If you understand something in only one way, then you don’t really understand it at all. This is because, if something goes wrong, you get stuck with a thought that just sits in your mind with nowhere to go. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we’ve connected it to all the other things we know. This is why, when someone learns “by rote,” we say that they don’t really understand. However, if you have several different representations then, when one approach fails you can try another. Of course, making too many indiscriminate connections will turn a mind to mush. But
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