11 ms·

The Overflowing Brain: Information overload and the limits of working memory

288 points by rzk 3y ago

pimpampum 3y ago
I wonder if over-reliance on digital tools prevents us from being challenged enough to maintain an optimal working memory.
- api 3y ago
  Seems more likely that the Internet is flooding us and overwhelming our working memory.
- MengerSponge 3y ago
  And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. 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. Plato (400 BC)
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    Funny, given that we read Plato.
    - ycombinete 3y ago
      Plato would not have missed the irony. He was incredibly literary and ironic in his writing. There’s always tension in Plato as to what was his opinion and what was Socrates’. Furthermore many characters in his dialogues are explicitly meant to be wrong in their opinions. Just reading a Plato quote as evidence of Plato’s actual opinion is a route to confusion. This idea as communicated in Phaedrus, by Socrates, was certainly Socrates’ opinion: Socrates never wrote anything down.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    I'd bet most of us have to remember a lot more than Plato did. What did he have in his day to day that's similar to the steps I have to take to log into various systems, or recalling the structure of different file systems so I can find things, or the ever growing and changing number of apps and tools? If I were a philosopher, I probably wouldn't need to write things down as much either and it'd be easier to see the need for the written word as "weakness".
- emoII 3y ago
  Another perspective is that putting our knowledge in the world by using digital tools is the only way we can function while being bombarded by information and distractions
  - PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    And it is possibly the only truly safe way to ensure knowledge propagation.
    - passion__desire 3y ago
      Internalise external information > solve problems in your head by moving pieces around > externalize solutions
      - intelVISA 3y ago
        Transfer solutions to product > burn VC money > retire
      - vidarh 3y ago
        Externalising solutions without externalising the process that lead there is the cause of a whole lot of problems, though. Unstated assumptions often lead to beliefs around choices in solutions that have little to do with reality, but that percolate through systems.
- Topfi 3y ago
  I really believe it depends on the tool and use case. A Zettelkasten (digital or physical) does create some reliance, yes, but considering the improved output commonly associated, I'd be very surprised if a Zettelkasten tool prevented a user from sufficiently challenging their working memory. There have been, admittedly, no studies on specific digital tools and their impact on the working memory, though at the same time, even the benefit of actively training working memory is inconclusive at best[0]. In general, I am doubtful over any statement that general use of modern technology could lead to a short-term memory impairement. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4968033/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4968033/
- falcolas 3y ago
  A human's working memory has never been that big. 5-7 items at a time. Less for those who are also dealing with other mental issues.
  - pengaru 3y ago
    Which is kind of bonkers when you think about how much complexity there is in the gray matter upstairs, so many neurons, yet just 5-7 items in the cache at a time. Jim Keller raised this point in one of his Lex Fridman interviews. They're some of the more worthwhile ones to listen to IMO.
  - criddell 3y ago
    Is what Marilou Henner can do different than working memory?
    - falcolas 3y ago
      There is one thing I always point out when individuals are called out as an exception: genetic mutants whose abilities are ideal for specific tasks exist. Runners who don’t produce lactic acid, swimmers with absurdly long arms, and so forth. The diagnosis of Marilu Henner’s recall ability as Hyperthymesia (per her Wikipedia article) seems to confirm this is a mutation compared to typical memory formation. That aside, long term memory is indeed distinct from working memory. Long term memory is formed from your working memory, but the memories are stored separately.
- gopalv 3y ago
  > prevents us from being challenged enough Digital tools mostly seem help me with long-term memory and doesn't do a thing for the working memory exercise. I can look up a phone number or have a calendar on what I'm doing next Wednesday, but the working memory of "what am I doing right now" hasn't gone digital yet. Navigation has vaguely the same, because it's more long form memory rather than the hot list in my brain (maybe "what gear am I in?" on a manual car? doubtful). Of all the day to day activities I do, cooking is one of those things where I've really felt like my working memory is working hard & despite quite a few tools like timers or automatic cookers, the way the kitchen is organized with closed drawers is a most-recent working memory exercise like those face-down card games.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kayodelycaon 3y ago
