6 ms·

I've direct experience on the power of handwriting to memorise concepts. When at the UNI, I was studying CS (while working part-time) less than 10 ya, and class

I've direct experience on the power of handwriting to memorise concepts. When at the UNI, I was studying CS (while working part-time) less than 10 ya, and classes where full of laptops. I was take notes during lectures using only pen and paper and similarly I was taking my notes about the main concepts from the courses books. Then I was re-writing them again in a more summarised way, and then underline this notes and study all together. The power of handwriting is real and I'm still taking notes and keeping a journal nowadays. It's sad that this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution, is going to get lost in future generations. This is because companies are making deals with schools to provide them software and devices. In a better world the school system would be one of the top 2 priority of every country, and receive adeguate public investments to don't have to adapt their education systems at companies product, to satisfy the greediness of entrepreneurs and investors. Don't abandon pen and paper, don't regress human brain capacity.

lifthrasiir 3y ago
I wonder if the key is not really handwriting but rather a deliberate summarization, because I always used a computer to do that. I did have a printout of my own summary, of course, so papers may have also helped as well. (I also tended to walk around and mumble a lot when I really need to tackle a hard problem in my head, but not when studying.)
- m463 3y ago
  I wonder too. I remember doing python the hard way years ago, which encouraged you to type in the example python programs and run them yourself. It made a definite difference to sort of deliberately slow down and absorb during the exercise.
  - RetroTechie 3y ago
    That's nothing. Try handcoding machine code some time! Using only pen, paper & cpu datasheet. ;-) If you feel generous, throw in a calculator for offsets or hex/dec conversions etc. If I grow old & senile some day, I'll forget how to wipe my ass before the last Z80 mnemonic slips from my mind.
    - m463 3y ago
      I remember doing that in octal for the PDP-11 - and it was really pretty wonderful. Everything was laid out so cleanly.
- vsnf 3y ago
  While I'm sure that deliberate summarization and also as a sibling posted, the slowness of the act are parts of it, I strongly suspect the actual mechanism of moving hand across space helps to engrave concepts in the mind. The connection between mind and body is strong. I can only speak to myself of course, but I've found that even quickly, absentmindedly, and imprecisely drawing out items on paper cements ideas in my mind way better than not doing it. I think the same concept applies to typing things out on a computer instead of copy and pasting. Even with minimal front-of-mind attention, the retention rate is stronger. Of course, writing on paper is even better than typing it on a computer. That being said, I wouldn't trade typing on a computer for writing on paper, given the sheer speed I can achieve with one. But if we're limiting ourselves to trying to better increase retention and understanding, then I think pen-on-paper is the most valuable thing one can do.
- goldcd 3y ago
  I agree - although not sure it's just the summarization, more the translation between 'information schemas' exposes patterns. e.g. I might read a few pages of text and scribble out the key points onto a mind-map I go. Then looking at the shape of what's on the page, normalize it onto a ER diagram on a slide with an accompanying swim-lane diagram showing the process. Each iteration of formatting hopefully progresses the display of the information towards its ideal. You know when it's worked (and when something isn't working out and you need to quit and try something else). To me the benefit of writing is that it makes me deliberately make a decision as to what I transcribe and what I leave out. If I skim read I often find my mind has drifted and I need to turn back some pages. Also, writing takes effort. If you notice you keep writing the same word/phrase, you'll give it an acronym. If you find repetition of concept, maybe you'll just draw an arrow pointing back to the paragraph the concept first came up - and your longhand is starting to turn into the next iteration already.
TheBigSalad 3y ago
I doubt moving your hands are the reason this worked for you.
barrysteve 3y ago
There was a book linked on HN a month ago about the Deisng of UI/UX experiences. One chapter mentions how cars are simple and easy to use despite being more complex than a phone numpad, because the linkages between the car controls and your mental mapping is one-to-one. Having to endlessly recombine your mental mapping with a numpad or digital pad to generate letters/sentences is much worse for humans than driving, or pen and paper. The mental mapping for pen and paper is also one-to-one, using behaviours to make specific known shapes is way more powerful than submitting to an arbitrary remapping device. Electronics are really no good for first order knowledge generation and gathering. The metaphysics of reality hasn't been overcome by tech revolutions, unfortunately (or not).
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  That doesn't sit right with the fact that we remember passwords or other sequences with our fingers or can type whole paragraphs without minding the keyboard. There might be a threshold to be good with an input method, but it feels contrived to me to assume that only the most basic ones can be mastered and become intuitive.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  I never made any progress learning to drive, and I still can't write legibly without carefully considering every letter. These one to one things are not easy. The pen acts like an untrained intern. It does exactly what you say and doesn't deviate from that. The computer acts as your manager. It tells you exactly what spot to hit to make a letter. I'm not sure if this is pure crackpot armchair psychology, but my theory is that some people naturally think on multiple levels and understand things from first principles, and for them UIs are confusing because their brain tries to understand every single thing it sees. I see "Press button, letter appears, hit the other button to comment" and if I think harder about it "HTML textinput in a form". They see a lot more and are distracted my questions and don't just expect stuff to mostly work even if they don't know exactly what it does. Maybe at least subconsciously, they are bothered by stuff they don't fully understand. Like, to me, a file is a "real" thing, with nothing below it that