Learning Is Not What You Think - Unpacking Humanity’s Superpower
Are you ready to learn?
Learning is a polysemous word. A polyseme is a word that has multiple, context-dependent meanings. If the word ‘polyseme’ is new to you, you probably had to do a little work just there. Maybe you said the word ‘out loud’ in your head a few times, drawing on the patterns of pronunciation learned from other, similar words. You might have been aware of a feeling of effort, or ‘cognitive load’ as your brain worked to add this new combination of letters to the twenty-thousand or so others you’ve already mastered.
That small moment of learning—that brief mental effort you expended to grasp a new word—provides a perfect window into what makes learning both ubiquitous and mysterious. The act of learning unfolded in milliseconds, involved multiple cognitive processes, and transformed the physical state of your brain. All of this happening without you being consciously aware of the mechanisms at work.
The Many Meanings of Learning
When we say “I learned something,” what exactly do we mean? The answer differs dramatically depending on context:
“I learned her name” describes a nearly instantaneous process of committing a simple fact to memory.
“I learned Python” suggests months of practice, trial and error, and the gradual building of a complex skill.
“I learned to be a doctor” implies years of intensive study, supervised practice, and professional socialization.
“I learned something about myself” hints at a moment of personal insight, perhaps even a transformative realization that changes how we view ourselves and our place in the world.
These statements all use the same verb but describe radically different processes happening at different timescales, requiring different levels of effort, and producing different kinds of outcomes. Yet we instinctively understand each usage without confusion—a testament to how central learning is to the human experience.
The Learning Stack: From Neurons to Culture
To understand the full scope of learning, it helps to visualize it as a stack of interdependent processes, each building upon the others. Crucially, at every level of this stack, what’s happening is model building—we are constructing and refining predictive models of the world that help us generate new actions, behaviors, and plans.
At the foundation lies the physiological level—learning as a biological process involving neural connections and synaptic plasticity. Our brains physically change when we learn, forming new connections between neurons, strengthening some pathways and weakening others. These neural changes aren’t random; they’re creating physical representations—models—of patterns in our environment. The molecular machinery of memory is constantly at work, transcribing proteins and reinforcing synapses, ensuring that important experiences become part of our neural architecture and predictive capacity.
Above this sits the cognitive level—learning as the acquisition, processing, and application of information through attention, perception, memory, and reasoning. This is learning as most of us consciously experience it: the mental work of understanding new concepts, practicing skills, making connections between ideas, and solving problems. What we’re really doing here is building and refining mental models that allow us to predict what will happen if we take specific actions, enabling us to navigate complex environments successfully.
Next comes interpersonal learning—the social transmission of knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors through observation, imitation, instruction, and collaboration. Humans are uniquely skilled at learning from each other, a capacity that has allowed us to accumulate knowledge across generations. At this level, we’re collaboratively building shared models of reality, aligning our individual predictions with those of others, and creating frameworks for coordinated action and understanding.
At the top of the stack sits cultural learning—the creation and maintenance of shared knowledge systems, institutions, and artifacts that extend beyond individual lifespans. Libraries, universities, books, the internet—these are all manifestations of our ability to externalize learning, making it accessible across time and space. These institutions serve as repositories and transmission mechanisms for our most sophisticated collective models of how the world works, enabling each generation to build upon rather than reinvent the predictive frameworks of previous generations.
The Uniquely Human Learning Superpower
When a toddler points at a fuzzy, barking four-legged animal and hears “doggy” from their parent, that single data point may be all they need to successfully identify dogs everywhere—in photos, videos, close up, far away, in different lighting conditions, small dogs, big dogs. This remarkable efficiency puts even our most advanced machine learning systems to shame.
Human learning operates with an astonishing economy of input. A child can learn a new word after hearing it just once or twice. A skilled craftsperson can watch a technique being demonstrated once and begin to replicate it. A mathematician can grasp a complex proof through a single careful reading.
This efficiency stems from our ability to:
- Draw on vast existing knowledge networks
- Abstract principles from specific examples
- Transfer learning across domains
- Contextualize new information within meaningful frameworks
- Generate and test hypotheses about how the world works
Our learning doesn’t exist in isolation—it builds upon all we’ve previously learned and connects to our understanding of the world, our goals, and our values.
Learning in the Age of AI
As artificial intelligence increasingly demonstrates capabilities that mimic aspects of human learning, we’re gaining new perspectives on what makes our own learning unique. The contrast is illuminating.
Machine learning systems require enormous datasets—reviewing millions of labeled images to learn what a dog looks like, analyzing billions of web pages to generate coherent text. These systems can achieve impressive results, but they lack the efficiency, adaptability, and continuous updating that characterizes human learning.
Yet AI also reminds us that learning—in its most fundamental form—is about creating models of the world that allow us to predict and navigate it successfully. The neural networks in AI systems and the neural networks in our brains both learn by adjusting connections in response to feedback, gradually improving their ability to make accurate predictions.
The Work of Learning
Learning requires effort—cognitive, emotional, sometimes even physical. When our brains learn, they consume glucose. In fact, the brain accounts for 2% of the body’s mass but about 20% of its energy needs. Learning causes increased glucose consumption in the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, temporal cortex, and cerebellum.
Our brain-bodies would prefer not to expend that energy because we are evolutionarily primed to conserve resources. This inherent tension—between our capacity to learn and our biological resistance to unnecessary energy expenditure—shapes how we approach learning throughout our lives.
Understanding that learning always involves work helps explain both our resistance to certain kinds of learning and the satisfaction we feel when we overcome that resistance. The cognitive load experienced during learning isn’t just an inconvenient side effect—it’s a necessary component of the transformative power of learning.
Learning as Transformation
At its most profound, learning changes who we are. It updates our model of the world and our place in it. When we truly learn something significant—whether it’s a practical skill, a scientific concept, or an emotional insight—we become different people than we were before.
This transformative power makes learning our most uniquely human capability. It’s the foundation of our adaptability as a species, our cultural evolution, and our individual growth. It’s what allows us to constantly reinvent ourselves and our societies.
Next time you find yourself learning something—whether it’s a new word like “polyseme,” a new skill, or a new perspective—take a moment to appreciate the multilayered miracle happening in your brain. From neurons firing to cultural knowledge accumulating, learning is the superpower that makes us who we are.