  From personal experience they don’t. Nothing has been able to improve my working memory. If anything digital tools greatly improve my memory by allowing me to offload things.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    What have you tried? I'm not doubting your efforts. I think there's a very real wall people working to improve their working memory are bound to hit eventually, but I haven't explored things specifically designed to improve working memory. I play video games, I play instruments, I write programs, and I have to imagine that all of it helps, but I haven't tried "brain training" or used tools marketed as improving working memory. I'm not even really sure what's on offer in that space, so if you've found some I'm curious to know about them.
    - kayodelycaon 3y ago
      Surprisingly, working in food service pushed my brain pretty hard for working memory. I managed to push myself from 3 items to 4, but it required constant effort to keep it there. The improvement would disappear after a week of not working. I can’t think of any better test than trial by fire. Kind of like learning languages. Study all you want, theory won’t save you when it comes to practical application. :) When it comes to programming, becoming familiar with your tools and learning to offload stuff to paper far exceeds anything else. If you know something well, you need less working memory to do it.
- autoexec 3y ago
  I doubt it. Not for most people writing software anyway. It might just be my own limitations, but I feel like I'm challenged quite a lot. I'm also not sure how much improvement we can realistically get. Some improvement will certainly come with practice, but at a certain point you're bound to approach your limits and the number of errors and amount of time wasted won't be worth the extra effort expended depending only on what your brain can hold onto at once.
throw1234651234 3y ago
I got bored halfway through the article. Very unfocused and there seems to be no point to it. Here is what you need to know - working memory is the ability to hold things in short term memory. Most people can hold 7 distinct pieces. What's important is that these pieces are not scalar, these can be "reference types". For example 3.14 would be 1 piece of information called "Pi" and other defined concepts are just "1 piece". Also, not all pieces are the same - 7 numbers are easier to memorize than 7 colors for most people for example. Working memory is the fluid intelligence part intelligence covered on IQ test, which covers 2 parts: fluid intelligence(working memory) and crystallized intelligence (stuff you memorized). Unlike what the article states, no one has found a proven way to improve working memory in a general sense in adulthood. This would be the panacea if someone did. edit: I did get through the end of the article after all and at the end of the day it really does say nothing at all. The author just tried to tie a bunch of old concepts together.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  > no one has found a proven way to improve working memory in a general sense in adulthood I was under the impression that dual n-back training was a way to achieve this, although https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back describes it as somewhere between unproven and small impact. It's a pity that it hasn't been studied more extensively; as you note, if we had a reliable way of increasing general working memory it would have a significant impact.
  - throw1234651234 3y ago
    There is a well-research article on it here: https://gwern.net/dnb-faq https://gwern.net/dnb-faq There is a good desktop trainer (/game) here: https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ In short, my understanding is that we can't improve it, but that could be very much due to the lack of actual dedicated research. If we could, it would essentially be a super power. There are people who can't memorize their authenticator codes in one piece, let alone focus when someone is describing a method signature at work. This would be a big quality-of-life change for those people. This also ties in with following conversations and tying words together well, which most people don't think about.
mark_l_watson 3y ago
Is this really a problem? When I code, I always work on one thing for 60 - 90 minutes, nothing else so all working memory is dedicated to task at hand. When I read (fiction or technical) or watch a lecture on YouTube, this is usually a dedicated 15 - 60 minute session. Once again, all working memory is dedicated to task at hand. Working memory might be a problem for people who multitask, but I don't like to do that.
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  You need to understand the scope of what you are working on. For example, right now I am "just" getting another field from an entity in a 3rd party API. That field is a reference. Immediately I have questions like: 1. Do I get this in one call or several? If former, will this cause issues with the cache? If latter, will it decrease performance? 2. At what level do I want to do the filtering, at the query or higher level? 3. How will this affect existing calls, etc? Breaking this down into questions is called "chunking" - grouping multi-parameter unknowns until they are simple. The problem is that if you can only keep 5 things in mind, you may outright miss questions to ask, or, at the very least, you will spend more time on a task than a person with a higher WM.
talldatethrow 3y ago
People decide what they want to memorize. If people want to spend memory on goofy things, that's up then I guess. I barely know the streets I take to my office, 6 months in (and I'm not just talking about their actual names). I use nav every time. My father thought I was losing my mind. But at the same time I can remember basically every small block of code in a large saas I single handedly built a few years ago, even today.
- balder1991 3y ago