enters my thinking unless I'm reading an article about filesystems. If you tell me about a file, I will probably see file icons and explorer windows in my mind, that's what they look like and that's where they live. Do people with a natural propensity for first order thinking get bothered at least a little bit by these abstractions? Do files feel less "real" to them? Is some part of them trying to figure out what's going on? And if they are highly technical, is some part of them wondering what the code looks like, how the text is rendered, or maybe even feeling a sense of self disappointment for not deeply understanding what they're doing? And is pure old fashioned boredom a factor? If I could see something in my head and then draw it in recognizable form, perhaps I wouldn't see the appeal of vector graphics, if I already knew what point on the paper mapped to what point of the picture in my head, maybe i wouldn't want the overhead of loading up the app to drag points around. I'd just want to draw it in the right spot the first time, and get better every day at doing that. And then there's spatial memory. If you have a good memory, the endless tweaks of modern UI probably bothers you. If you don't... Well... The new change isn't any more unfamiliar than the old one because you never deeply learned it! Digital vs analog is such a completely different paradigm. Analog people are basically working with a blank canvas all the time. With digital you're constantly being led by the machine, and if your mind is overflowing with ideas that the programmer never intended, you might hate it. If you don't have a deep understanding of how things work and what possibilities there are, you might adore having a framework where you only make small deviations in predefined ways, the possibilities are obvious, right in front of you. We should probably all do more analog stuff, but a pen is definitely an "Outside the comfort zone" thing for me rather than something that feels like an obvious and natural way to work, aside from simple things we do every day.
_glass 3y ago
I second this experience. In my undergrad I wrote so much by hand, and I really had to step back a lot of times, and do it by hand, again, like a kata. Also I learned so much with writing by hand the answers to The Little Lisper etc.
Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago
In some classes we were allowed to bring in our own formula sheets. We could write whatever we wanted on a single sheet of paper (both sides). So of course we condensed the entire course to fit on that with tiny writing. But after putting in all that effort to make this sheet, I rarely even looked at in during the test. I didn't need to -- the act of making it made it stick in my brain.
wizofaus 3y ago
> probably sculpted by our evolution I can't really begin to imagine what selective pressure could realistically have acted on this, certainly given the tiny period of time over which any substantial percentage of the population would have been using their hands to store information in any way. If there's any correlation between use of computers and any loss of ability to memorise concepts (which I'm not convinced we actually have proof of) it could just as easily be explained by our tendency to "offload", knowing that any gaps in our memory/understanding can readily be filled by technology as needed. I do worry about a possible future where we literally stop bothering learning how to handwrite at all, but mainly because there's still sufficient chance you might need such a skill at some crucial moment when computers can't be used. But it's surely sufficient just to know how to block print capital letters.
- eloisant 3y ago
  There has been studies that proved that handwriting helps memorizing better than using a computer. The studies took a group of students, randomly assigned them handwriting/computers then they had a test to pass. Handwriting students performed better. The reason is that handwriting is slower, so it forces you to summarize and make decisions in your note taking. Selecting what's important. On the other hand typing is faster, so you can type everything the teacher says without understanding.
  - eviks 3y ago
    So you only need to slow a person down to achieve the same effect, what's the value of handwriting?
    - edgyquant 3y ago
      The mechanical motion involved, physically putting your thoughts down. It isn’t the same as typing at all where you just click a button, having to motion the letters and words is surely worth something in itself.
      - 3y ago
ryanklee 3y ago
> It's sad that this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution, is going to get lost in future generations. We haven't been writing that long. And the vast majority of people never did.
- thwarted 3y ago
  But the vast majority of people use their hands. It's not the writing, the assertion it's that it's the movement associated with/occurring at the same time as thinking that reenforces learning. That writing of words using hands (interaction with the environment) can help with learning abstract (non-physical) concepts is an extension of that.
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    People continue to use their hands.
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    Apologies, I failed to understand your point properly in my sibling reply. Yes, it's possible what you say is true (I somewhat doubt it, though; open to evidence, of course). But the point I was making in my original reply to GGP is that it's no loss from an evolutionary perspective because the timeline is too short. I also doubt it's true from a civilization perspective, because again, the timeline is both too short and most people have never picked up a pencil. Handwriting is likely a fetish. It's so easy to see benefits where there's actually only preference and bias.
eviks 3y ago
Now imagine the power where you can save time wasted on the initial copying and invested it in summarizing (which could also be faster to edit)
moffkalast 3y ago
I don't really get how moving hands smoothly to write something versus tapping keys poses any large difference in memorization? For the us generations that grew up learning cursive and associating it with school it may be easier to remember that way, but if someone was raised by only typing from an early age it probably makes no difference. We're analog juvenoial dinosaurs living in a digital age we've only partially adapted to. > this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution There's no way that's true, it's only been around for 5000 years and for most of that time it was excluded to a narrow circle of scribes or scholars. Literacy has only been available to the masses for the past 200 years which is absolutely nothing on an evolutionary scale.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  How is this hard to get? One you tap a button that could contain any character or letter. The other is physically motioning said characters and you brain associates the underlying idea with the motions rather than a generic “tap.”
