Why I Gave Up on Learning

I have come to despise the word “learning.”

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

I mean human learning, and one particular kind of it. The full-time, feel-good, safe kind.

That is not learning. It is a buffer layer that delays your entry into reality.

“I’m not ready yet.” “I need to study a bit more.” “Let me finish this course first.” Each one sounds reasonable. But the right time never comes, because you can always learn a little more. Learning hands you the perfect excuse: I am working hard, it just isn’t time yet.

To me the word now means something unmeasurable, with no output, nothing that lands, no real impact. A cowardly way of stepping out of life.

Especially in this era.

Why this era? Learning is a process of pretraining and memorization, and there is no way the human version of that process beats a Transformer on efficiency. On time spent and value produced per problem solved, humans lose to machines. The value of hard, static knowledge and ready-made solutions is being compressed toward zero.

So what do humans have left?

The courage to face the real world, and the execution that goes with it. The ability to find and define real problems. The courage to break things, rebuild them, and innovate destructively, and the self-trust to do it.

None of these comes from sitting in a study. They only get knocked into you by the real world. Books tell you what you should do. Reality tells you what actually happens. There is a gap between the two, and most people stay on the book side, because crossing it hurts. You fail, you look foolish, you lose money.

Learning never does that to you. Learning only makes you feel good.

So smart, effective behavior should be tested directly by real life.

By the market, and by money.

Which is why, when I hear that someone’s current project is “learning” or “studying for an exam,” I don’t hesitate. I label them a fool.

I know that sounds harsh. What I gave up is not growth. It is the illusion that you get ready first and then step onto the field.

Disclaimer: this is a personal opinion, written with some heat. It targets full-time, self-congratulating, output-free pseudo-learning, not the acquisition of knowledge in general. Systematic education, professional training in medicine, law or engineering, and scientific research still have value nothing else replaces. Judge for your own situation; this is not life advice.