Epistemic Status: Speculative, a theory that works well for the experiences I've had. I'm interested in how it overlays onto other people's experiences.

When I come across a lesson or a theory about the world that I've run into before, particularly after a long period of time, I often experience a feeling of increased understanding; that THIS time I've grasped the concept and its relevance.

For example, there's a quote attributed to Plato (although apparently not his words) that goes "The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself". Recently I've been noticing a lot of issues around self-discipline in myself and so have been quite conscious of things along this axis. It feels like now, when I read this, I'm truly getting the essence of it. But when I read it as a teenager I thought I did too, even though, now, it doesn't seem like I had as much of a handle on its significance then as I do today, and I'm sure every time I encounter it in the future it will feel like I've finally fully grokked the idea that the words are trying to convey.

This feeling used to scare me. If you could be exposed to the same idea and it still appears novel, then how can you make sure you're improving your understanding of the world and not just caught up flitting from concept A to concept B back to concept A like a philosophical dory? And it has implications for interpersonal relationships, too. A friend will tell us something, or try to teach us, and perhaps it will come across as a meaningless platitude, even though this is a person who we hold in high regard for their wisdom. Or you'll try to explain a thought you've had that seems so significant to you, but others won't be as enamored with it as you. How do you ever know to what degree you are talking about the same thing as someone else?

The root of all of this is simply that our brains are trying their best to model the world around us given the evidence they have so far. So when we hear Plato/not-Plato talking about conquering ourselves as a teenager, we just don't have the same breadth of life experience and self examination as we do today. The feeling of increased significance comes from a weightier evidence base supporting that idea. I've been calling this salience - the property of a thought being noticeable or striking - a...

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