You think you're upgrading your mindset
But you're just saving files
Ever met someone like this?
They read more than anyone
Spouting concepts, theories, and buzzwords
Sharing brain science today
Quantum mechanics tomorrow
Sounding incredibly learned
But after spending time with them
You see they haven't changed at all
Same knee-jerk reactions
Same judgment of others
The same trap they fell into last year
They're still falling into today
Their head is a whole library
But the person using that library
Hasn't moved an inch
Hello
Hi everyone
I'm Wang Lijie
Today I want to discuss a distinction I've pondered
Once you see this clearly
It might change how you view learning
And that is
Knowledge
Is not cognition
We often use these terms interchangeably
As if reading more means higher cognition
Or knowing more means thinking clearly
But actually
They are two completely different things
Let me give you a simple but useful definition
Knowledge
Is essentially information
While cognition
Is essentially a structure
Don't rush ahead
Pause for a second
Feel the weight of these two words
Information
Comes in bits and pieces
It can be added
Deleted
Or overwritten
Structure
Is an entire web
It determines where information goes
Where it lands
What it connects to
And how you ultimately see the world
Let me use a simple analogy
Your brain is like a computer
Learning new knowledge
is like saving a file to the hard drive
Today, you memorize a historical date
Tomorrow, you learn a new word
The next day, a company's financial data
All of these
are just saved files
The act of saving
is actually very light
It doesn't change the computer itself
It just adds a little more inside
But cognitive upgrade is different
Cognitive upgrade
is like reinstalling the operating system
It changes how information is processed
The shape of the network itself changes
When the same information comes in
you understood it one way before
but another way after the upgrade
On the surface, you haven't memorized more
But your entire perspective on the world
has shifted
These two things
involve two different physical processes
This isn't just my analogy
It's what neuroscience has actually seen
Your brain has about 80 billion neurons
connected by 100 trillion synapses
Synapses
are the interfaces where neurons connect
All your knowledge, memories, and habits
don't exist in a single cell
They are hidden in the shape of connections
So when you learn
what actually happens in the brain?
Neuroscience has a famous saying
Neurons that fire together
wire together
Memorizing something new
is essentially strengthening
certain synaptic connections slightly
It's a small, localized change
Scientists tracked mice learning new moves
Learning does grow new synapses
and makes old ones disappear
But daily learning, that kind of saving
is very limited in scope
Like on a massive circuit board
just resoldering a point or two
But cognitive upgrading
is on a whole different level
It's not about a few solder points
It's a massive area of the circuit board
being torn down and rebuilt
Old circuits are dismantled
New circuits are established
Neuroscientists call this structural plasticity
Memory isn't written into a single cell
but etched into a rewired neural network
In other words
a true cognitive upgrade
leaves a physical trace
A part of your brain
actually looks different than before
Now you can probably feel that
knowledge and cognition
differ not in quantity
but in hierarchy
How many files you save
versus what model your machine is
are two different things
But there is a deadly trap
I must warn you about
Our brains
naturally prefer archiving
and resist reinstallation
Why
Because reinstallation is too costly
Just look at children
A three or five-year-old
learns frighteningly fast
mastering a language in months
Not because they're smarter than us
Quite the opposite
it's because their brains are nearly empty
Full of unlabeled, empty drawers
They have fewer old structures to protect
So they mostly practice accommodation
reinstalling every day
But for us adults
our brains are full of decades of drawers
Each one is already labeled
and set in place
When something new comes in
an existing drawer catches it instantly
We get better at assimilation
and more afraid of accommodation
Neuroscience has a saying
Brain plasticity declines with age
But think about it
Is it really your ability to learn that declines
I'm starting to feel
What actually declines is the courage to dismantle yourself
And
Reinstalling everything
Is truly expensive for your brain
Your brain is only 2% of your body weight
Yet it consumes nearly a fifth of your energy
It is a very calculating organ
Saving whenever it can
Maintaining an old structure
Letting information follow the old path
Takes almost no effort
But to tear down old circuits
And grow new connections
Is a massive project that burns huge energy
So evolution has long since
Set your brain to be lazy
Its default strategy is always
If an old drawer works
Never build a new one
This isn't your fault
It's a million-year-old energy-saving instinct
But once you understand this
You will realize
Every true cognitive upgrade
Is a fight against your biological instincts
It was always
Meant to be hard
Let me tell you an old psychology concept
Proposed by developmental psychologist Piaget
He said
When facing new information
There are two ways to process it
The first is called assimilation
Which is when you take new things
And stuff them into your existing framework
You already have a drawer in your mind
Marked with a certain label
When something new arrives
You look at it and say
Oh
This belongs in that drawer
And stuff it in
This process is comfortable
Almost effortless
You haven't changed anything
You've just confirmed what you already believe
The second is accommodation
When new information arrives
And it fits no existing category
It conflicts with your beliefs
It is contradictory
It makes you uncomfortable
At this point
You either discard it
Pretend you didn't see it
Or
Endure the discomfort
Dismantle the old category
And build a new structure for it
Do you see?