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Well the tap isn't necessarily generic, it's in a specific spot and usually by a specific finger associated with only a few letters. While handwriting is just wiggling your hand a bit for anything you write. We're sort of like LLMs in the way that we don't really see letters when reading anyway, we just see words or parts of words directly. I would expect writing to be the same conceptually. If anything I'd more lean towards having to form complete solid thoughts before writing them by hand could be beneficial, while typing lets you go back and correct or reword everything, making the overall memory of it fuzzier.
- specialist 3y ago
  I've long wondered too. "Intention" is the best notion I've come up with. With typing, I find it easier to enter a flow state. That stream of consciousness where it feels the prose (or code) seems to write itself. With handwriting, I must visualize what I'm about to write. Plan ahead. Think thru things. This works for lists, writing letters, and even graphic stuff like design diagrams. I also must really pay attention when I'm taking notes during meetings and lectures. Otherwise, my mind will wander off and I'll miss the whole thing. So I often volunteer to take minutes when I want to fully participate. PS: Out of respect for u/jncfhnb, I'll add an explicit YMMV.
User23 3y ago
> Don't abandon pen and paper, don't regress human brain capacity. Socrates believed writing regressed human brain capacity, by serving as a crutch for memory and thus leading to atrophy. Maybe he had a point, because you don’t much hear about recitations of Illiad length works from memory these days. I don’t think it’s quite as simple as all that though, because I imagine using your memory mostly as an index rather than mostly as a data store has its own set of adaptions. However, the development of that kind of comprehensive organizing memory is by no means ensured by the modern environment.
jncfhnb 3y ago
I dislike these kind of statements. I can’t take notes. I learned very explicitly that I will retain information much better if I take no effort to write it down and instead just focus and listen. If I do take notes, I’ll look down at my page at the end and see 20ish words written in different sizes and spaces and then throw it away because it’s clearly useless. That is to say, it’s all just personal preference. Explore and exploit what works for you.
- lolinder 3y ago
  > If I do take notes, I’ll look down at my page at the end and see 20ish words written in different sizes and spaces and then throw it away because it’s clearly useless. For me, the point of taking notes has never been the final product. I went through college taking at least a page of notes per lecture, but never once did I actually go back and reference them. The notes were valuable for getting the material into my brain, not for use later.
- JambalayaJim 3y ago
  Yup - I liked taking notes using my laptop because I could copy down what the professor was saying verbatim. This gave me two advantages; (1) I could focus on the lecture itself and not how to best summarize the lecture, and (2) I could review the notes later as a higher quality product than what I would have invented. This strategy didn't work for things like math classes which were hard to take computer notes on.
  - pests 3y ago
    Why not just a audio/visual recording? Even when I took notes via laptop in class it was never a direct transcription.
    - JambalayaJim 3y ago
      I would never go back to an audio/visual recording, that simply takes too much time
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I spent years trying to find the value others find in handwritten note taking. But it doesn’t work for me. For me, listening carefully and questioning the speaker internally and focusing intensely on the way they are speaking and visualizing the concepts works better. Handwriting interferes with that as I’m too busy rephrasing to fit into my writing rate. My memory is better than the paper at the nuances of the concepts IFF I am intently focused at a semantic level. I think, like many of these things, they speak to the average experience. That many people benefit from hand writing. But humanity so very varied, and there one size fits all analysis of learning style does really well at picking out the mode, but statistical analysis cuts off the tails and outliers as noise. But being the noise as an individual makes these sorts of statistical teaching methods painful and distracting. The day I pushed the paper and pen aside and learned the way I learn best was the day school went from being a chore of tedium, a true struggle, to being a delight. I turned around from a barely capable student to getting highest honors from one of the science and engineering universities in the world. Further by honing my ability to understand deeply with just my ears and mind I can carry that into every day life outside a classroom, such as casual conversations or other formats where note taking would be weird. I’ve never missed my handwritten notes, and I literally never take notes and never will again.
- silcoon 3y ago
  > But humanity so very varied I agree that the way of learning concepts is a personal preference and that humanity is varied, but this is not related of how our brain mechanisms work. If learning by writing is a human ability, it would work no matter of your personal preference. It would work for any student who tries to study with method and take notes of the lesson. Listening to lessons and learning is a romantic way of studying, but I'm not sure how practical it is when your test is at the end of a course of 4/6 months. Plus all the others course that you follow at the same time, with the labs exercises, it all make a good amount of material to put in your brain just by listening. In addition to that I would not be able to listen to professors explaining concepts for 6/7h and just learning them immediately. I would fall asleep in the middle of the lessons if I don't actively take notes. A lesson is not just a repetition of a book, but the connection of multiple concepts with linearity, done by a professional expert that knows the subject and usually add small details or new way of seeing things, that books don't do them. Notes help students take notes of this and re-use the concepts when studying for the tests, improving their visualization ability.

