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With computers, which excel at memorization, why not off-load out faulty memory there? And use time, and brain capacity, for things that we are still better at
by stared 7y ago
With computers, which excel at memorization, why not off-load out faulty memory there? And use time, and brain capacity, for things that we are still better at, or at least at fun or fulfilling?
For each prompt, my first thought was "yeah, I have it in Evernote/1Password/Google Calendar" followed by that it makes my life easier. So basically, let's embrace our extended phenotype!
I am sure that there are people around that can flawlessly remember hundreds of complex passwords and numbers, even ones they have used in a decade.
Also, knowing something does not guarantee that we can use that. For example, I guess a lot of you had:
A: Honey, when is our anniversary?
B: April 20th, obviously.
A: And which date is today?
B: April 21st... oh f-.
- keiferski 7y agoThe ability to quickly google a piece of information != knowing, understanding, or being able to use it in any meaningful sense. The notion that memorization is useless or somehow not integral to the learning process is wrong. When you intuitively know an idea, you can build upon it and combine it with other ideas in a subconscious and long-term way. This isn't possible if you externalize your memory to a computer.
- stared 7y agoI bet you know this, quite old, quotation on memory: "They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks." > The notion that memorization is useless or somehow not integral to the learning process is wrong. When you intuitively know an idea, you can build upon it and combine it with other ideas in a subconscious and long-term way. There is a profound difference between memorizing sequences of characters (passwords, ids, phone numbers, surnames, dates, particular APIs) and memorizing concepts (which may, but not need to, use these characters as a component).
- keiferski 7y agoSure, that quote is from Socrates about books. I don’t think he’s actually wrong: the average person today probably is less mentally capable than ~2,500 years ago. Books are more useful as a storage device, to be sure, but externalization does have downsides when it comes to mental cognition itself. Don’t disagree with on the sequences of characters point, though. Unfortunately most people don’t make that distinction and lump everything into the ‘not worth memorizing’ camp.