  I guess the case of remembering old things, likely because you have some sort of emotion associated with it, is not the same as working memory.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >People decide what they want to memorize. Not exactly the case when you have ADHD.
  - bmoxb 3y ago
    I wouldn't say it's true in general. You can certainly choose what to put active effort into learning/revising, but memorisation isn't really something we have direct, conscious control over.
  - anthk 3y ago
    You might love Gemini and Gopher networks then. Try Lagrange either on PC, Win, Linux, Mac or Android and head to gemini://gemi.dev and gopher://magical.fish, the news section. No bullshit content, no doomscrolling, no ads, no notifications.
- dktnj 3y ago
  > But at the same time I can remember basically every small block of code in a large saas I single handedly built a few years ago, even today. Trying to replace that with something useful here at the moment. Much more difficult than it looks.
- Llamamoe 3y ago
anthk 3y ago
As a Spaniard when I read "tertulia" I associate it with radio/tv talk shows with 5% of content and 95% of blabbery and filler. Oh, and talkers interrupting each other, everytime. Then, I head do the teletext service (which is "alive", amazingly) and I have the same content in four or five lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext What we need it's some service over web/gemini/gopher which news resumed down to the core. Yes, http://text.npr.org http://text.npr.org it's good for Americans, and http://lite.cnn.io http://lite.cnn.io used to work. But, instead of an endless wall, something composed of two or three paragraphs.
cborenstein 3y ago
I find this part super interesting: > He describes studies that have found a substantial delay in the reaction time of people talking on their cell phone while driving --- or even just holding conversations with someone in the car while driving. A similar delay has not been found in these studies when the driver is doing more passive activities such as listening to the radio or an audio book; it is the need to focus on a conversation that limits the working memory's ability to effectively support driving at the same time. When your mind is holding items in working memory, that means that it has less space to focus and execute effectively on the main task at hand. Just writing things down gives some resolution of that task/thought so that we can fully show up for our main thing. Working on a new notepad for jotting things down to free up working memory. The goal is to make it easy to capture things and add some organization when you want. Curious to get feedback. https://www.stashpad.com/blog/working-memory https://www.stashpad.com/blog/working-memory
- ChrisClark 3y ago
  As a personal anecdote, a long time ago I tried learning Chinese from a CD on my commute. I gave up after a couple of days because I realized it was affecting my driving. I needed a lot of concentration to practice the language and found I was making driving mistakes.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  This might also explain why simply having a passenger in your car with you will impair your driving. You're probably paying some amount of attention to the passenger.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
    I tell my wife to shush when I'm approaching a difficult intersection. She gets it.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      My code phrase is "just a minute" -- a phrase I developed a habit for when people want to interrupt me at work when I'm not in a place where I can safely pause.
babyshake 3y ago
It will be very interesting to see the intersections between cognitive neuroscience and notions of "working memory" and context windows in AI.
wcrichton 3y ago
For the curious, I have done some experiments on working memory and programming: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06305 https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06305 > Program tracing, or mentally simulating a program on concrete inputs, is an important part of general program comprehension. Programs involve many kinds of virtual state that must be held in memory, such as variable/value pairs and a call stack. In this work, we examine the influence of short-term working memory (WM) on a person's ability to remember program state during tracing. [...]
- siilikuin 3y ago
  You're too humble, Will. Allow me to copy and paste the whole intro. >Program tracing, or mentally simulating a program on concrete inputs, is an important part of general program comprehension. Programs involve many kinds of virtual state that must be held in memory, such as variable/value pairs and a call stack. In this work, we examine the influence of short-term working memory (WM) on a person's ability to remember program state during tracing. We first confirm that previous findings in cognitive psychology transfer to the programming domain: people can keep about 7 variable/value pairs in WM, and people will accidentally swap associations between variables due to WM load. We use a restricted focus viewing interface to further analyze the strategies people use to trace through programs, and the relationship of tracing strategy to WM. Given a straight-line program, we find half of our participants traced a program from the top-down line-by-line (linearly), and the other half start at the bottom and trace upward based on data dependencies (on-demand). Participants with an on-demand strategy made more WM errors while tracing straight-line code than with a linear strategy, but the two strategies contained an equal number of WM errors when tracing code with functions. We conclude with the implications of these findings for the design of programming tools: first, programs should be analyzed to identify and refactor human-memory-intensive sections of code. Second, programming environments should interactively visualize variable metadata to reduce WM load in accordance with a person's tracing strategy. Third, tools for program comprehension should enable externalizing program state while tracing.
