What this is, and where to start
My name is Michal. I live in London, and in my late forties I am rebuilding my education deliberately.
I passed the exams and earned the qualifications, then forgot almost all of it.
Years later, reading seriously as an adult, I found the same thing happening again. I would finish a book, feel I had understood it, and three months later be unable to reconstruct the argument.
The full version of that story, and what I think it means, is in the piece that started this.
This publication is what I am doing about it, published as I go.
What arrives
I take one book or course at a time, work through it slowly, test the ideas against my own life, and write up what held and what didn’t.
They are not book summaries. I am interested in what happens after the summary.
Does the idea survive examination?
Where does it conflict with another thinker I trust?
Can I see it operating in an ordinary week?
Does knowing it change anything I actually do?
The reading currently runs through psychology, philosophy and behavioural science. Aristotle, Kahneman, Haidt, Sapolsky, Storr, Huxley, and whoever the argument leads to next.
Where to start
Six pieces, in this order. Together they are the whole project.
1. I Am Building the Education I Should Have Built Years Ago
Why this exists. I passed the exams and forgot almost everything, then watched the same thing happen again as an adult, with books I had chosen myself.
2. You Didn’t Answer That Question
How I read. Kahneman on answer substitution. You do not get the wrong answer to a hard question. You get the right answer to an easier one you swapped in without noticing.
3. Your Moral Convictions Are Not What You Think They Are
Human nature. Haidt’s argument that moral reasoning behaves like a press secretary, and what is left of your convictions once you take that seriously.
4. The Most Dangerous People Are Not the Angry Ones
How people behave around each other. Storr on status, and why righteousness has no natural stopping point where anger does.
5. The Rebuttal That Doesn’t Quite Land
How I handle disagreement. I read Dawkins, then deliberately read the book written to refute him, and worked out what survived. Neither of them asks what would change his mind.
6. Stop Collecting Ideas. Build a Philosophy That Holds Together.
Where this is going. Aristotle’s order of enquiry, used as an architecture for your own beliefs rather than as history.
And the other half of the project
The Doors of Perception study pack is free and complete. Briefing, structured notes, connections to other books, a behaviour test and thirty flash cards. I build one of these for every book I read. It is there so you can see the standard before deciding whether any of it is worth paying for.
The rest, and what is coming next, are on the study packs page.
Who this is for
People who read a lot and retain little. People who have spent years on books, podcasts and courses without building anything coherent out of them. People who want to be more articulate, not to sound impressive, but because clear speech grows from clear thought.
Especially for anyone who thinks they started too late. I don’t think we started too late. We may just have reached the point where we can finally choose our own education.
Where this goes
I am not writing as an academic or as someone who has finished. I am the first participant. The system is being built through use, my assumptions are being tested against the reading, and when my understanding changes the writing shows it.
I want the apparatus I am building for myself, the notes, the retrieval practice, the connections between thinkers, to be useful to other people trying to do the same thing. I’m doing it myself properly and publishing the results, including the parts that fail.
