Eli5: Why do you not understand things/concepts/arguments one time but when you come across it again later, you “get it” despite not having gone out of your way to understand the thing/concept/argument?

Question

Eli5: Why do you not understand things/concepts/arguments one time but when you come across it again later, you “get it” despite not having gone out of your way to understand the thing/concept/argument?

In: Other

Answer 1

There could be several reasons, or a combination of reasons, for this. Your brain takes in information and keeps processing it in the background, so even if you don’t understand a concept when you originally encounter it, it doesn’t mean that your brain has stopped working on the problem. Also, additional scenarios with slightly different data may present it in a way that makes more sense to you – different people learn in different ways. Add to this the other things you may have learned between the first encounter and the concept making sense – and your brain has been accumulating data to work with.