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He has a
unique combination of skills, including
engineering, physics, computer science,
business, and leadership, that enable
him to tackle complex problems and
create groundbreaking solutions.
Musk's success in entrepreneurship,
including space travel, is attributed to
his foundational understanding of the
subjects he pursued. Musk's advice for
memorizing everything you learn is to
read extensively, understand the
material, and apply it.
The semantic tree method is an automatic
method of semantical analysis, which
consists of determinating the logical
values of subformulas of the given
formula.
Elon Musk’s Semantic Trees
samueljtanner DIgital Learning, How to
study November 20, 2020 3 Minutes
I am a big fan of Elon Musk. He was born
gifted, but he has been able to master
how to learn, he reads a lot, surrounds
himself with experts, and does a lot of
experiments. Has been able to identify
industries such as banking, energy,
transportation, and space, that are
important to the future of humanity and
apply his unique thinking and resources
to disrupt these fields.
One of the things that makes him unique
is his ability to identify and master
the core principles of a chosen field
and then apply these to disruptive
solutions. Elon Musk believes that most
people have limited their capacity for
creativity by not knowing how to outline
their information in a way that leads to
new connections.
Elon Musks has two stages of learning:
Semantic trees – build the trunk on
first principles
Make connections – add peripheral
knowledge as connections to these
principles
Semantic trees
Not everything you learn in a field is
equally important; some elements are
central, and others are peripheral.
Identify these central elements and then
master them first before moving on to
the peripheral elements.
“Make sure you understand the
fundamental principles, ie the trunk and
big branches, before you get into the
leaves/details or there is nothing for
them to hang on to.”
Elon Musk
Taking this semantic tree approach, you
can create a conceptual framework of the
fundamental ideas and central debates of
a discipline to help you come up with
new ideas that have value. Naval
Ravikant suggests a similar idea when
talking about aiming to be able to pick
up any book in a library and understand
it. By learning the fundamentals of a
subject first, and then you can pick up
and understand any text in that field.
Introductory textbooks are a great place
to start building a conceptual framework
for a new field. You can usually find
the reading list for many university
introductory courses on their websites
as a starting point when looking at a
new area. These introductory courses for
some of the best universities in the
world can also be found on Massive Open
Online Course (MOOCs) platforms like EdX
and Coursera if you need a more directed
starting point.
Make connections
We remember things better by associating
them with something we already know. The
fundamental knowledge of an area can be
used as ‘hooks’ for new learning to be
attached, speeding up your understanding
and helping you remember more of what
you read. Once you have built the
foundational truck of your semantic
tree, you can start to read more widely
around a subject to construct vast trees
in across multiple sectors. By starting
with the core knowledge and then adding
the peripheral knowledge to the truck of
core principles, you will find that
although slower, in the beginning, you
will be able to go much further and
faster with your learning in the long
term.
One approach that Bill Gates suggests is
to find the leading thinker in a field
and read everything they have published.
This approach allows you to quickly find
interesting peripheral knowledge and
understand how these have been linked to
the core principles by an existing
expert. Once you have your semantic
trees, over time, you can start to
connect your current knowledge and new
ideas as you come across them, using
these connections to come up with new
usable insights that can help you build
experiments in your work.
Build your first tree
When approaching a new area, first learn
the core principles and then move on to
the advanced material, making
connections to these core principles for
faster and better learning. Build the
truck first and then read everything you
can to make the connections.
Try building a tree now;
Open a blank document (paper or digital)
and write the disciple as a title at the
top of the page.
Have a go at listing five to six
fundamental principles in that area;
these might be a formula in a maths-based
subject or rules in a non-technical
discipline.
Try to find the reading list of an
introductory module at the top
university for that subject and edit
your list with these new items.
Now you have the trunk for your semantic
tree, add any peripheral knowledge,
ideas, or debates you can think of,
using the core text and a Google search
to help.
Connect the peripheral elements to the
fundamental principles you believe they
relate to in your tree.
I would highly recommend reading Ashlee
Van’s book on Elon Musk and The Almanack
of Naval Ravikant.
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