One way I learned to learn

 

In the 80s I learned that skill is only in a domain. For example, Bobby Fischer was brilliant as a chess player but not in social skills. I learned our skills are often dependent upon how we see the world and the language we use to describe it. While the Inuits don't actually have 50 words for snow, they do have hundreds of ways to describe it. That's because the type of snow you are in can be life or death in the wilderness.

These differences are called "distinctions." The number of distinctions a person has in an area is usually more highly correlated to ability than experience is. For example, a doctor can see all sorts of things in an xray while I'd just see shades of gray.

When faced with someone who says there’s a difference between two things that you don’t see, consider these two ways of having a conversation with them. You can say “there’s no difference between these two things” or you can ask “I don’t see the difference between these, can you explain what you see?” The first sets up a competition between the two of you while the second gets around cognitive bias (which is an impediment to learning) to some extent. Someone who sees a difference is not always right, of course, but there’s more to learn if you consider the possibility.