Learning and discontinuous growth

I think learning and discontinuous growth should be talked about as a set.
Why do we learn? The most basic answer is that we learn in order to achieve some goal. (ex: studying for an English qualification exam so you can do work that involves English, and so on)

Learning that follows a purpose — something like lean learning — is probably the most efficient, and the knowledge itself is also easier to stick.

On the other hand, learning does not always come with a purpose.
Compulsory education is the clearest example.
When you study math, Japanese, physics, history, English, and so on, is that for achieving some goal?
Getting into a good university is not a purpose — it's only one "metric (standard)" — so it is not a purpose.
In other words, learning in compulsory education is not something done to achieve a particular goal.

So it's only natural that students (especially those who can't keep up) wonder why they have to study when it comes to learning at school.

The answer to that question is: "There is no purpose, so studying is for nothing in particular."

By the way, there are people who criticize students for demanding answers from teachers, or teachers who can't explain the meaning of studying — but personally I think that's far too harsh. For better or worse, they are only people who can teach the knowledge of a subject.

Even a teacher is just someone who has more knowledge of that subject than the students. You shouldn't expect them, as people, to have some specially deep way of thinking.
(※ The sad reality is that many teachers themselves misunderstand this part.
I'm the type of person teachers and other people called "sensei" tend to dislike, so looking back, I received plenty of their absurd attitudes and behavior.
I'm twisted myself, so I get why they disliked me. I don't hate them, and I have no intention of digging it up now.
But if I say one thing: there are surely a certain number of people — especially students — suffering from this right now, and for them I feel deeply sorry, because I understand the feeling painfully well.)

Back to the point: learning does not necessarily come with a purpose. In other words, "learning to achieve a purpose" is necessary, but "learning does not necessarily need a purpose."

Now, let's move on to discontinuous growth. I think discontinuous growth comes from learning that has no purpose.
That kind of talk often comes up with Nobel Prizes. A Japanese researcher who won a Nobel Prize in biochemistry once said something to the effect that innovation was born precisely because it was not research for profit.
That statement has all kinds of implications, but setting aside whether I agree or disagree for a moment — if profit (not only corporate profit, but also contribution to the real world) is a typical purpose of research, then Nobel-level research results are an example of what can come from research (learning) without a purpose.

A Nobel Prize is an extreme example, of course, so let's rephrase it with the programming study that's popular among working adults these days.
Setting aside people who want to switch careers as programmers or who have a web service they want to build — someone who simply wants to learn programming may, as a result of that learning, suddenly get pulled into a new programming-related area at work.
In that case, they enjoy a benefit they never expected at the start — which is clearly discontinuous growth.

People think differently about learning, and I think many believe learning should be treated as a means as much as possible. (Decide the purpose first, before you learn, and so on.)
It's true that learning with no purpose, just being satisfied with the act of learning itself, and never producing results can look unseemly from the outside.
I've had that conflict myself — if there's no purpose or need, shouldn't I not be learning? — but now I think: learning itself is fun, so it's fine if there's no purpose. It's fine if results never come.

Besides, as I wrote in a previous blog, I partly have a rule of doing new things, so if I thought about purpose every time, I wouldn't be able to move.
If you become the kind of person mocked as "high-minded" — showing off that you're learning to other people — that is unseemly. But if you're just learning because you like it, there shouldn't be a problem.

Being able to learn as you like and enjoy learning itself is one of the good things about being human, isn't it?
I think learning for something other than eating (getting paid) or surviving is something only humans can do.

Learning in order to aim for discontinuous growth, then never growing and starting to panic, is putting the cart before the horse — but if there's something you're curious about even though you don't really have a motive or purpose, I recommend you not hesitate and just learn it however you like.