lifthrasiir 3y ago

I wonder if the key is not really handwriting but rather a deliberate summarization, because I always used a computer to do that. I did have a printout of my own summary, of course, so papers may have also helped as well. (I also tended to walk around and mumble a lot when I really need to tackle a hard problem in my head, but not when studying.)

m463 3y ago
I wonder too. I remember doing python the hard way years ago, which encouraged you to type in the example python programs and run them yourself. It made a definite difference to sort of deliberately slow down and absorb during the exercise.
- RetroTechie 3y ago
  That's nothing. Try handcoding machine code some time! Using only pen, paper & cpu datasheet. ;-) If you feel generous, throw in a calculator for offsets or hex/dec conversions etc. If I grow old & senile some day, I'll forget how to wipe my ass before the last Z80 mnemonic slips from my mind.
  - m463 3y ago
    I remember doing that in octal for the PDP-11 - and it was really pretty wonderful. Everything was laid out so cleanly.
vsnf 3y ago
While I'm sure that deliberate summarization and also as a sibling posted, the slowness of the act are parts of it, I strongly suspect the actual mechanism of moving hand across space helps to engrave concepts in the mind. The connection between mind and body is strong. I can only speak to myself of course, but I've found that even quickly, absentmindedly, and imprecisely drawing out items on paper cements ideas in my mind way better than not doing it. I think the same concept applies to typing things out on a computer instead of copy and pasting. Even with minimal front-of-mind attention, the retention rate is stronger. Of course, writing on paper is even better than typing it on a computer. That being said, I wouldn't trade typing on a computer for writing on paper, given the sheer speed I can achieve with one. But if we're limiting ourselves to trying to better increase retention and understanding, then I think pen-on-paper is the most valuable thing one can do.
goldcd 3y ago
I agree - although not sure it's just the summarization, more the translation between 'information schemas' exposes patterns. e.g. I might read a few pages of text and scribble out the key points onto a mind-map I go. Then looking at the shape of what's on the page, normalize it onto a ER diagram on a slide with an accompanying swim-lane diagram showing the process. Each iteration of formatting hopefully progresses the display of the information towards its ideal. You know when it's worked (and when something isn't working out and you need to quit and try something else). To me the benefit of writing is that it makes me deliberately make a decision as to what I transcribe and what I leave out. If I skim read I often find my mind has drifted and I need to turn back some pages. Also, writing takes effort. If you notice you keep writing the same word/phrase, you'll give it an acronym. If you find repetition of concept, maybe you'll just draw an arrow pointing back to the paragraph the concept first came up - and your longhand is starting to turn into the next iteration already.

