Learning concepts is dirty work

Jean Piaget, the developmental psychologist best known for his clinical interviews with children, argued that concepts form gradually through what he called constructivism—not in a sudden flash of understanding. His most famous experiment involved asking children whether juice poured between glasses of different shapes changed in volume, and Piaget discovered they moved through distinct stages: the youngest believed the juice literally increased, older children calculated and reasoned through the problem, and only the oldest grasped that quantity stays constant. LessWrong draws a parallel to how large language models undergo 'grokking'—a shift from memorization to true generalization. The upshot: real learning, whether in children or AI, requires dirty work, and shortcuts don't exist.

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