5 ms·

I think we don’t remember the things because we know they are at the reach of our fingers. This is based on my experience with driving. I used to drive car eve

by rkuska 5y ago

I think we don’t remember the things because we know they are at the reach of our fingers. This is based on my experience with driving. I used to drive car every other week from the city where I live to my hometown (230km give or take). I did the route several times for few years - and still I never could remember which exit to take on specific places. Then I decided to drive without navigation. It took few wrong turns and one try and now I remember my route without any problems.

throw10920 5y ago
> I think we don’t remember the things because we know they are at the reach of our fingers. To be more precise: studies have shown that passive learning is significantly less effective than active learning[1]. "Active" learning involves intentional recall, as opposed to passive review. Searching things is passive review. Racking your brain to try to remember the prototype of a function is active recall, which significantly strengthens the memory in your brain. So, yes, this is the reason, and there's scientific evidence to back it up. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/116/39/19251 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/39/19251
hnarn 5y ago
> I never could remember which exit to take I don’t mean for this to sound snarky, it’s an honest question: are there no signs? Having to “remember” which exit to take seems to indicate to me that the route isn’t drivable in any intuitive way (ie follow the signage to your city/block) Because if there are signs, I just think this depends on how we individually use GPS assistance.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  My experience is the same as GP. Signs take attention looking at. They often don’t point to where you want to go, but some other major destination along the way, or road names. Junctions can be confusing. When I can, I like to drive without satnav, it makes me appreciate the geography more.
- thrashh 5y ago
  I won’t even the remember the exit name if I use a nav app. And I’m someone that can walk around randomly and perfectly keep a mental map of the whole area.
- rkuska 5y ago
  My hometown is a small one, so I have to remember which (bigger) cities are prior to mine. Also it's not just going on a single highway to reach my destination it's a combination of 2 different highways and several motorways and even roads that lead through villages. There are also often detours because of construction and whatnot. Maybe important to note, this is Europe. Going from one's country big city to other's country small city. It's not just straight single highway.
- lvturner 5y ago
  Seeing the right sign but being three lanes over in nose to tail traffic is a semi-common occurrence when driving for me - missed many exits that way...
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  If you have 230km trip, it is unlikely there'll be signs at beginning that indicate "turn left to go to specific place X". Similarly when you get to exit highway or turn to downtown, it'll say "Jarvis street exit" or "Exit 238", but if you're going to a random house on a random street in random part of random town, signs really may not be that helpful or specific. So I may be going to 123 Brown street of Pleasantville, and to get there I need to take number of random roads in my town, get to highway 10, then take ramp to Highway 20 West (which at this point is actually going South, because highways are wiggly but need consistent naming), then take exit 303 "Alabama Street" to go to Atom road to drive 20km to take right on Williams Boulevard to get to town of Pleasantville and take 3 more streets to go to Brown Street. (also, note that I've found signs in different places be oriented very differently; in parts of Europe, you'll frequently have sings that indicate which way to a selection of big neighbouring cities; I don't really see that in North America)
jokethrowaway 5y ago
I think it's because it's trite and repetitive and you've done it for 5 different languages and way too many years. You felt some emotion when you first learned a language and built something cool with it. You don't feel anything nowadays implementing the 200th service. ~20 years ago I knew most PHP function by heart. Today I need to keep the rust documentation open. I had roughly the same internet access I have now. What you point out with the GPS likely happened because the negative emotion of taking the wrong turn built a memory for you.
thedanbob 5y ago
I agree, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I have so much random web development knowledge crammed in my head I’m more than happy to offload the rest to devdocs.io and StackOverflow. Although it does mean that I frequently forget which of my projects contains the solution to that one bizarre problem I just ran into again, so whenever I solve one of those I try to leave myself an easily grepable comment.
- FractalHQ 5y ago
  TIL about devdocs! Is this a popular resource? It looks like a lite web version of the MacOS native app Dash.
  - thedanbob 5y ago
    I actually found it when I was looking for a replacement for Dash, after I switched to Linux. It's not quite as convenient (still miss being able to pull up Dash with a global hotkey) but it gets the job done.

