[chenmike]

If you equate "consuming information" with learning, yes you are right that learning in public is more time-consuming than learning in private.

However, there are several studies[1] that show dramatic improvements in retention and understanding from material vs. just studying it. So if you consider retention and understanding to be the goal outcomes of learning, forcing yourself to structure your thoughts about the material enough to communicate it with others has clear benefits to learning rate.

[1] Example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03614...