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OP and others here are stretching the definition of “memorize” to mean “anything that leads to something being retained in memory.” I reject this idea. The tra

OP and others here are stretching the definition of “memorize” to mean “anything that leads to something being retained in memory.” I reject this idea. The trauma of burning your hand on a hot pan creates a memory you won’t soon forget, but almost no one would understand it as an act of memorization. Memorization to me refers to a set of cargo-culty “learning” practices wherein we believe that by using language to drill exposure to an abstract representation of a concept, that somehow we will absorb the concept itself. We do this mainly because experts suck at empathizing with learners and fail to understand that the symbol has meaning for them but not for the learner. It’s the difference between drilling vocabulary flashcards and actually reading, listening, or talking to someone. Young children do not use vocab flashcards to learn their L1. They aren’t being “drilled” to learn “mama.” They have actual needs in an actual social context and attend to nuanced details of that context to make complex statistical inferences about the world, their perceptions, and their body. Mostly subconsciously. Yes, there are specific areas where drilling can help us accelerate or catch up. Many kids seem to need explicit phonetics instruction in order to make the leap to reading words. Phonological speech interventions are often drill-like. Practicing musical scales does make you more fluent in improvisation. Drilling the mechanics of a repertoire piece frees your mind to focus on higher-order expression and interpretation. They’re valuable, they have a place. But this is just a small slice of learning. It’s disproportionately important for passing tests (And getting hired at tech companies!), which to me is the crux of the issue. If I had to reformulate OP’s argument to something I can get behind, it would be more about deliberate practice or “putting in the reps.” This is also often boring, and differentiates highly successful people from average performers. But it’s a broader and more purposeful set of activities than “memorization” would imply.

