How confident are you can, quickly, learn enough about a topic ...

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3. 1-2 weeks

As an IT consultant off and on (some perm jobs in between) for 30+ years I've repeatedly got up to speed on a business I'm unfamiliar with as well as systems, architectures and programming languages used by the business in 1-2 weeks. I usually make recommendations for business processes and IT systems in that time which the company's business and IT experts agree with. Unlike many consultants I then stay for 6-9 months to lead the development of new systems (often in a language or platform I haven't used before) and implementation of business processes and would find out if my initial recommendations were off-base.

I do it through a combination of meetings during the day and internet at night. Not exactly self-education since I have the daily meetings. But the internet is great for getting lots of detail about terminology I hear and existing systems I "understand" but don't know all of the pros/cons, trade-offs, decisions, options, etc of. And I can do that without taking hours out of the daily meetings to get my detailed questions answered. And after 1-2 weeks I know pros/cons/alternatives that the client's IT people often aren't aware of.

I'm not sure what you're trying to find out so maybe I'm way off topic. Maybe I could have just said: The internet is great for some things; horrible for others; and won't make anyone an expert at anything by itself.