- nl 3y ago
  I hadn't seen this, but just commented[1] noting the link between working memory and cyclometic complexity. I suspect your experimental results might be slightly weakened by the way mechanical Turkers will always do the easiest thing possible to get paid (I've had studies broken by this too). That probably explains this: In fact, we found the preponderance of linear traces somewhat bewildering — participants appeared to just click through each function, remembering what they could and then synthesizing the information into an answer at the end.
Fr0styMatt88 3y ago
The way I’ve come around to digital tools is that I consider them a different, externalised type of memory augmentation. They give us another type of memory. If someone interrupts me and asks me to do something that I can’t attend to right then, there’s two options (assuming I want to do the thing): - Hold it in my working memory until I’m able to fully context switch or put mental effort into transferring it into long-term memory - Immediately note it down, then make no further effort to remember it The same applies for random ideas that might pop into my head that are unrelated to the task at hand.
- nine_k 3y ago
  Noting it down so that the context is easy enough to restore may be a surprisingly large amount of work, easily taking 10 or even 15 minutes, not 20 seconds. This is somehow related to the fact that e.g. a programmer can spend 30-60 minutes wandering through code and docs before the right amount of context is built in their head, so that a seemingly simple change can be done with confidence.
  - Fr0styMatt88 3y ago
    Oh yeah absolutely. I mainly do notes in my personal life, coding is a whole different thing that I’m still in the process of figuring out lol
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
svnt 3y ago
Can someone please update the title to reflect this is from 2010?
balder1991 3y ago
I’d guess those Paradox games such as Europa Universalis and Victoria do wonders for working memory exercise.
ftxbro 3y ago
By improving mental hygiene the only limit is the bekenstein bound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound we're all gonna make it.
- goldenkey 3y ago
  You're forgetting the interconnects, the buses. Now, make a topologically-parameterized bound model ;-)
jcims 3y ago
Any Harry Mack fans in here? I feel like he sustains the information processing throughput that happens when an olympic gymnast or diver is mid-air, but for minutes at a time with remarkable ability to pocket information for later recall. Edit: Looks like he just dropped his first wordplay Wednesday in a while. Two and a half hours of freestyling based on chat recommendations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEkCIF1Msc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEkCIF1Msc
8bitsrule 3y ago
Speaking of information overload: this article would be a lot more readable if the sentences were shorter. I quickly tired of the load. On average each sentence is over 30 words. Gasp Most and-splices, commas, semicolons don't add much value. At least the word lengths aren't too egregious.
firewolf34 3y ago
[dead]
nl 3y ago
In-case people haven't made the link, working memory is why cyclomatic complexity is so important in software development. For each increase in cyclomatic complexity, you need to keep one additional bit of state in your head. Usually you can ignore high level state bits when you are down low, so cyclomatic complexity isn't a one-to-one mapping to working memory, but one notes that the old shorthand of "working memory is 7 +/- 2" is close to the "cyclomatic complexity > 10 is too hard" rule.
- feoren 3y ago
  I really like early returns for this reason. if (someEdgeCase) { return SpecialValue; } const normalCase = a + b ... It allows you to drop a case from working memory as early as possible. I believe this would be a +1 in cyclomatic complexity, but it shouldn't be. Cyclomatic complexity is not the whole story (nor do I think it tries to be).
itvision 3y ago
I have insane issues with my working memory which render me basically useless as an employee or even a human being and doctors here in my country aren't even aware such a thing exists and can deteriorate. And given my salary and savings I cannot afford going to the countries where this problem is studied and probably can be fixed. Darn.
- feoren 3y ago
  Have you tried gluten free ginkgo biloba bee pollen salt lamps? Sorry, I had to. But here's an actual real suggestion that may or may not be any better. It's a working memory trainer that I feel has slightly helped improve my own working memory called Brain Workshop. Obviously proper diagnosis and medical treatment would be preferred. https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ Edit: one other thing that may legitimately be the issue, worth checking even if unlikely: get a Carbon Monoxide detector.
KingOfCoders 3y ago
I was so blown away from the concept, when my boss gave me "Information Anxiety" 30 years ago. Before that - as someone who read everything - I would never have seen that problem.