TheBigSalad 3y ago

I doubt moving your hands are the reason this worked for you.

barrysteve 3y ago

There was a book linked on HN a month ago about the Deisng of UI/UX experiences. One chapter mentions how cars are simple and easy to use despite being more complex than a phone numpad, because the linkages between the car controls and your mental mapping is one-to-one. Having to endlessly recombine your mental mapping with a numpad or digital pad to generate letters/sentences is much worse for humans than driving, or pen and paper. The mental mapping for pen and paper is also one-to-one, using behaviours to make specific known shapes is way more powerful than submitting to an arbitrary remapping device. Electronics are really no good for first order knowledge generation and gathering. The metaphysics of reality hasn't been overcome by tech revolutions, unfortunately (or not).

makeitdouble 3y ago
That doesn't sit right with the fact that we remember passwords or other sequences with our fingers or can type whole paragraphs without minding the keyboard. There might be a threshold to be good with an input method, but it feels contrived to me to assume that only the most basic ones can be mastered and become intuitive.
eternityforest 3y ago
I never made any progress learning to drive, and I still can't write legibly without carefully considering every letter. These one to one things are not easy. The pen acts like an untrained intern. It does exactly what you say and doesn't deviate from that. The computer acts as your manager. It tells you exactly what spot to hit to make a letter. I'm not sure if this is pure crackpot armchair psychology, but my theory is that some people naturally think on multiple levels and understand things from first principles, and for them UIs are confusing because their brain tries to understand every single thing it sees. I see "Press button, letter appears, hit the other button to comment" and if I think harder about it "HTML textinput in a form". They see a lot more and are distracted my questions and don't just expect stuff to mostly work even if they don't know exactly what it does. Maybe at least subconsciously, they are bothered by stuff they don't fully understand. Like, to me, a file is a "real" thing, with nothing below it that enters my thinking unless I'm reading an article about filesystems. If you tell me about a file, I will probably see file icons and explorer windows in my mind, that's what they look like and that's where they live. Do people with a natural propensity for first order thinking get bothered at least a little bit by these abstractions? Do files feel less "real" to them? Is some part of them trying to figure out what's going on? And if they are highly technical, is some part of them wondering what the code looks like, how the text is rendered, or maybe even feeling a sense of self disappointment for not deeply understanding what they're doing? And is pure old fashioned boredom a factor? If I could see something in my head and then draw it in recognizable form, perhaps I wouldn't see the appeal of vector graphics, if I already knew what point on the paper mapped to what point of the picture in my head, maybe i wouldn't want the overhead of loading up the app to drag points around. I'd just want to draw it in the right spot the first time, and get better every day at doing that. And then there's spatial memory. If you have a good memory, the endless tweaks of modern UI probably bothers you. If you don't... Well... The new change isn't any more unfamiliar than the old one because you never deeply learned it! Digital vs analog is such a completely different paradigm. Analog people are basically working with a blank canvas all the time. With digital you're constantly being led by the machine, and if your mind is overflowing with ideas that the programmer never intended, you might hate it. If you don't have a deep understanding of how things work and what possibilities there are, you might adore having a framework where you only make small deviations in predefined ways, the possibilities are obvious, right in front of you. We should probably all do more analog stuff, but a pen is definitely an "Outside the comfort zone" thing for me rather than something that feels like an obvious and natural way to work, aside from simple things we do every day.

