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I don't think I can agree, as an extremely creative person with extremely bad memory - to a point where I pretty much never memorize anything, whether intention
by Llamamoe 2y ago
I don't think I can agree, as an extremely creative person with extremely bad memory - to a point where I pretty much never memorize anything, whether intentionally or by accident.
What I find instead, is that by just processing novel information, especially if I focus on analysing it, my brain internalizes insights and builds model of that type of thing, allowing me to either imperfectly reconstruct what I've seen, or to come up with an infinite array of permutations, extrapolations, etc which is where the real ideas come from.
Further, ideas crucially revolve not around just the information itself, but the "feel" for what role they play in the whole, how well they do it, in what way they're notable, etc.
In fact I'd straight up claim that memorization is antithetical to creativity - a perfect ML autoencoder or GAN would just regurgitate the training data. Creativity comes from generalisation while memorisation is analogous to overfitting.
- XenophileJKO 2y agoA million times this.. I also am extremely creative and in fact I think the MOST creative people are really bad at intentional memoration, but are good at seeing patterns. I feel like often the reason a creative person is hyper creative is they haven't memorized things so they are trying to rebuild information all the time in their heads from very sparse details. This creates the transformative and relational combinations of information that a person memorizing can't see because it is created from a lack of organized specific information rather than a bounty of it.
- Sammi 2y ago"What I find instead, is that by just processing novel information, especially if I focus on analysing it, my brain internalizes insights and builds model of that type of thing" Sorry, but this is memoization.
- guitheeengineer 2y agoI feel like every reply making a point against memorisation would benefit from having their definition of what is memorization, because every single one of those replies sound like they're still implicitly describing some sort of memorization as the better way
- maksimur 2y agoI feel like this is about the difference between rote/explicit memorization and organic/implicit/tacit memorization, for a lack of better words. I suspect the former could narrow/restrict your understanding because it may be constrained/limited by the vocabulary/definition itself.
- djeastm 2y agoI think perhaps there's a confusion of "memorization" with "rote memorization". The word "rote" connotes flashcards and dull drills, but memorization by itself, to me at least, is more like "a focused attempt at internalizing information", in whatever way that means to a person, as opposed to just ingesting it or letting it wash over you/osmosis. But that's just my interpretation of the terms. I don't know what the "official" meanings are.
- alan-hn 2y agoExactly, everyone here is just describing different forms of memorization
- XenophileJKO 2y agoIs it? If I don't remember any of the detail, but just the general "feel" of the concept.. is that memorization?
- jaggederest 2y agohttps://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/memory/types-memory https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain-basics/memory/types-memory
- barrkel 2y agoWhat do you call it when you remember things so you can repeat them but you can't generalize? E.g. if you learn a poem or phrase in a foreign language, but can't reuse the words in different contexts? Or being able to recite a rule, but not automatically applying it? Is there a word for this? Similarly, we should have a word for knowing how to reuse something in a different context, but not recall its origin or its canonical portrayal. Being able to apply a rule, without being able to recite it. Do you think there's one word which means both of these things, which are opposites, as I've stated them?
- kiba 2y agoTransfer learning. Transferring skills from one context to another is surprisingly hard to do, but not impossible. AFAIK, contexts must be similar to each other for transfer to take place.
- Izkata 2y ago> What do you call it when you remember things so you can repeat them but you can't generalize? E.g. if you learn a poem or phrase in a foreign language, but can't reuse the words in different contexts? Or being able to recite a rule, but not automatically applying it? "Rote memorization"
- inciampati 2y agoModeling is not memorization. It's more generic and can't allow you to reproduce the memorized information, only describe its underlying structure.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoI think I would call it internalization instead of memorization. People memorize equations not knowing what the variables are, others internalize the concepts of what is trying to be calculated.
- Izkata 2y ago> > and builds model > memoization Was this intentional and no one caught on? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoization Or just a typo?
- Sammi 2y agoTypo. Funny typo given we're on hn.
- Llamamoe 2y agoIf I cannot recall the information or even that I've come across it unprompted, is it really? Because that's my norm, and I still retain insights from that, that are then applicable across topics.
- kqr 2y agoI would describe myself exactly the same way as you, and I've always been that way (noticed it at first in school where I would take forever to hand in the memorisation half of an exam but finish the analytical half in record time.) I recommend giving spaced repetition a serious go. It doesn't cost much and you might be surprised how far it takes even someone like you. It completely changed how I view the role of memorisation in analytical work. Strictly speaking, someone like you does not need to memorise things because you can always derive them from more fundamental principles. But being able to do that, while a blessing, is also a crutch. Reasoning from first principles every time is slow compared to pulling out the right relationship for the problem at hand right away.
- llamaimperative 2y agoI'm this same way -- very strong semantic memory, astoundingly bad episodic memory. I've been getting into spaced repetition and I was curious if you have ideas on what to memorize via SRS? I don't really have things in my job or intellectual pursuits that clearly lend themselves to flashcard style memorization, so I've been doing SRS on sort of quasi-useless things to help 1) get in the habit of SRS and 2) build more "scaffolding" in my memory so when I want to SRS useful things it'll be easier. (By (2) I mean I'm memorizing some historical dates/facts because I found early in using SRS that I'd traverse known facts like a graph, so simply having more known facts would make it easier to add and remember new ones -- most things I'll learn will have a date affiliated with them, so figure anchoring a bunch of dates in my memory won't be totally useless)
- kqr 2y agoI forgot to reply to this and don't want to write a long answer now in case you won't see it. If you're still interested, shoot an email to hn@xkqr.org and I'll give more details. Sorry for taking so long!
- philipov 2y agoYes! Creativity often happens when you try to reconstruct something you failed to memorize, but succeed at making something else.
- bobbruno 2y agoI think we have a problem of semantics here. Your notion of "the brain internalizes insights" is very close to what the author means as memorizing patterns. They even gäbe a few examples where they started with rote memorizations, which were not that useful at first, but eventually a pattern, an insight if you will, emerged.
- pfortuny 2y agoAnything you “know” is because you have memorized it. It has nothing to do with either effort, or consciousness. Memory is the basis of knowledge.
- moate 2y agoWhich is why the thesis here is boring/less useful. “All colors come from memorization” is also accurate. “All thought comes from memorization”. At that point, you’re factually accurate but saying little of use. If you’re trying to teach creativity, what do you make people memorize? The author even points out: some cultures are great at memorizing and bad at innovation and vice versa. That’s interesting to talk about. “Try-hards use spreadsheets to be funnier” is…sad?