The Problem Is Not a Lack of Knowledge, but an Abundance of It

The problem with the world is not a lack of knowledge, but an abundance of it.

Since childhood, we have been constantly receiving knowledge from different people, in different forms.

Our parents, siblings, relatives, friends, teachers, schools… the list goes on.

We spend nearly 25 years in schools and colleges, absorbing all sorts of knowledge.

Of course, to navigate this complex world, we need to learn a lot.

But somewhere in this process, we overlook something remarkable.

We humans are naturally capable of figuring things out for ourselves.

Think about a child.

A child can learn any human language they grow up surrounded by. Without formal lessons in grammar, they gradually discover patterns, construct rules, recognize exceptions, and learn to express surprisingly complex ideas.

Children learn about the world by observing, experimenting, making mistakes, and trying again.

We are born with an extraordinary ability to learn.

And we possess another superpower: the ability to recognize what we don’t know.

That’s curiosity. And it comes naturally to us.

My son once wanted a toy. I bought it for him, and within a day, he was bored of it.

Why?

Because the toy had become predictable. He had figured it out. There was little new left for him to discover.

Think about what that means.

We are naturally driven to explore the unknown. Once something becomes predictable, our curiosity often pushes us toward something new.

A child can figure out how to play many games simply by trying, failing, observing, and trying again.

So, where does the problem begin?

The problem begins when we start giving children answers before they have had a chance to discover them.

We explain concepts, demonstrate solutions, and ask children to remember what we have taught them.

Through repeated lectures and reinforcement of our own ideas, we gradually train children to receive knowledge rather than discover it.

We make them believe that receiving knowledge is the same as learning.

And slowly, we make them abandon their own ideas.

Without realizing it, we repeatedly communicate a message:

“You cannot figure things out on your own. Follow me. Memorize what I am telling you.”

Eventually, children begin to believe that learning means memorizing rules, formulas, facts, and explanations provided by someone else.

Now, there is nothing wrong with memorization.

Memorization gives us speed. Derivation gives us understanding.

We don’t need to reinvent a formula every time we use it. But we should understand why it works.

When we derive a formula ourselves, we understand not just what it says, but the reasoning behind it.

And when we encounter an unfamiliar problem, that understanding gives us the ability to go beyond what we have memorized.

The real danger is when we mistake remembering an answer for understanding an idea.

And this habit doesn’t necessarily stop at school.

As adults, we encounter situations that nobody has prepared us for. We search our memories for something we have been told before and try to fit those ideas onto our lives.

Sometimes, the existing knowledge is useful.

But what happens when no familiar pattern fits?

What happens when we face a problem nobody has taught us how to solve?

I have experienced this myself.

In college, I started a student group without much thought. To me, starting something was common sense. You see a need, you gather people, and you begin.

Years later, when I wanted to start my first company, I did what I had been trained to do. I read. Books on how to start up. Articles on dos and don’ts. And I received plenty of gyan from well-wishers.

I knew more about startups than ever before.

And yet, I couldn’t start.

I kept looking for the right playbook instead of listening to myself. Instead of thinking from first principles, I was searching for someone else’s answer.

The college student with little knowledge had simply started. The adult with all the knowledge was stuck.

We may have accumulated enormous knowledge without developing confidence in our own ability to figure things out.

And that is a terrible loss.

Life is hard.

We face disease, poverty, uncertainty, loss, and countless other adversities. Sometimes, there is no solution.

But humans are capable of confronting unfamiliar problems, reasoning from first principles, and discovering creative solutions.

When we lose confidence in that ability, we lose something precious.

Instead of exploring possibilities, we look for ready-made answers. Instead of trusting our judgment, we become dependent on others to tell us what to do.

And when no ready-made answer exists, we may feel helpless.

I believe this loss of confidence in our own thinking contributes enormously to human suffering.

Education should strengthen our ability to face the unknown, not make us afraid of it.

Learning by Inventing

For the past 12 years, I have been experimenting with a different approach to teaching.

I call it Learning by Inventing.

The idea is simple.

Don’t teach children what they can discover for themselves.

Instead of delivering lectures, turn concepts into a sequence of simple, carefully designed exercises.

Let learners discover abstract ideas by solving concrete problems.

Let them invent the formulas, rules, algorithms, and principles that we would otherwise ask them to memorize.

Instead of telling a child what to do, ask them what they would do.

A great lecture is not necessarily one that explains everything beautifully. It is one that makes learners curious enough to experiment, question, and figure things out for themselves.

I fundamentally believe that if one human being can understand an idea, we should strive to make that idea understandable to others.

Of course, we are all different. We have different strengths, limitations, experiences, and learning speeds.

But I believe we vastly underestimate how much a child is capable of understanding.

The responsibility of someone who deeply understands a subject is to break it into a sequence of exercises through which others can gradually discover its principles.

Not everything can be derived through reasoning alone. Some scientific discoveries required experiments that challenged everything we previously believed.

In such cases, we must learn from observations and evidence. But even then, we can reason about their implications and reconstruct the ideas built upon them.

Learning by Inventing doesn’t mean reinventing every discovery in human history.

It means giving learners the opportunity to reconstruct the reasoning behind our knowledge, rather than merely memorizing its conclusions.

Understanding is different from knowing

Let me give you an example from programming.

There is a technique called backtracking. The idea is simple: make a choice, see where it leads, and if you get stuck, undo that choice and try another.

You have probably done this yourself while solving a Sudoku. You put a 4 in an empty square. A few moves later, you find a square where no number fits. So you go back, erase the 4, and try a 7.

That’s backtracking.

Now imagine two children learning it.

The first child is told: “This is backtracking. Here are the steps. Use them to solve Sudoku.”