_glass 3y ago

I second this experience. In my undergrad I wrote so much by hand, and I really had to step back a lot of times, and do it by hand, again, like a kata. Also I learned so much with writing by hand the answers to The Little Lisper etc.

Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago

In some classes we were allowed to bring in our own formula sheets. We could write whatever we wanted on a single sheet of paper (both sides). So of course we condensed the entire course to fit on that with tiny writing. But after putting in all that effort to make this sheet, I rarely even looked at in during the test. I didn't need to -- the act of making it made it stick in my brain.

wizofaus 3y ago

> probably sculpted by our evolution I can't really begin to imagine what selective pressure could realistically have acted on this, certainly given the tiny period of time over which any substantial percentage of the population would have been using their hands to store information in any way. If there's any correlation between use of computers and any loss of ability to memorise concepts (which I'm not convinced we actually have proof of) it could just as easily be explained by our tendency to "offload", knowing that any gaps in our memory/understanding can readily be filled by technology as needed. I do worry about a possible future where we literally stop bothering learning how to handwrite at all, but mainly because there's still sufficient chance you might need such a skill at some crucial moment when computers can't be used. But it's surely sufficient just to know how to block print capital letters.

eloisant 3y ago
There has been studies that proved that handwriting helps memorizing better than using a computer. The studies took a group of students, randomly assigned them handwriting/computers then they had a test to pass. Handwriting students performed better. The reason is that handwriting is slower, so it forces you to summarize and make decisions in your note taking. Selecting what's important. On the other hand typing is faster, so you can type everything the teacher says without understanding.
- eviks 3y ago
  So you only need to slow a person down to achieve the same effect, what's the value of handwriting?
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    The mechanical motion involved, physically putting your thoughts down. It isn’t the same as typing at all where you just click a button, having to motion the letters and words is surely worth something in itself.
    - 3y ago

ryanklee 3y ago

> It's sad that this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution, is going to get lost in future generations. We haven't been writing that long. And the vast majority of people never did.

thwarted 3y ago
But the vast majority of people use their hands. It's not the writing, the assertion it's that it's the movement associated with/occurring at the same time as thinking that reenforces learning. That writing of words using hands (interaction with the environment) can help with learning abstract (non-physical) concepts is an extension of that.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  People continue to use their hands.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  Apologies, I failed to understand your point properly in my sibling reply. Yes, it's possible what you say is true (I somewhat doubt it, though; open to evidence, of course). But the point I was making in my original reply to GGP is that it's no loss from an evolutionary perspective because the timeline is too short. I also doubt it's true from a civilization perspective, because again, the timeline is both too short and most people have never picked up a pencil. Handwriting is likely a fetish. It's so easy to see benefits where there's actually only preference and bias.

eviks 3y ago

Now imagine the power where you can save time wasted on the initial copying and invested it in summarizing (which could also be faster to edit)

moffkalast 3y ago

I don't really get how moving hands smoothly to write something versus tapping keys poses any large difference in memorization? For the us generations that grew up learning cursive and associating it with school it may be easier to remember that way, but if someone was raised by only typing from an early age it probably makes no difference. We're analog juvenoial dinosaurs living in a digital age we've only partially adapted to. > this incredible ability of our brain to learn concepts from the small movement of our hands, probably sculpted by our evolution There's no way that's true, it's only been around for 5000 years and for most of that time it was excluded to a narrow circle of scribes or scholars. Literacy has only been available to the masses for the past 200 years which is absolutely nothing on an evolutionary scale.

edgyquant 3y ago
How is this hard to get? One you tap a button that could contain any character or letter. The other is physically motioning said characters and you brain associates the underlying idea with the motions rather than a generic “tap.”
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Well the tap isn't necessarily generic, it's in a specific spot and usually by a specific finger associated with only a few letters. While handwriting is just wiggling your hand a bit for anything you write. We're sort of like LLMs in the way that we don't really see letters when reading anyway, we just see words or parts of words directly. I would expect writing to be the same conceptually. If anything I'd more lean towards having to form complete solid thoughts before writing them by hand could be beneficial, while typing lets you go back and correct or reword everything, making the overall memory of it fuzzier.
specialist 3y ago
I've long wondered too. "Intention" is the best notion I've come up with. With typing, I find it easier to enter a flow state. That stream of consciousness where it feels the prose (or code) seems to write itself. With handwriting, I must visualize what I'm about to write. Plan ahead. Think thru things. This works for lists, writing letters, and even graphic stuff like design diagrams. I also must really pay attention when I'm taking notes during meetings and lectures. Otherwise, my mind will wander off and I'll miss the whole thing. So I often volunteer to take minutes when I want to fully participate. PS: Out of respect for u/jncfhnb, I'll add an explicit YMMV.

