Position · last reconsidered September 17, 2026
A right answer can be a guessed password
Yudkowsky's claimposition — On this site, an idea someone holds about a question, shown with its author and its source. that saying the words a teacher rewards is not the same as understanding what they predict.
- Areas
- Knowing
In our words
Eliezer Yudkowsky argues that school often rewards students for saying the phrase the teacher is waiting for, so they learn to guess the expected words instead of forming an idea they could check. A student who answers heat conduction but cannot predict what will actually happen has not learned the physics. An explanation that changes nothing about what you expect to see is just words, however correct it sounds.
Eliezer YudkowskyEliezer Yudkowsky — American AI researcher and writer (born 1979)Description from WikidataRationalist community (LessWrong)2007
In their words
“If you aren’t using the diffusion equation—putting in numbers and getting out results that control your anticipation of particular experiences—then the connection between map and territory is severed as though by a knife. What remains is not a belief, but a verbal behavior.”Connected ideas
derived from
- Guessing the Teacher's PasswordSource
The quoted passage and the argument around it (paragraph beginning “If you aren’t using the diffusion equation”).
related to
- VerificationConcept
Understanding is tied to predictions you could check.
responds to
- What happens when answers cost nothing?Question
A school that rewards the right words is already a place where answers are cheap.
- When does spotting a pattern become real understanding?Question
Knowing which word is rewarded is recognition without understanding.
supports
- Knowing that you do not knowPosition
The student who guesses the password thinks they know; Socrates' test would expose it.