288 points by rzk 3y ago

I wonder if over-reliance on digital tools prevents us from being challenged enough to maintain an optimal working memory.

api 3y ago
Seems more likely that the Internet is flooding us and overwhelming our working memory.
MengerSponge 3y ago
And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. 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. Plato (400 BC)
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Funny, given that we read Plato.
  - ycombinete 3y ago
    Plato would not have missed the irony. He was incredibly literary and ironic in his writing. There’s always tension in Plato as to what was his opinion and what was Socrates’. Furthermore many characters in his dialogues are explicitly meant to be wrong in their opinions. Just reading a Plato quote as evidence of Plato’s actual opinion is a route to confusion. This idea as communicated in Phaedrus, by Socrates, was certainly Socrates’ opinion: Socrates never wrote anything down.
- autoexec 3y ago
  I'd bet most of us have to remember a lot more than Plato did. What did he have in his day to day that's similar to the steps I have to take to log into various systems, or recalling the structure of different file systems so I can find things, or the ever growing and changing number of apps and tools? If I were a philosopher, I probably wouldn't need to write things down as much either and it'd be easier to see the need for the written word as "weakness".
emoII 3y ago
Another perspective is that putting our knowledge in the world by using digital tools is the only way we can function while being bombarded by information and distractions
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  And it is possibly the only truly safe way to ensure knowledge propagation.
  - passion__desire 3y ago
    Internalise external information > solve problems in your head by moving pieces around > externalize solutions
    - intelVISA 3y ago
      Transfer solutions to product > burn VC money > retire
    - vidarh 3y ago
      Externalising solutions without externalising the process that lead there is the cause of a whole lot of problems, though. Unstated assumptions often lead to beliefs around choices in solutions that have little to do with reality, but that percolate through systems.
Topfi 3y ago
I really believe it depends on the tool and use case. A Zettelkasten (digital or physical) does create some reliance, yes, but considering the improved output commonly associated, I'd be very surprised if a Zettelkasten tool prevented a user from sufficiently challenging their working memory. There have been, admittedly, no studies on specific digital tools and their impact on the working memory, though at the same time, even the benefit of actively training working memory is inconclusive at best[0]. In general, I am doubtful over any statement that general use of modern technology could lead to a short-term memory impairement. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4968033/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4968033/
falcolas 3y ago
A human's working memory has never been that big. 5-7 items at a time. Less for those who are also dealing with other mental issues.
- pengaru 3y ago
  Which is kind of bonkers when you think about how much complexity there is in the gray matter upstairs, so many neurons, yet just 5-7 items in the cache at a time. Jim Keller raised this point in one of his Lex Fridman interviews. They're some of the more worthwhile ones to listen to IMO.
- criddell 3y ago
  Is what Marilou Henner can do different than working memory?
  - falcolas 3y ago
    There is one thing I always point out when individuals are called out as an exception: genetic mutants whose abilities are ideal for specific tasks exist. Runners who don’t produce lactic acid, swimmers with absurdly long arms, and so forth. The diagnosis of Marilu Henner’s recall ability as Hyperthymesia (per her Wikipedia article) seems to confirm this is a mutation compared to typical memory formation. That aside, long term memory is indeed distinct from working memory. Long term memory is formed from your working memory, but the memories are stored separately.
gopalv 3y ago
> prevents us from being challenged enough Digital tools mostly seem help me with long-term memory and doesn't do a thing for the working memory exercise. I can look up a phone number or have a calendar on what I'm doing next Wednesday, but the working memory of "what am I doing right now" hasn't gone digital yet. Navigation has vaguely the same, because it's more long form memory rather than the hot list in my brain (maybe "what gear am I in?" on a manual car? doubtful). Of all the day to day activities I do, cooking is one of those things where I've really felt like my working memory is working hard & despite quite a few tools like timers or automatic cookers, the way the kitchen is organized with closed drawers is a most-recent working memory exercise like those face-down card games.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kayodelycaon 3y ago
From personal experience they don’t. Nothing has been able to improve my working memory. If anything digital tools greatly improve my memory by allowing me to offload things.
- autoexec 3y ago
  What have you tried? I'm not doubting your efforts. I think there's a very real wall people working to improve their working memory are bound to hit eventually, but I haven't explored things specifically designed to improve working memory. I play video games, I play instruments, I write programs, and I have to imagine that all of it helps, but I haven't tried "brain training" or used tools marketed as improving working memory. I'm not even really sure what's on offer in that space, so if you've found some I'm curious to know about them.
  - kayodelycaon 3y ago
    Surprisingly, working in food service pushed my brain pretty hard for working memory. I managed to push myself from 3 items to 4, but it required constant effort to keep it there. The improvement would disappear after a week of not working. I can’t think of any better test than trial by fire. Kind of like learning languages. Study all you want, theory won’t save you when it comes to practical application. :) When it comes to programming, becoming familiar with your tools and learning to offload stuff to paper far exceeds anything else. If you know something well, you need less working memory to do it.
autoexec 3y ago
I doubt it. Not for most people writing software anyway. It might just be my own limitations, but I feel like I'm challenged quite a lot. I'm also not sure how much improvement we can realistically get. Some improvement will certainly come with practice, but at a certain point you're bound to approach your limits and the number of errors and amount of time wasted won't be worth the extra effort expended depending only on what your brain can hold onto at once.

