbox without guidance is daunting. They also differ on screens and on paying students for results. The support is mostly experience and argument, not controlled studies.
What to do with it: for each way you study, ask what you produced. Try the problem before reading the solution, for a few core ideas. Follow every lecture or video with something active. Carry an example one step further to test the pattern. Get the basics fluent by direct instruction and repetition. Build something you personally want that can fail in a way you will notice. If you teach, rebuild the idea in front of your students. Explain what you learned to someone.
