6 ms·

Being able to look things up, even in seconds, is not equivalent to knowing them. When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would caus

Being able to look things up, even in seconds, is not equivalent to knowing them. When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y", if Y is buried in some pdf file on your computer, or one Bing search away - how do you know you should search for Y, when there are infinite other things you could search for.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
That's one of the main points of The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and I think that I agree. Long term subconscious memory is where a lot of the connections happen. If your long term memory only knows where to find things without knowing them then that ability is stunted.
rntksi 4y ago
The way I used to write/set-up tests when I was teaching is that you could use a limited set of online resources to answer, but if you have to search every question you won't have enough time to do it. So it also tested your ability to quickly locate the information you need should you not know it right away.
forgotusername6 4y ago
Back at university one of the first things we were told about being an a good engineer was: "You don't need to know everything, but you do need to know where to look it up". It's a statement that I agree with. There is just too much knowledge to know it all. These days there is a very real skill in knowing how to search i.e. a second order version of the above statement "you need to know where to find out how to look this up".
- arcbyte 4y ago
  There's a HUGE difference between looking something up to reactivate sleepy memories and learning something new for the first time. There are some really technical things ive done in the pasy that I couldn't do without a reference right now, but once I've got the reference I don't need to be reminded about low level details or edge cases or gotchas - it's all still there in my head I just need to see the road map and it will all come back to me.
- nolroz 4y ago
  Yep, my dad used to sum this up as "All Engineering school does is teach you where to shit." I guess I may have gone with "where to eat" but he had a flair for the dramatic.
- tester756 4y ago
  But still, there's "minimal required knowledge".
  - sam0x17 4y ago
    Like how to use google
    - tester756 4y ago
      Nope. I wouldn't want to go to doc that has to Google basic stuff.
      - sam0x17 4y ago
        Conversely, I wouldn't want to go to a doc who doesn't know how to Google basic stuff.
    - epgui 4y ago
      Underestimating the amount of knowledge required or of importance to know (yes, even when google exists) is just another form of the infamous Dunning-Kruger.
    - sha256sum 4y ago
      Google’s search mechanisms and rankings have changed a lot over my lifetime. I don’t usually trust it to find the right answers to problems in my field unless it’s a very well supported technology. I don’t agree that “knowing how to Google” is a skill in its own right for this reason. Hell they even claimed not long ago they would fix quote searches but they seem worse than ever.
  - forgotusername6 4y ago
    It depends. I haven't yet in my career come across something that I couldn't research online because I hadn't been taught it. Usually the first step is to discover which words to use, reading around the domain. Once I have the words I can usually find out everything I need to do my job. Knowledge is so easily acquired these days that, while useful, it is not essential. I hire people with zero domain knowledge for that reason.
jononomo 4y ago
It is a lot faster to have things stored in your head than to look them up. You can just put a time limit on the test and tell people that they can either spend a year before the test starts learning the material and getting it into their heads, of they can try to learn biochemistry from scratch using Google after the 40-minute timer for the test starts.
willio58 4y ago
The thing is, if you search for something enough you will end up learning it. It's a natural way to learn things. This is how people become software engineers these days. They _constantly_ look stuff up, watch videos, and learn by doing that. Yes, you can still go to college and take tests that require you to "know" things, but honestly the vast majority of what I "knew" in college turned out to be short-term knowledge stored for tests. By searching and learning, you
- godshatter 4y ago
  A person can certainly become a software engineer without a college education, but I worry that constantly learning things just in time for using them will give them disconnected snippets of knowledge in a lot of areas rather than a good concept of how the underlying system functions. I guess it depends on if they are studying computer architecture, complexity theory, and whatnot in those videos or if they are just copying snippets of code from SO. I learned by doing, initially, because I started learning programming with minimal resources before going to college and had to unlearn or restructure a lot of the knowledge I had gained up to that point once I did. I would probably have gotten there in the end, but it would have taken me a lot longer. The world was different then, though. Instead of easy access to info before going to college I was lucky to find a book somewhere that someone threw out that talked about things in a peripheral way that I needed to know, or ran into someone I could discuss things with that were as info-deprived as I was. That's where my skepticism of this approach comes from, I guess. But I didn't live in a world where knowledge was at my fingertips from a very early age, so who knows?
wruza 4y ago
When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y" This is reasonable. E.g. sure a person can google how to build a house, but also sure that at planning phase they’ll mess and conflict with a half of good rules of thumb. Or forget them right after reading, because there is no habit nor knowledge in their head, and all that info is pretty transient. Pro is not the one who has read an article, but the one who can tell a couple of their own notes about it. Otoh, gp is also correct that tests should check how you are doing in a real life situation. So maybe use both ways of testing?
sam0x17 4y ago
Right but you shouldn't be tested on things that can just be "looked up". You should be tested on your ability to apply what you know, and teachers should be taking the time to write globally unique problems for every single test (gasp)

