The other day, I came across a thread on X that really resonated with me.
The author argued that self-study has actually become harder in the age of the internet. Beginners naturally search for answers online, but because they don’t yet have the foundation to judge what is important—or even what is correct—they tend to piece together fragments of information and fill in the gaps with their own assumptions. Search engines are also very good at finding evidence that seems to support whatever you already believe, making it surprisingly easy to reinforce misconceptions.
The conclusion was simple: if you really want to learn something, start with a well-structured curriculum or a respected textbook. The internet is an incredible resource once you understand the fundamentals, but it’s a poor substitute for learning those fundamentals in the first place.
Reading that, I thought, Yeah… that’s exactly right.
When I first got my driver’s license and started becoming interested in sports cars, I spent a lot of time reading automotive magazines.
Every now and then I’d come across an article that made me stop and think, Wait… does that really make sense?
You know the kind of articles I’m talking about.
“This is how you make your car faster.” “Install this part and you’ll gain speed.” “This component works like this…”
The problem was, I simply had no way of knowing whether any of it was actually true.
I just didn’t know enough.
Later, after I started taking my MX-5 to the racetrack and became more serious about improving my lap times, that didn’t really change.
Even as I became a better driver, I still couldn’t tell which explanations I could trust.
Sometimes I’d read one explanation and think, Doesn’t that contradict what someone else said?
But was it really a contradiction? Or was I misunderstanding something? Or were they just making confident claims without much evidence?
I had no way of telling.
Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t going to figure it out on my own.
Suspension design was the subject that fascinated me most, so I finally accepted that I had to start reading books and technical papers—even the ones I really didn’t feel like reading.
The hardest part was that I didn’t even know what I needed to learn.
So I simply picked up anything that looked relevant and kept reading until another piece finally fell into place.
There was no way I was ever going to understand everything. Not even close.
But little by little, the questions that had been bothering me started making sense.
Looking back, I suppose that alone made the effort worthwhile.
Whenever you learn something new, you naturally want to share it with someone.
So I started writing blog posts.
Quite a few people told me, “Isn’t your blog… kind of difficult to read?”
Looking back, they’re probably right. I could certainly have explained things more clearly.
But at the time, I honestly didn’t think I had much choice.
I don’t enjoy reading difficult books either. They’re hard. They’re exhausting. I’d much rather read something easier.
But magazine articles and random internet posts often skipped over the important details or filled in the missing pieces with someone’s personal assumptions.
That wasn’t what I was looking for.
I wasn’t looking for convenient explanations. I wanted to understand how things actually worked.
Finding reliable references, struggling through them, comparing different sources, and trying to make sense of everything took an enormous amount of time.
Sometimes I think about all the other things I could have done with those hours.
Then again, without that journey, I probably never would have met people like Tatsu. His writings on vehicle dynamics have had a lasting influence on the way I think about these topics, and I’ve mentioned some of those ideas in my earlier articles on racing lines and circuit simulation.
Simply seeing how people with deep, well-founded knowledge approach a problem is educational in itself.
I’d like to reach that level someday.
Of course, getting there takes an extraordinary amount of time and effort.
And, well… life is simply too short.