patrick451 2y ago
> The trauma of burning your hand on a hot pan creates a memory you won’t soon forget, but almost no one would understand it as an act of memorization. I reject you rejection. You need to provide a reason something learned via pain is fundamentally different from something learned without pain. We used to beat school children for not learning their lesson.
linearrust 2y ago
> It’s the difference between drilling vocabulary flashcards and actually reading, listening, or talking to someone. You need the 'flashcards' before you can read, listen or talk. Go try reading a book where you don't know most of the words. Heck you need 'flashcards' before you needs 'flashcards for words'. You need to memorize the alphabet first. Try reading a text where you haven't learned the writing system. > Young children do not use vocab flashcards to learn their L1. Because they can't read. > They aren’t being “drilled” to learn “mama.” Obviously you aren't a parent. You think a child magically decides one day to say mama? Or do you think it's the mother constantly saying 'mama' to the child until the child 'remembers it' and repeats it? > They have actual needs in an actual social context and attend to nuanced details of that context to make complex statistical inferences about the world, their perceptions, and their body. What? Complex statistical inferences about the world?
- chaps 2y ago
  How are you defining a "flashcard"?
- watwut 2y ago
  You should be aware that people are able to become fluent without ever using flashcards.
- MisterBastahrd 2y ago
  Kids say mama almost universally and regardless of their local language because it's an easy sound to make.
- lelanthran 2y ago
  > Heck you need 'flashcards' before you needs 'flashcards for words'. You need to memorize the alphabet first. I've a toddler who can read 3 paragraphs of 3 sentences each, and then tell you the details of the story he read[1]. He is 4y6m, right now. He has never learned the alphabet or the names of the letters (A,B, C, D, etc). He has only learned the sounds a letter or sequence of letters make for certain patterns. You most definitely do not need to memorise the alphabet in order to learn to read! Teaching children the alphabet before teaching them reading makes it a lot harder for them to learn actual reading. [1] I've seen kids as old as 7 get confused by a book with no pictures, and he sails right on through because I taught him to read (using the DISTAR alphabet), and made sure none of our daily lessons had even a single picture in it.
gwervc 2y ago
> It’s the difference between drilling vocabulary flashcards and actually reading, listening, or talking to someone. Those are not opposite activities. Drilling vocabulary flashcard is the most efficient way to start being able to read/listen/speak; and it's not even clear from research that output (speaking and writing) is useful at all for learning. Also good luck learning to read Chinese or Japanese without rote learning a few hundred characters. Even native speakers learn them by repetition. You can't be serious advocating "just go read stuff" as a way to learn a language. Some foundation, acquired by explicit learning, is required to even start reading. > Young children do not use vocab flashcards to learn their L1. That's a bad argument: the life of a toddler is vastly different than an adult. A young child has basically nothing but figuring out what's going around him (including language) at least 16 hours per day, every day. An adult has much less time for that.
- nickburns 2y ago
  > A young child has basically nothing but figuring out what's going around him Right—not simply memorizing what's happening around them. Those are fundamentally different activies. That is the gist of the parent comment's point. They've also acknowledged expressly that rote memorization techniques are "valuable" and "have a place."
- kqr 2y ago
  > That's a bad argument: the life of a toddler is vastly different than an adult. Also it takes a surprisingly long time for children to learn language. I used to think it sorta-kinda happened over a year or two, but having children myself revealed how wrong I was. I have written up a fairly hefty dictionary of words they mispronounce or even just invent on their own because they don't know the one in their native tongue. My oldest rarely contributes individual words to this dictionary anymore, but he still improvises expressions and idioms.
  - nickburns 2y ago
    > I have written up a fairly hefty dictionary of words they mispronounce or even just invent on their own because they don't know the one in their native tongue. Ah, beautiful little displays of an attempt to understand, not merely memorize.
usrbinno 2y ago
> ...experts suck at empathizing with learners... Or maybe we just don't want to coddle them. When has learning anything been easy, and why do you expect people to be able to acquire new knowledge and skills without putting in the effort? It shouldn't be grueling, not for its own sake, but yeah, you might have to stare at a compiler error for a few hours or even a few days before you figure out what's broken. Truly, how else are you supposed to learn if you don't, eventually, do it yourself? I'm so sick of this anti-expert, anti-knowledge attitude. It's why we have bootcamp juniors being thrown into otherwise-senior roles, with laughably predictable consequences for the field.
- lovethevoid 2y ago
  This attitude seems unrelated to the topic at hand quite frankly. Experts suck at empathizing with learners not because of this spite, but often because it's actually quite difficult to switch gears in language and understanding. It's a completely different way of sharing knowledge, where you have to explicitly express things that are just assumed shared understanding among colleagues. Also, to answer your questions in a very simple way: the entire reason you even became an expert is because another expert somewhere along the way gave you an easy in to the knowledge, they coddled you. This is why you can "stare at a compiler error for a few hours before figuring out what's broken". Without that expert, you wouldn't even understand what a compiler even is.
