The Feynman Technique
How explaining one strange philosophy taught me how to think more clearly.
Have you ever heard of the Feynman Technique?
The idea is: If you can’t explain a concept to a kid or someone who is struggling, you don't actually understand it yet.
Sometimes I get super in the weeds with something, and I end up overexplaining that.
I learned about the Feynman Technique recently, and it made me want to test it.
About a year ago, I learned about Panpsychism. Never heard of it? Well, today I’m going to break it down to you using the Feynman Technique.
Panpsychism is the philosophical view that consciousness, mind, or subjective experience is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of all physical matter.
Pretty cool, right?
Or, at least weird enough to be worth thinking about.
So what does that mean?
Well, the technique involves a four-step process.
Step 1: Deconstruct (The Kid Test)
Panpsychism sounds like a massive, terrifying word, but let’s look at it like we’re explaining it to an 8-year-old.
Think about your favorite stuffed animal or a rock you found in the yard.
Normally, we think that only humans and animals can feel things or be awake inside. Panpsychism says that everything in the universe has a tiny, tiny spark of awareness, even that rock.
It’s not saying the rock can think about math or wonder what’s for dinner, but it means that the building blocks of the rock have a basic form of “feeling” or presence.
Consciousness isn’t a special trick that only human brains can do; it’s baked right into the ingredients of the universe, just like gravity or electricity.
Step 2: Identify the Gaps (The Speed Bump)
Now, as I’m writing this, I hit a speed bump.
A critic might look at me and say, “Wait a minute, Barnaby. Are you telling me my smartphone is alive and watching me?”
This is where Step 2 of the technique kicks in. I have to pause and realize where my explanation gets shaky.
If I can’t answer that, I don’t fully understand it yet. So, I go back to the source. Panpsychists argue that simply piling matter together isn't enough. What matters is how it's organized.
A human brain is a highly organized combination where tiny sparks of awareness join together to make a big, complex consciousness.
A smartphone or a rock is just a "heap" of matter. The individual building blocks of matter might each possess a primitive form of awareness, but they aren't organized in a way that forms a single, unified mind.
Identifying that gap allows me to sharpen my understanding.
Step 3: Create an Analogy (The Picture)
To make sure this sticks, let’s use an analogy. Imagine the universe is a giant ocean of light.
Many mainstream theories treat consciousness as something that appears only when matter becomes sufficiently complex. Panpsychism tells a different story.
It says the room was already full of light.
Human brains are just highly advanced magnifying glasses that focus the existing light into a sharp, brilliant beam.
We didn’t invent consciousness; we just concentrated it.
Step 4: Transmit (The Teacher Test)
The final step is turning around and passing it on.
If you can walk away from reading this and explain to a friend over coffee tomorrow that “Panpsychism just means consciousness is an ingredient of matter, not a byproduct of it,” then the technique worked.
I learned it, I simplified it, and now you can teach it.
That’s why I like Panpsychism so much, because I don't know if Panpsychism is true. Very few philosophers or neuroscientists do.
What I like is that it offers a radically different way of thinking about consciousness. Instead of treating awareness as something the universe accidentally produced, it imagines awareness as something the universe always contained.
In fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I wanted a layer of meta-cognition within this very writing. Meta-cognition just means “thinking about thinking.”
My goal today wasn’t just to teach you a wild philosophy or a study trick.
It was to use two completely different, unfamiliar terms, Panpsychism and the Feynman Technique, and layer them together so you could watch the process of learning happen alive on the page.
When you learn how to look at your own thoughts like this, the world stops looking like an overwhelming, messy place.
You realize that any big problem, complex idea, or difficult season can be broken down, understood, and mastered.
You just have to be willing to look at the pieces, find the picture that makes sense, and pass it on.
Learning isn’t about collecting bigger words.
It’s making big ideas small enough that someone else can carry them.
If you can do that, you probably understand the idea better than you did before.
That’s the Feynman Technique.
That’s my TED Talk.