I'd argue I learn much faster now. I did study math and physics but I've found that those tools have accelerated a lot of learning and have a lot of compounding effects. Maybe mileage may vary but I suspect a strong base allows one to learn even faster.
Though only in last few years did I realize I was a fast learner. I thought I was slow because I'd say I didn't understand unless I had a deep understanding. But found that where I would not feel comfortable claiming understanding was a different threshold than others.
Where I've found math and physics helpful is in depth and abstraction. The science builds a good framework to dive deep into understanding and tease out the critical components. Science is a search algorithm in some sense. The math helps abstract, or generalize. To see the patterns and extend and use in ways beyond what was taught. That's where the real compounding happens and where I personally start to feel I understand things. But it requires the depth. But that's my framework and I'm sure there's a million good ones and a million better ones
Math and physics certainly allow you to learn fast in technical fields and that is my experience as well, but the other comment was more about completely unrelated fields like humanities where previous experience may not translate at all. For example an english speaker with a PhD in Physics will still have to start more or less from zero when learning japanese.
Strangely I've found there's still a lot of translative skills. But I think it is more to do with the approach than the base knowledge.
Physics definitely helps me learn things like a sport or driving a new vehicle. Forces me to think more about things like where force is being applied, positioning, paths, and many other things. I'll focus on the small things that compound and I think this makes the start a little slower but that makes things accelerate as my base isn't shaky as I'm moving forward.
But this also helps when I've doing things like learn a language. It's why I wrote the last paragraph like I did. The science side gives you the habit of breaking things down into their atomic units. The framework of build, attack/critique/deconstruct, rebuild. When I was younger I couldn't do this. If I were trying to do something like learn Chinese I'd first focus on just memorizing rather than focus on the radicals.
The iterative style of building up is such a useful framework. Naturally when forming a hypothesis you try to build something stable. But the most important thing to then do is attack it as hard as you can. This is a step most people don't take, but it's probably the most important one for finding truth. It damages and even sometimes completely destroys your construction. But when you rebuild it is better, it is stronger. The framework taught me the importance of doing the boring stuff like revisiting what I've already learned.
And that's also why I'm saying there's a million paths and I doubt my background that I'm leveraging is particularly advantageous. The base knowledge is helpful in the first example but nonexistent in the second. The utility still exists though because of the metaphysics/metamathematics. The framework of how to approach problems, to dive into details, to find what are the important parts, to navigate through mental spaces filled with many unknown unknowns. Maybe my neuroplasticity isn't as high as when I was a teen, but I sure didn't have the (mental) tools I have today and boy what a difference it makes.
Though only in last few years did I realize I was a fast learner. I thought I was slow because I'd say I didn't understand unless I had a deep understanding. But found that where I would not feel comfortable claiming understanding was a different threshold than others.
Where I've found math and physics helpful is in depth and abstraction. The science builds a good framework to dive deep into understanding and tease out the critical components. Science is a search algorithm in some sense. The math helps abstract, or generalize. To see the patterns and extend and use in ways beyond what was taught. That's where the real compounding happens and where I personally start to feel I understand things. But it requires the depth. But that's my framework and I'm sure there's a million good ones and a million better ones