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

That's one of the main points of The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and I think that I agree. Long term subconscious memory is where a lot of the connections happen. If your long term memory only knows where to find things without knowing them then that ability is stunted.

rntksi 4y ago

The way I used to write/set-up tests when I was teaching is that you could use a limited set of online resources to answer, but if you have to search every question you won't have enough time to do it. So it also tested your ability to quickly locate the information you need should you not know it right away.

forgotusername6 4y ago

Back at university one of the first things we were told about being an a good engineer was: "You don't need to know everything, but you do need to know where to look it up". It's a statement that I agree with. There is just too much knowledge to know it all. These days there is a very real skill in knowing how to search i.e. a second order version of the above statement "you need to know where to find out how to look this up".

arcbyte 4y ago
There's a HUGE difference between looking something up to reactivate sleepy memories and learning something new for the first time. There are some really technical things ive done in the pasy that I couldn't do without a reference right now, but once I've got the reference I don't need to be reminded about low level details or edge cases or gotchas - it's all still there in my head I just need to see the road map and it will all come back to me.
nolroz 4y ago
Yep, my dad used to sum this up as "All Engineering school does is teach you where to shit." I guess I may have gone with "where to eat" but he had a flair for the dramatic.
tester756 4y ago
But still, there's "minimal required knowledge".
- sam0x17 4y ago
  Like how to use google
  - tester756 4y ago
    Nope. I wouldn't want to go to doc that has to Google basic stuff.
    - sam0x17 4y ago
      Conversely, I wouldn't want to go to a doc who doesn't know how to Google basic stuff.
  - epgui 4y ago
    Underestimating the amount of knowledge required or of importance to know (yes, even when google exists) is just another form of the infamous Dunning-Kruger.
  - sha256sum 4y ago
    Google’s search mechanisms and rankings have changed a lot over my lifetime. I don’t usually trust it to find the right answers to problems in my field unless it’s a very well supported technology. I don’t agree that “knowing how to Google” is a skill in its own right for this reason. Hell they even claimed not long ago they would fix quote searches but they seem worse than ever.
- forgotusername6 4y ago
  It depends. I haven't yet in my career come across something that I couldn't research online because I hadn't been taught it. Usually the first step is to discover which words to use, reading around the domain. Once I have the words I can usually find out everything I need to do my job. Knowledge is so easily acquired these days that, while useful, it is not essential. I hire people with zero domain knowledge for that reason.

jononomo 4y ago

It is a lot faster to have things stored in your head than to look them up. You can just put a time limit on the test and tell people that they can either spend a year before the test starts learning the material and getting it into their heads, of they can try to learn biochemistry from scratch using Google after the 40-minute timer for the test starts.

willio58 4y ago

The thing is, if you search for something enough you will end up learning it. It's a natural way to learn things. This is how people become software engineers these days. They _constantly_ look stuff up, watch videos, and learn by doing that. Yes, you can still go to college and take tests that require you to "know" things, but honestly the vast majority of what I "knew" in college turned out to be short-term knowledge stored for tests. By searching and learning, you

godshatter 4y ago
A person can certainly become a software engineer without a college education, but I worry that constantly learning things just in time for using them will give them disconnected snippets of knowledge in a lot of areas rather than a good concept of how the underlying system functions. I guess it depends on if they are studying computer architecture, complexity theory, and whatnot in those videos or if they are just copying snippets of code from SO. I learned by doing, initially, because I started learning programming with minimal resources before going to college and had to unlearn or restructure a lot of the knowledge I had gained up to that point once I did. I would probably have gotten there in the end, but it would have taken me a lot longer. The world was different then, though. Instead of easy access to info before going to college I was lucky to find a book somewhere that someone threw out that talked about things in a peripheral way that I needed to know, or ran into someone I could discuss things with that were as info-deprived as I was. That's where my skepticism of this approach comes from, I guess. But I didn't live in a world where knowledge was at my fingertips from a very early age, so who knows?

wruza 4y ago

When someone suggests "let's do X", you cannot reply with "but that would cause Y" This is reasonable. E.g. sure a person can google how to build a house, but also sure that at planning phase they’ll mess and conflict with a half of good rules of thumb. Or forget them right after reading, because there is no habit nor knowledge in their head, and all that info is pretty transient. Pro is not the one who has read an article, but the one who can tell a couple of their own notes about it. Otoh, gp is also correct that tests should check how you are doing in a real life situation. So maybe use both ways of testing?

sam0x17 4y ago

Right but you shouldn't be tested on things that can just be "looked up". You should be tested on your ability to apply what you know, and teachers should be taking the time to write globally unique problems for every single test (gasp)