> formal thinking is not how we learn.

The way I've thought about it is that we cannot understand a problem until we've faced it ourselves.

And too often we try to teach each other by going straight to the answer, and then it just doesn't stick.

I recall this happened to me when reading about 'soft' skills (such as collaboration methodologies), it wasn't until I was working with a team of people at a job and was faced with the problems these methodologies attempt to solve that I was able to read about them without immediately thinking "this sounds like bullshit"