Two observations about understanding

An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about absolutely nothing.

Mahoney & Kaktus extrapolating Nicholas Murray Butler

Experts make statements based on models and models must be applicable, so deeper models become either as intractable as the reality they're modelling or restricted..

One corollary of that is that I'm constantly asking myself whether I should write a substantial post about some issue concerning the notions I'm working with or a superficial one about some momentary concern.

Today I'm doing the latter, but I'll try to be witty too.

A thinker is someone who has trained himself to accept fewer and fewer certainties, until he's finally happy with the speed of his intellect.

As Schopenhauer said:  Fast progress is ecstasy and slow progress pain. And as mathematicians like to say: A mathematician must have a high frustration tolerance.

Verily, when you expect to understand when you do not, and throw out the attempt to, because your fuse is too short, you never will.