- apsurd 2y ago
  Parent is saying there's a big difference between being an expert in a field and being a good teacher.
- zharknado 2y ago
  Perhaps I worded it too emotionally. I mean that experts struggle to remember what it was like before they understood something. It’s very common for experts to ask novices to make leaps that they aren’t capable of making, because they seem natural or obvious from an expert POV. I’m all for hard work; learning is usually very hard work. I also think we need expert guidance. But let’s make the difficulty useful/effective rather than counterproductive.
stonemetal12 2y ago
Memorize means "to retain in and quickly recall from memory". Weather that is by synthetic or natural process is irrelevant. From the point of understanding how memory and recall work, yes burning your hand is an act of memorization. Sure there is a natural repetitive process that leads to base learning like L1 you mention. On the other hand no one adds or multiples enough in daily life for natural memory formation. Humans consider the skill vital enough that we have developed methods to memorize them. Same for spelling, especially for infrequently used words. Flashcards used with Spaced repetition isn't cargo cult, it is a well studied, and pretty good method of inducing memory formation.
- zharknado 2y ago
  I’d say that’s the definition of “remember” rather than “memorize.” To most people I’d wager “memorize” has a strong connotation for the synthetic version only, with an emphasis on a stripping-out of context. I recognize that stripping away context can be valuable—-drilling a tennis serve over and over outside the real-time context of a game is extremely helpful. Flashcards are rarely valuable in the same way. For semantically oriented tasks, an impoverished context is usually not very helpful. Receptive skills like letter and character recognition might be an exception. But even then you’ve got to make the leap to reading at some point. > no one adds or multiplies enough in daily life for natural memory formation To the contrary, there’s a fascinating study of children in South America who had very fluent mental math skills for making change because they sold fruit on the side of the road. They couldn’t solve the exact same problem in story problem format in a classroom, though. Synthetic contexts usually don’t transfer well to real life.
  - kiba 2y ago
    Actually, my understanding is that contexts in general are hard to transfer.
- jacobolus 2y ago
  By far the best way to learn arithmetic facts is to ‘naturally’ use them in service of solving more interesting or relevant problems. Someone who spends the same amount of time doing nontrivial word problems, pattern-discovery projects, playing a game or solving a puzzle involving embedded arithmetic, or just talking about numbers in a group will come out vastly better prepared both for recalling or figuring out arithmetic solutions per se and for mathematical fluency in general than someone who does narrow practice drills. Arithmetic drills are not only a total motivation killer for most people, but also just suck at aiding retention. Time spent on arithmetic drills in school is somewhere between a waste of time and an actively harmful punishment. If anyone wants some primary school appropriate word problems, let me recommend the collections by Lenchner, e.g. https://archive.org/details/mathematicalolym0000lenc https://archive.org/details/mathematicalolym0000lenc Also try Kordemsky’s Moscow Puzzles https://archive.org/details/boris-a.-kordemsky-the-moscow-puzzles-1972/ https://archive.org/details/boris-a.-kordemsky-the-moscow-pu...
WalterBright 2y ago
The EEs I have known that carried around a card with: V = I * R I = V / R R = V / I because they couldn't remember it were all bad at EE and bad at math. If you can't remember the pieces making up a concept, how are you going to remember the concept? > It’s disproportionately important for passing tests (And getting hired at tech companies!) I don't remember anyone who couldn't pass tests but was really a great engineer. BTW, one of the tests fighter pilots go through is they are blindfolded, and then have to put their hand on each control the instructor calls out. I also have some written tests for certifying pilots. There are questions like max takeoff weight, fuel burn rate, max dive speeds, etc. Stuff a pilot had better know or he's a dead pilot.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  Some times the brain is wired to intuit the concept. That's something that fascinates me. You grasp the idea before any articulate explanation. Somebody shows you a problem and rapidly you start discussing solutions with the other person and even go further. Most of the time memorization is a key role for creativity, the easier you can jump between ideas the more combinations you can explore (seems like the brain is constrained by some cache bottleneck in a way).
- jjk166 2y ago
  > There are questions like max takeoff weight, fuel burn rate, max dive speeds, etc. Stuff a pilot had better know or he's a dead pilot. You don't want a pilot who is creative when it comes to max takeoff weight. Obviously there are good reasons to memorize certain things, creativity just isn't one of them.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >You don't want a pilot who is creative when it comes to max takeoff weight. In certain combat situations, or when smuggling coke across South and Central America, you certainly do.
    - lambda 2y ago
ugh123 2y ago
Makes total sense. Kinda like how we can't train an LLM how to speak by just giving it a dictionary.
- lo_zamoyski 2y ago
  I am not commenting on or agreeing with the OP, but your response is false. LLMs aren't given just a dictionary, and they do not know how to speak. Speech implies grasp of semantics. There is zero semantics in a block of text, only, according to some interpretation, various textual correlations.
pfortuny 2y ago