Assimilation is just saving data
Accommodation is a system reinstall
Assimilation adds knowledge
Accommodation upgrades cognition
Yet 99% of our so-called learning
Stops at assimilation
We desperately seek info that fits
When we see a viewpoint
Our first reaction is
"Exactly!"
"He thinks just like me"
It feels good in that moment
But you haven't grown at all
You just gave your old structure
Another coat of protective paint
What truly makes you grow
Is what makes you frown
The info you want to refute
Because only that
Can force you to rebuild
That is why I say
Cognitive upgrading
Is inherently painful
It isn't effortless like saving data
It tears down your familiar home
There will be a period
When the old has collapsed
And the new isn't built yet
You feel suspended and lost
Many retreat at this step
They can't stand the suspension
They rush back to the old structure
Delete the uncomfortable info
And tell themselves
"I've learned it"
"I already know it"
He did know
But he didn't change
This leads to something I really want to tell you
In today's information explosion
The biggest illusion
Is using information hoarding
To fake cognitive growth
You scroll through hundreds of tips daily
Save thousands of articles
Sign up for many courses
Your hard drive gets fuller
Creating an illusion of rapid progress
But that packed favorites folder
Slowly becomes a tomb you never open
Have you honestly asked yourself
In the past year
Your operating system
How many times was it reinstalled
Is there anything you once firmly believed
That you tore down yourself
If not
You aren't upgrading
You're just on a static old structure
Frantically saving files
The more files there are
The slower that old machine runs
In my years of investing
I've seen many brilliant, knowledgeable people
Who eventually failed
Precisely in the field they knew best
Because they knew too much
The old structure was too solid
They lost the ability to tear it down
All their new information
Was assimilated into an obsolete framework
I have a real example nearby
I know a very successful entrepreneur
Twenty years in a traditional industry
An absolute expert
When mobile internet first emerged
All the information was before him
He read more than anyone
Stacks and stacks of industry reports
But talking to him, you'd find
Every new trend he read about
Was translated into the same sentence
"This is the same as when we did channels"
"It's the same thing"
He didn't fail to see the new world
He used old drawers to store it
Fitting the new world into old slots
The result was
The more he knew
The more wrong he became
What finally changed his mind
Wasn't any report
But seeing a young man in his 20s
Using tactics he couldn't understand
To crush the business he'd built for 20 years
In that moment
All his old drawers
Collapsed with a crash
He told me later
It was the most painful yet clearest time of his life
You see
Knowledge didn't save him
It trapped him
What finally broke him open
Was hitting a brick wall
Buddhism explained this long ago
It makes a fine distinction
One is called Adhimoksha
The other is Prajna
Adhimoksha
Is understanding a concept
Being able to repeat it
And explain it to others
That is knowledge
An archive
But Prajna
Is when truth is in your bones
Becoming your instinctive reaction
That is true cognition
A structure
Buddhism has another term
The 'Obstacle of Knowledge'
It means
The things you know
Can become your barriers
You think knowledge is a ladder
But when it's a wall you won't tear down
It becomes what blocks you
One more thing
Regarding AI
With the rise of LLMs
Many ask
Are those trillions of parameters
All the knowledge it learned
Not exactly
Those trillions of parameters
It doesn't store isolated facts
It stores the shape of relationships between them
It is a structure
This is the same thing
we are talking about today
Intelligence
is never about how much you remember
But about the shape
formed within you
Look at someone who read a library but never changed
You'll see where they are stuck
They spent a lifetime assimilating
But never dared to accommodate
They welded all new information
Onto an old web unchanged for decades
So what can be done
I have no easy answer
I can only say
Next time
When you see a view that makes you want to argue
Don't rush to swipe away
Don't rush to refute
Stay in that discomfort
for a little longer
Notice your physical reaction in that moment
A tight chest
Or throbbing temples
That is your old structure resisting
It is whispering
Don't tear me down
That discomfort
might not be you being offended
But an old circuit in your brain
being gently
pried open by a hand
That single pry
is closer to real growth
than saving a hundred files today
I'll leave you with a question
Think back
In your life so far
When was the moment
of true cognitive reloading
Which word, event, or person
completely dismantled
one of your old drawers
Remember that floating, chaotic feeling
Tell me in the comments
I'd love to hear it
What reinstalled
your operating system?
I'm Wang Lijie
See you next time