The Loneliness of the Long Distance Self-Learner

Due to personal reasons, which were mainly attributed to some physical troubles I experienced at the age of six, I have had a strong admiration for self-study ever since. I became aware of this admiration around the age of 14, and since then, I have always longed for the ability to learn something on my own, and I have been able to achieve this depending on the subject. However, I am not completely satisfied with my own achievements.

The biggest challenge when trying to learn something on your own is that when you don't understand something, you can't ask anyone for help. Even if you do ask someone, they may not know the answer, or worse, you may not even know what to ask. I remember being impressed by a scene in a movie I watched on TV many years ago about a teenage girl who was studying alone to get into night school. She showed her textbooks and problem sets to the landlady she was staying with to ask questions, but the landlady was busy with daily housework, such as hanging laundry in the yard. She didn't remember much of what she had learned at school, so she couldn't actively help the girl. This caused the girl to become quite upset, and I can relate to that feeling. It's a typical situation, with the learner being desperate to ask and the one being asked finding them bothersome.

She was still lucky because at least she had someone to ask questions to. True self-learners don't even have that option. While posting questions on Q&A sites for learners can be helpful, asking anonymous people can be quite exhausting, and the answerers often seem condescending, or that's how the questioners often feel. Persisting in asking questions can cause the other person to dislike you, or you may be told to ask someone you know. This is where ChatGPT comes in. I have recently been thinking that it could be the answer to this frustration, as long as you find out tricks and tips to use it smartly.

For example, I have read a lot of books on extremely abstract subjects so far. However, if I were faced with an in-person exam and bombarded with questions on those subjects by the examiner, I wouldn't have much confidence in answering them smoothly. But with ChatGPT, if there are any specialized terms that I don't understand, I can ask and get a quick answer. If I can articulate where I don't understand, it will create an answer that is appropriate for the question. As I continue to do this every day, I am surprised to find that my reading of those specialized books has become more sophisticated, and I can grasp the arguments of those subjects better than before. I can even develop both the questions and the answers I should make for them that the examiner would ask in a face-to-face exam, all by myself.

The downside is that there is no guarantee that the AI's answer is correct, and the answer may change depending on how the question is asked, among other things. The AI is not the final answer to self-learners. In other words, it tests the true ability of the self-learner.