You are changing the definition of memory we have had for like 25 centuries in the West. That is your choice but there is no stretching on the other side. “To me” is not what defines what something is.
coldtea 2y ago
>OP and others here are stretching the definition of “memorize” to mean “anything that leads to something being retained in memory.” They "stretch" it to its dictionary definition? >The trauma of burning your hand on a hot pan creates a memory you won’t soon forget, but almost no one would understand it as an act of memorization It still is a kind of memorization, just not a voluntary one. And such learning is still is a very important function of mental development and evolutionary fitness, that shouldn't just be shunned "because trauma". >Memorization to me refers to a set of cargo-culty “learning” practices wherein we believe that by using language to drill exposure to an abstract representation of a concept, that somehow we will absorb the concept itself Well, I see your cargo cult and I raise you tried-and-true. "Absorbing the concept itself" might take more effort (including personal, for logistical reasons, not everything can be tailored to the individual learner, who might not even care enough for learning compared to all kinds of diversions, and have zero passion for the subjects, even if a clone with the teaching skills of Feynman with the presentation skills of Tonny Robbins, and the passionate conviction of Jean D' Arc was to present it to them. But absorbing the concept is not enough, there needs to be instant recall, or at least fast enough recall) of all kinds of facts and factoids and tables, and also this "absorbing" also needs to encompass boring concepts, that are nonetheless crucial, if one is to be succesful in anything technical or scientific, or generally creative in any sort of organized way that combines concepts and information (not just Jackson Pollocking away).
- LoganDark 2y ago
  > They "stretch" it to its dictionary definition? To memorize means to commit to memory. It is an action. But memories are created by not just actions, but experiences. Experiences can create memories without you having committed them; without you having memorized anything.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >To memorize means to commit to memory. It is an action. There is no action of "commiting to memory". It's not an action we do, it's a process that results in that. The actual action we do (when we consciously try to remember something) is e.g. to study (read, repeat, and so on).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
josephg 2y ago
> We do this mainly because experts suck at empathizing with learners and fail to understand that the symbol has meaning for them but not for the learner. I hear you; but teaching deep expertise is really hard. We can use your example of a child learning their first language. They will really understand it. But people are famously, hilariously terrible at teaching their native tongue. We know how to conjugate, and how to use verbs and adverbs and all the rest. But it’s all intuitive - we have no symbolic understanding of it. If that’s the case, we can’t explain it in words. Here’s a weird fact: if you look around the room you’re in now, I bet you know what it would feel like on your tongue to lick everything you see. We probably learned that in the “put everything in your mouth” baby phase. You are an expert. But if you wanted to, how would you teach that? I think the learner would just have to go lick a lot of things for themself. I believe a lot of real learning is actually like that. When I taught programming, I think I was a frustrating teacher. My students would ask things like “what’s the best way to structure this program?” And I would say “I don’t know. Let’s brainstorm a few ways then you should pick at least one and try writing it like that. Figure it out in code.” I think you become great at programming by licking all the programs you can find. Same with music and art and languages (go have conversations with native speakers). There is only so much the best teacher can teach. Sometimes you just have to walk around licking things.
- azeirah 2y ago
  Yes. Tacit knowledge is hard to teach.
  - josephg 2y ago
    Right. And, I think, real expertise in any subject is choc full of tacit knowledge. Even - and especially - in areas where we have good symbolic representations. (Like music, math, programming and languages.)
    - thanksgiving 2y ago
      The problem with English is I don't actually know the rules. Something just feels "off" sometimes when someone makes grammatical mistakes. I doubt I will ever gain this feeling (for lack of a better word) with another language. I mean how could I? Everything sounds weird and "off" when you're a beginner, right? For example: el bano, el agua, la naranja, la sillas. You're constantly suppressing warning signs flashing in your head. For example, I remember being forced to memorize the multiplication tables. I doubt we do that in schools anymore. I feel like all that time could have been better spent learning something else.
throwaway14356 2y ago
haha, no man, the "creativity" cargo cult should be entirely ignored. You shouldn't even consider what mechanistic formula they've invented. If you do you might buy into it and your creativity will be less your own. Never listen to the grownups, everything they say is a lie.
cjfd 2y ago
Drilling vocabulary flashcards is very helpful in learning a language. As is reading, listening, or talking to someone. To learn a language well, you need to do both. Although children ultimately reach the level of being a native speaker, they do not do this very quickly considering that they say their first words when they are about 1 year old.
jamager 2y ago
> They aren’t being “drilled” to learn “mama They actually are, thou. Small kids are repeated the same things over and over, hundreds of times. They watch the same Bluey episodes dozens of times, get them read the same books dozens of times, listen to the same songs dozens of times. They drill in their own ways, but they drill.