by rkuska 5y ago

throw10920 5y ago

> I think we don’t remember the things because we know they are at the reach of our fingers. To be more precise: studies have shown that passive learning is significantly less effective than active learning[1]. "Active" learning involves intentional recall, as opposed to passive review. Searching things is passive review. Racking your brain to try to remember the prototype of a function is active recall, which significantly strengthens the memory in your brain. So, yes, this is the reason, and there's scientific evidence to back it up. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/116/39/19251 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/39/19251

hnarn 5y ago

> I never could remember which exit to take I don’t mean for this to sound snarky, it’s an honest question: are there no signs? Having to “remember” which exit to take seems to indicate to me that the route isn’t drivable in any intuitive way (ie follow the signage to your city/block) Because if there are signs, I just think this depends on how we individually use GPS assistance.

rich_sasha 5y ago
My experience is the same as GP. Signs take attention looking at. They often don’t point to where you want to go, but some other major destination along the way, or road names. Junctions can be confusing. When I can, I like to drive without satnav, it makes me appreciate the geography more.
thrashh 5y ago
I won’t even the remember the exit name if I use a nav app. And I’m someone that can walk around randomly and perfectly keep a mental map of the whole area.
rkuska 5y ago
My hometown is a small one, so I have to remember which (bigger) cities are prior to mine. Also it's not just going on a single highway to reach my destination it's a combination of 2 different highways and several motorways and even roads that lead through villages. There are also often detours because of construction and whatnot. Maybe important to note, this is Europe. Going from one's country big city to other's country small city. It's not just straight single highway.
lvturner 5y ago
Seeing the right sign but being three lanes over in nose to tail traffic is a semi-common occurrence when driving for me - missed many exits that way...
NikolaNovak 5y ago
If you have 230km trip, it is unlikely there'll be signs at beginning that indicate "turn left to go to specific place X". Similarly when you get to exit highway or turn to downtown, it'll say "Jarvis street exit" or "Exit 238", but if you're going to a random house on a random street in random part of random town, signs really may not be that helpful or specific. So I may be going to 123 Brown street of Pleasantville, and to get there I need to take number of random roads in my town, get to highway 10, then take ramp to Highway 20 West (which at this point is actually going South, because highways are wiggly but need consistent naming), then take exit 303 "Alabama Street" to go to Atom road to drive 20km to take right on Williams Boulevard to get to town of Pleasantville and take 3 more streets to go to Brown Street. (also, note that I've found signs in different places be oriented very differently; in parts of Europe, you'll frequently have sings that indicate which way to a selection of big neighbouring cities; I don't really see that in North America)

jokethrowaway 5y ago

I think it's because it's trite and repetitive and you've done it for 5 different languages and way too many years. You felt some emotion when you first learned a language and built something cool with it. You don't feel anything nowadays implementing the 200th service. ~20 years ago I knew most PHP function by heart. Today I need to keep the rust documentation open. I had roughly the same internet access I have now. What you point out with the GPS likely happened because the negative emotion of taking the wrong turn built a memory for you.

thedanbob 5y ago

I agree, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I have so much random web development knowledge crammed in my head I’m more than happy to offload the rest to devdocs.io and StackOverflow. Although it does mean that I frequently forget which of my projects contains the solution to that one bizarre problem I just ran into again, so whenever I solve one of those I try to leave myself an easily grepable comment.

FractalHQ 5y ago
TIL about devdocs! Is this a popular resource? It looks like a lite web version of the MacOS native app Dash.
- thedanbob 5y ago
  I actually found it when I was looking for a replacement for Dash, after I switched to Linux. It's not quite as convenient (still miss being able to pull up Dash with a global hotkey) but it gets the job done.