throw1234651234 3y ago

I got bored halfway through the article. Very unfocused and there seems to be no point to it. Here is what you need to know - working memory is the ability to hold things in short term memory. Most people can hold 7 distinct pieces. What's important is that these pieces are not scalar, these can be "reference types". For example 3.14 would be 1 piece of information called "Pi" and other defined concepts are just "1 piece". Also, not all pieces are the same - 7 numbers are easier to memorize than 7 colors for most people for example. Working memory is the fluid intelligence part intelligence covered on IQ test, which covers 2 parts: fluid intelligence(working memory) and crystallized intelligence (stuff you memorized). Unlike what the article states, no one has found a proven way to improve working memory in a general sense in adulthood. This would be the panacea if someone did. edit: I did get through the end of the article after all and at the end of the day it really does say nothing at all. The author just tried to tie a bunch of old concepts together.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> no one has found a proven way to improve working memory in a general sense in adulthood I was under the impression that dual n-back training was a way to achieve this, although https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back describes it as somewhere between unproven and small impact. It's a pity that it hasn't been studied more extensively; as you note, if we had a reliable way of increasing general working memory it would have a significant impact.
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  There is a well-research article on it here: https://gwern.net/dnb-faq https://gwern.net/dnb-faq There is a good desktop trainer (/game) here: https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ In short, my understanding is that we can't improve it, but that could be very much due to the lack of actual dedicated research. If we could, it would essentially be a super power. There are people who can't memorize their authenticator codes in one piece, let alone focus when someone is describing a method signature at work. This would be a big quality-of-life change for those people. This also ties in with following conversations and tying words together well, which most people don't think about.

mark_l_watson 3y ago

Is this really a problem? When I code, I always work on one thing for 60 - 90 minutes, nothing else so all working memory is dedicated to task at hand. When I read (fiction or technical) or watch a lecture on YouTube, this is usually a dedicated 15 - 60 minute session. Once again, all working memory is dedicated to task at hand. Working memory might be a problem for people who multitask, but I don't like to do that.

throw1234651234 3y ago
You need to understand the scope of what you are working on. For example, right now I am "just" getting another field from an entity in a 3rd party API. That field is a reference. Immediately I have questions like: 1. Do I get this in one call or several? If former, will this cause issues with the cache? If latter, will it decrease performance? 2. At what level do I want to do the filtering, at the query or higher level? 3. How will this affect existing calls, etc? Breaking this down into questions is called "chunking" - grouping multi-parameter unknowns until they are simple. The problem is that if you can only keep 5 things in mind, you may outright miss questions to ask, or, at the very least, you will spend more time on a task than a person with a higher WM.

talldatethrow 3y ago

People decide what they want to memorize. If people want to spend memory on goofy things, that's up then I guess. I barely know the streets I take to my office, 6 months in (and I'm not just talking about their actual names). I use nav every time. My father thought I was losing my mind. But at the same time I can remember basically every small block of code in a large saas I single handedly built a few years ago, even today.