The second child is simply given Sudoku puzzles, starting with very small ones. They guess, get stuck, and slowly realize that whenever they get stuck, they should go back to their last guess and change it. Nobody told them. They invented backtracking.

Both children can now solve Sudoku.

Then we give them a new puzzle: place eight queens on a chessboard so that no queen can attack another.

This looks nothing like Sudoku. No numbers. No boxes.

The first child may not see any connection. For them, backtracking is “the Sudoku method.”

The second child is more likely to notice that it’s the same kind of problem: place a queen, check whether the rest can still fit, and if not, go back and move it.

Why? Because they didn’t learn backtracking as a list of steps. They learned it as a way of thinking that came out of their own struggle.

And even if they forget the algorithm, they can invent it again.

The second child has practiced something the first child hasn’t: inventing a solution.

This is what I find so fascinating about discovery-based learning.

The objective is not merely to remember solutions.

It is to develop the ability to create solutions to problems we have never encountered before.

Learning is like going to the gym

Think of learning as going to the gym.

At the gym, nobody expects you to lift the heaviest weights on your first day.

If you cannot do a push-up, a good trainer doesn’t demonstrate a hundred push-ups and ask you to memorize the movements.

They might start you with wall push-ups. Then knee push-ups. And gradually, you develop the strength to do a full push-up.

Learning should work the same way.

If a child cannot solve a problem, it doesn’t mean the child is incapable.

It means we need to find a simpler problem they can solve and gradually build from there.

And if they still struggle, make the problem simpler again.

Every exercise should look deceptively easy.

The instructor must have enormous patience. They should never show anger or disappointment when a learner cannot solve something.

Instead, they should say:

“Perhaps I made the problem too difficult. Let me find a simpler one.”

The responsibility is on the teacher to design the right exercises.

And just as you wouldn’t judge your fitness by comparing yourself with the strongest person at the gym, you shouldn’t judge your intelligence by comparing yourself with another learner.

Your competition is with who you were yesterday.

Every problem you solve is an exercise for your mind. Every discovery is an opportunity to strengthen your confidence in your own thinking.

The objective is not to prove how intelligent you already are.

It is to develop what you are capable of becoming.

From external appreciation to the joy of discovery

There is another important part of this process.

Celebrate every discovery.

In the beginning, learners may need encouragement. Appreciate their effort, recognize their progress, and genuinely celebrate what they accomplish.

I remember when I started going to the gym.

My instructor would appreciate my progress. Sometimes, he would even clap.

That encouragement felt good. It motivated me to continue.

But something interesting happened over time.

I began to enjoy exercising itself. I developed a mind-to-muscle connection and started experiencing the joy of becoming stronger.

Eventually, I no longer needed my instructor’s appreciation.

Learning can follow a similar path.

Initially, a child may enjoy the appreciation that comes from solving a problem.

But as they repeatedly experience the satisfaction of figuring things out, discovery itself can become rewarding.

They begin to associate effort with progress, and progress with joy.

Gradually, the teacher’s encouragement becomes less necessary.

The ultimate success of a teacher is when the learner no longer needs the teacher’s approval to feel successful.

Because something profound happens when a child figures something out independently.

They don’t just learn a fact or a formula.

They learn that they are capable of figuring things out.

And that belief can change their relationship with learning.

Learning by Inventing doesn’t mean rejecting existing knowledge

Quite the opposite.

It helps us appreciate existing knowledge more deeply.

Imagine learning linear regression.

One approach is to import a library, call a function, and obtain a model.

Another approach is to start with a few data points and try to invent a method for finding the line that best fits them.

Through a sequence of simple exercises, you might discover the idea of measuring prediction errors and gradually improving a model.

Once you’ve invented a simple version yourself, you can appreciate the sophistication of a professional library.

You understand what it is doing, why it works, and some of the situations in which it might fail.

You don’t need to reinvent the entire library.

You need to invent just enough to understand the ideas on which everything else is built.

Independent thinking doesn’t mean refusing to learn from others.

It means developing the ability to understand, evaluate, and build upon their ideas.

Life doesn’t come with a textbook

And this brings me to something even more important.

Life is much more complex than any classroom.

It presents unfamiliar problems, uncertain situations, and challenges for which nobody has prepared an answer.

Imagine someone entering a difficult negotiation.

They might recognize that a decision tree, something they once invented while solving a mathematical problem, could help them evaluate their choices.

Or perhaps none of the tools they know quite fits the situation.

Then they can invent a new approach.

Of course, being able to solve mathematical problems doesn’t automatically make someone good at negotiations or relationships.

That is why Learning by Inventing should not be limited to mathematics or science.

We should design discovery-based exercises around real-life problems too: making decisions under uncertainty, evaluating conflicting claims, understanding human behavior, and navigating difficult choices.

The goal is to practice reasoning across different domains, recognizing common patterns, and developing new approaches when familiar ones fail.

The objective is not merely to teach learners a collection of useful tools.

It is to help them become people who can create new tools when existing ones fail.

Because life will always present problems we have never encountered before.

The Real Goal of Education

Over time, I hope learners stop depending on others for every answer.

They start questioning assumptions, exploring possibilities, examining evidence, and reasoning from first principles.

They become independent thinkers.

And, in a very real sense, philosophers.

Not people who reject the knowledge of others, but people who can understand it, question it, appreciate it, and build upon it.

The goal of education should not be merely to fill a child’s memory with the knowledge of others.

It should be to develop such deep confidence in their own ability to think that they can face unfamiliar problems without immediately looking for someone to tell them what to do.

That is what Learning by Inventing is about.

Not creating children who know all the answers.

But raising children who know they can figure things out.