I agree with this sentiment. But I also have personal antidotes that make me cautious about it. When I was a child I memorized dozens of phone numbers of people

I agree with this sentiment. But I also have personal antidotes that make me cautious about it. When I was a child I memorized dozens of phone numbers of people I called a couple times a month. Now my phone memorizes any phone number for me. We used to memorize poems and such. I can't give you any scientific reason why it is good to have memorized the Gettysburg Address. But I feel intuitively that there is some benefit to exercise your brain similar to the intuition I have about exercising muscles. If a person thinks they benefit from 100 situps a day, I'm not going to disagree. And if they think there is some benefit in reading man pages, well, thanks to those who take the time to write all that ducumentation.