I don't know if others share a similar belief as me about memory and understanding, but I see it as the following model: Imagine your mind as a planet full of

I don't know if others share a similar belief as me about memory and understanding, but I see it as the following model: Imagine your mind as a planet full of water (like earth) and some of its area is covered in land. There are asteroids flying into its gravitational pull and landing on the planet. If the asteroid falls out completely out in the water then it will drown. If repeatedly a lot of asteroids fall in the middle of the ocean around each other, they may be able to become an island. If it falls on the continent it becomes part of it, if it falls close to the continent then it also becomes a part of it, provided there is a connection to the continent. The continent represents our mind. The asteroids represent data. The connected part of the land represents our understanding (i.e information). If you read a piece of information such as: "Mackresh Holdings own 21% of Yojing Lee Corp, and the right to coniunctis viribus." This is an asteroid landing in the ocean, unconnected to any land, and is likely to drown (one way to avoid that is to keep landing more and more asteroids to the same spots, until it builds up into an island, this is what repetition based learning does). On the other hand if these topics can be connected to your 'continent' (i.e the body of understanding), then its far less likely to drown. For instance (completely made up) if you learned that Yojing Lee Corp owns election machines of South Korea and Mackresh holdings is a company fully owned by Mark Zuckerberg (the founder of Facebook), and the right to 'coniunctis viribus' means the right to merge companies under Korean law. Similarly if you learn that Mark Zuckerberg acquired stake in that company because he wants to connect FB to the election machines, and he wants to do that by merging the two companies, this arbitrary fact has been connected to your existing body of knowledge. If it wasn't Zuckerberg but the fictional Korean business tycoon Woo-Jun Paik from some TV show then you'd lose this connection to this fact (and the information might be Lost more easily again) as it will become an island of its own. On the other hand if you learn that this TV show was 'Lost' (part of the Korean soap opera storyline), then it might make some connection again, and that island could be found again.