balder1991 3y ago
I guess the case of remembering old things, likely because you have some sort of emotion associated with it, is not the same as working memory.
coldtea 3y ago
>People decide what they want to memorize. Not exactly the case when you have ADHD.
- bmoxb 3y ago
  I wouldn't say it's true in general. You can certainly choose what to put active effort into learning/revising, but memorisation isn't really something we have direct, conscious control over.
- anthk 3y ago
  You might love Gemini and Gopher networks then. Try Lagrange either on PC, Win, Linux, Mac or Android and head to gemini://gemi.dev and gopher://magical.fish, the news section. No bullshit content, no doomscrolling, no ads, no notifications.
dktnj 3y ago
> But at the same time I can remember basically every small block of code in a large saas I single handedly built a few years ago, even today. Trying to replace that with something useful here at the moment. Much more difficult than it looks.
Llamamoe 3y ago

anthk 3y ago

As a Spaniard when I read "tertulia" I associate it with radio/tv talk shows with 5% of content and 95% of blabbery and filler. Oh, and talkers interrupting each other, everytime. Then, I head do the teletext service (which is "alive", amazingly) and I have the same content in four or five lines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext What we need it's some service over web/gemini/gopher which news resumed down to the core. Yes, http://text.npr.org http://text.npr.org it's good for Americans, and http://lite.cnn.io http://lite.cnn.io used to work. But, instead of an endless wall, something composed of two or three paragraphs.

cborenstein 3y ago

I find this part super interesting: > He describes studies that have found a substantial delay in the reaction time of people talking on their cell phone while driving --- or even just holding conversations with someone in the car while driving. A similar delay has not been found in these studies when the driver is doing more passive activities such as listening to the radio or an audio book; it is the need to focus on a conversation that limits the working memory's ability to effectively support driving at the same time. When your mind is holding items in working memory, that means that it has less space to focus and execute effectively on the main task at hand. Just writing things down gives some resolution of that task/thought so that we can fully show up for our main thing. Working on a new notepad for jotting things down to free up working memory. The goal is to make it easy to capture things and add some organization when you want. Curious to get feedback. https://www.stashpad.com/blog/working-memory https://www.stashpad.com/blog/working-memory

ChrisClark 3y ago
As a personal anecdote, a long time ago I tried learning Chinese from a CD on my commute. I gave up after a couple of days because I realized it was affecting my driving. I needed a lot of concentration to practice the language and found I was making driving mistakes.
JohnFen 3y ago
This might also explain why simply having a passenger in your car with you will impair your driving. You're probably paying some amount of attention to the passenger.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  I tell my wife to shush when I'm approaching a difficult intersection. She gets it.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    My code phrase is "just a minute" -- a phrase I developed a habit for when people want to interrupt me at work when I'm not in a place where I can safely pause.

babyshake 3y ago

It will be very interesting to see the intersections between cognitive neuroscience and notions of "working memory" and context windows in AI.

wcrichton 3y ago

For the curious, I have done some experiments on working memory and programming: https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06305 https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06305 > Program tracing, or mentally simulating a program on concrete inputs, is an important part of general program comprehension. Programs involve many kinds of virtual state that must be held in memory, such as variable/value pairs and a call stack. In this work, we examine the influence of short-term working memory (WM) on a person's ability to remember program state during tracing. [...]

siilikuin 3y ago
You're too humble, Will. Allow me to copy and paste the whole intro. >Program tracing, or mentally simulating a program on concrete inputs, is an important part of general program comprehension. Programs involve many kinds of virtual state that must be held in memory, such as variable/value pairs and a call stack. In this work, we examine the influence of short-term working memory (WM) on a person's ability to remember program state during tracing. We first confirm that previous findings in cognitive psychology transfer to the programming domain: people can keep about 7 variable/value pairs in WM, and people will accidentally swap associations between variables due to WM load. We use a restricted focus viewing interface to further analyze the strategies people use to trace through programs, and the relationship of tracing strategy to WM. Given a straight-line program, we find half of our participants traced a program from the top-down line-by-line (linearly), and the other half start at the bottom and trace upward based on data dependencies (on-demand). Participants with an on-demand strategy made more WM errors while tracing straight-line code than with a linear strategy, but the two strategies contained an equal number of WM errors when tracing code with functions. We conclude with the implications of these findings for the design of programming tools: first, programs should be analyzed to identify and refactor human-memory-intensive sections of code. Second, programming environments should interactively visualize variable metadata to reduce WM load in accordance with a person's tracing strategy. Third, tools for program comprehension should enable externalizing program state while tracing.
nl 3y ago
I hadn't seen this, but just commented[1] noting the link between working memory and cyclometic complexity. I suspect your experimental results might be slightly weakened by the way mechanical Turkers will always do the easiest thing possible to get paid (I've had studies broken by this too). That probably explains this: In fact, we found the preponderance of linear traces somewhat bewildering — participants appeared to just click through each function, remembering what they could and then synthesizing the information into an answer at the end.