User23 3y ago

> Don't abandon pen and paper, don't regress human brain capacity. Socrates believed writing regressed human brain capacity, by serving as a crutch for memory and thus leading to atrophy. Maybe he had a point, because you don’t much hear about recitations of Illiad length works from memory these days. I don’t think it’s quite as simple as all that though, because I imagine using your memory mostly as an index rather than mostly as a data store has its own set of adaptions. However, the development of that kind of comprehensive organizing memory is by no means ensured by the modern environment.

jncfhnb 3y ago

I dislike these kind of statements. I can’t take notes. I learned very explicitly that I will retain information much better if I take no effort to write it down and instead just focus and listen. If I do take notes, I’ll look down at my page at the end and see 20ish words written in different sizes and spaces and then throw it away because it’s clearly useless. That is to say, it’s all just personal preference. Explore and exploit what works for you.

lolinder 3y ago
> If I do take notes, I’ll look down at my page at the end and see 20ish words written in different sizes and spaces and then throw it away because it’s clearly useless. For me, the point of taking notes has never been the final product. I went through college taking at least a page of notes per lecture, but never once did I actually go back and reference them. The notes were valuable for getting the material into my brain, not for use later.
JambalayaJim 3y ago
Yup - I liked taking notes using my laptop because I could copy down what the professor was saying verbatim. This gave me two advantages; (1) I could focus on the lecture itself and not how to best summarize the lecture, and (2) I could review the notes later as a higher quality product than what I would have invented. This strategy didn't work for things like math classes which were hard to take computer notes on.
- pests 3y ago
  Why not just a audio/visual recording? Even when I took notes via laptop in class it was never a direct transcription.
  - JambalayaJim 3y ago
    I would never go back to an audio/visual recording, that simply takes too much time

fnordpiglet 3y ago

I spent years trying to find the value others find in handwritten note taking. But it doesn’t work for me. For me, listening carefully and questioning the speaker internally and focusing intensely on the way they are speaking and visualizing the concepts works better. Handwriting interferes with that as I’m too busy rephrasing to fit into my writing rate. My memory is better than the paper at the nuances of the concepts IFF I am intently focused at a semantic level. I think, like many of these things, they speak to the average experience. That many people benefit from hand writing. But humanity so very varied, and there one size fits all analysis of learning style does really well at picking out the mode, but statistical analysis cuts off the tails and outliers as noise. But being the noise as an individual makes these sorts of statistical teaching methods painful and distracting. The day I pushed the paper and pen aside and learned the way I learn best was the day school went from being a chore of tedium, a true struggle, to being a delight. I turned around from a barely capable student to getting highest honors from one of the science and engineering universities in the world. Further by honing my ability to understand deeply with just my ears and mind I can carry that into every day life outside a classroom, such as casual conversations or other formats where note taking would be weird. I’ve never missed my handwritten notes, and I literally never take notes and never will again.

silcoon 3y ago
> But humanity so very varied I agree that the way of learning concepts is a personal preference and that humanity is varied, but this is not related of how our brain mechanisms work. If learning by writing is a human ability, it would work no matter of your personal preference. It would work for any student who tries to study with method and take notes of the lesson. Listening to lessons and learning is a romantic way of studying, but I'm not sure how practical it is when your test is at the end of a course of 4/6 months. Plus all the others course that you follow at the same time, with the labs exercises, it all make a good amount of material to put in your brain just by listening. In addition to that I would not be able to listen to professors explaining concepts for 6/7h and just learning them immediately. I would fall asleep in the middle of the lessons if I don't actively take notes. A lesson is not just a repetition of a book, but the connection of multiple concepts with linearity, done by a professional expert that knows the subject and usually add small details or new way of seeing things, that books don't do them. Notes help students take notes of this and re-use the concepts when studying for the tests, improving their visualization ability.