Fr0styMatt88 3y ago

The way I’ve come around to digital tools is that I consider them a different, externalised type of memory augmentation. They give us another type of memory. If someone interrupts me and asks me to do something that I can’t attend to right then, there’s two options (assuming I want to do the thing): - Hold it in my working memory until I’m able to fully context switch or put mental effort into transferring it into long-term memory - Immediately note it down, then make no further effort to remember it The same applies for random ideas that might pop into my head that are unrelated to the task at hand.

nine_k 3y ago
Noting it down so that the context is easy enough to restore may be a surprisingly large amount of work, easily taking 10 or even 15 minutes, not 20 seconds. This is somehow related to the fact that e.g. a programmer can spend 30-60 minutes wandering through code and docs before the right amount of context is built in their head, so that a seemingly simple change can be done with confidence.
- Fr0styMatt88 3y ago
  Oh yeah absolutely. I mainly do notes in my personal life, coding is a whole different thing that I’m still in the process of figuring out lol
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

svnt 3y ago

Can someone please update the title to reflect this is from 2010?

balder1991 3y ago

I’d guess those Paradox games such as Europa Universalis and Victoria do wonders for working memory exercise.

ftxbro 3y ago

By improving mental hygiene the only limit is the bekenstein bound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound we're all gonna make it.

goldenkey 3y ago
You're forgetting the interconnects, the buses. Now, make a topologically-parameterized bound model ;-)

jcims 3y ago

Any Harry Mack fans in here? I feel like he sustains the information processing throughput that happens when an olympic gymnast or diver is mid-air, but for minutes at a time with remarkable ability to pocket information for later recall. Edit: Looks like he just dropped his first wordplay Wednesday in a while. Two and a half hours of freestyling based on chat recommendations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEkCIF1Msc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEkCIF1Msc

8bitsrule 3y ago

Speaking of information overload: this article would be a lot more readable if the sentences were shorter. I quickly tired of the load. On average each sentence is over 30 words. Gasp Most and-splices, commas, semicolons don't add much value. At least the word lengths aren't too egregious.

firewolf34 3y ago

[dead]

nl 3y ago

In-case people haven't made the link, working memory is why cyclomatic complexity is so important in software development. For each increase in cyclomatic complexity, you need to keep one additional bit of state in your head. Usually you can ignore high level state bits when you are down low, so cyclomatic complexity isn't a one-to-one mapping to working memory, but one notes that the old shorthand of "working memory is 7 +/- 2" is close to the "cyclomatic complexity > 10 is too hard" rule.

feoren 3y ago
I really like early returns for this reason. if (someEdgeCase) { return SpecialValue; } const normalCase = a + b ... It allows you to drop a case from working memory as early as possible. I believe this would be a +1 in cyclomatic complexity, but it shouldn't be. Cyclomatic complexity is not the whole story (nor do I think it tries to be).

itvision 3y ago

I have insane issues with my working memory which render me basically useless as an employee or even a human being and doctors here in my country aren't even aware such a thing exists and can deteriorate. And given my salary and savings I cannot afford going to the countries where this problem is studied and probably can be fixed. Darn.

feoren 3y ago
Have you tried gluten free ginkgo biloba bee pollen salt lamps? Sorry, I had to. But here's an actual real suggestion that may or may not be any better. It's a working memory trainer that I feel has slightly helped improve my own working memory called Brain Workshop. Obviously proper diagnosis and medical treatment would be preferred. https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ https://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/ Edit: one other thing that may legitimately be the issue, worth checking even if unlikely: get a Carbon Monoxide detector.

KingOfCoders 3y ago

I was so blown away from the concept, when my boss gave me "Information Anxiety" 30 years ago. Before that - as someone who read everything - I would never have seen that problem.