patrick451 2y ago

> The trauma of burning your hand on a hot pan creates a memory you won’t soon forget, but almost no one would understand it as an act of memorization. I reject you rejection. You need to provide a reason something learned via pain is fundamentally different from something learned without pain. We used to beat school children for not learning their lesson.

linearrust 2y ago

> It’s the difference between drilling vocabulary flashcards and actually reading, listening, or talking to someone. You need the 'flashcards' before you can read, listen or talk. Go try reading a book where you don't know most of the words. Heck you need 'flashcards' before you needs 'flashcards for words'. You need to memorize the alphabet first. Try reading a text where you haven't learned the writing system. > Young children do not use vocab flashcards to learn their L1. Because they can't read. > They aren’t being “drilled” to learn “mama.” Obviously you aren't a parent. You think a child magically decides one day to say mama? Or do you think it's the mother constantly saying 'mama' to the child until the child 'remembers it' and repeats it? > They have actual needs in an actual social context and attend to nuanced details of that context to make complex statistical inferences about the world, their perceptions, and their body. What? Complex statistical inferences about the world?

chaps 2y ago
How are you defining a "flashcard"?
watwut 2y ago
You should be aware that people are able to become fluent without ever using flashcards.
MisterBastahrd 2y ago
Kids say mama almost universally and regardless of their local language because it's an easy sound to make.
lelanthran 2y ago
> Heck you need 'flashcards' before you needs 'flashcards for words'. You need to memorize the alphabet first. I've a toddler who can read 3 paragraphs of 3 sentences each, and then tell you the details of the story he read[1]. He is 4y6m, right now. He has never learned the alphabet or the names of the letters (A,B, C, D, etc). He has only learned the sounds a letter or sequence of letters make for certain patterns. You most definitely do not need to memorise the alphabet in order to learn to read! Teaching children the alphabet before teaching them reading makes it a lot harder for them to learn actual reading. [1] I've seen kids as old as 7 get confused by a book with no pictures, and he sails right on through because I taught him to read (using the DISTAR alphabet), and made sure none of our daily lessons had even a single picture in it.

gwervc 2y ago

> It’s the difference between drilling vocabulary flashcards and actually reading, listening, or talking to someone. Those are not opposite activities. Drilling vocabulary flashcard is the most efficient way to start being able to read/listen/speak; and it's not even clear from research that output (speaking and writing) is useful at all for learning. Also good luck learning to read Chinese or Japanese without rote learning a few hundred characters. Even native speakers learn them by repetition. You can't be serious advocating "just go read stuff" as a way to learn a language. Some foundation, acquired by explicit learning, is required to even start reading. > Young children do not use vocab flashcards to learn their L1. That's a bad argument: the life of a toddler is vastly different than an adult. A young child has basically nothing but figuring out what's going around him (including language) at least 16 hours per day, every day. An adult has much less time for that.

nickburns 2y ago
> A young child has basically nothing but figuring out what's going around him Right—not simply memorizing what's happening around them. Those are fundamentally different activies. That is the gist of the parent comment's point. They've also acknowledged expressly that rote memorization techniques are "valuable" and "have a place."
kqr 2y ago
> That's a bad argument: the life of a toddler is vastly different than an adult. Also it takes a surprisingly long time for children to learn language. I used to think it sorta-kinda happened over a year or two, but having children myself revealed how wrong I was. I have written up a fairly hefty dictionary of words they mispronounce or even just invent on their own because they don't know the one in their native tongue. My oldest rarely contributes individual words to this dictionary anymore, but he still improvises expressions and idioms.
- nickburns 2y ago
  > I have written up a fairly hefty dictionary of words they mispronounce or even just invent on their own because they don't know the one in their native tongue. Ah, beautiful little displays of an attempt to understand, not merely memorize.

usrbinno 2y ago

> ...experts suck at empathizing with learners... Or maybe we just don't want to coddle them. When has learning anything been easy, and why do you expect people to be able to acquire new knowledge and skills without putting in the effort? It shouldn't be grueling, not for its own sake, but yeah, you might have to stare at a compiler error for a few hours or even a few days before you figure out what's broken. Truly, how else are you supposed to learn if you don't, eventually, do it yourself? I'm so sick of this anti-expert, anti-knowledge attitude. It's why we have bootcamp juniors being thrown into otherwise-senior roles, with laughably predictable consequences for the field.

lovethevoid 2y ago
This attitude seems unrelated to the topic at hand quite frankly. Experts suck at empathizing with learners not because of this spite, but often because it's actually quite difficult to switch gears in language and understanding. It's a completely different way of sharing knowledge, where you have to explicitly express things that are just assumed shared understanding among colleagues. Also, to answer your questions in a very simple way: the entire reason you even became an expert is because another expert somewhere along the way gave you an easy in to the knowledge, they coddled you. This is why you can "stare at a compiler error for a few hours before figuring out what's broken". Without that expert, you wouldn't even understand what a compiler even is.
apsurd 2y ago
Parent is saying there's a big difference between being an expert in a field and being a good teacher.
zharknado 2y ago
Perhaps I worded it too emotionally. I mean that experts struggle to remember what it was like before they understood something. It’s very common for experts to ask novices to make leaps that they aren’t capable of making, because they seem natural or obvious from an expert POV. I’m all for hard work; learning is usually very hard work. I also think we need expert guidance. But let’s make the difficulty useful/effective rather than counterproductive.

stonemetal12 2y ago

Memorize means "to retain in and quickly recall from memory". Weather that is by synthetic or natural process is irrelevant. From the point of understanding how memory and recall work, yes burning your hand is an act of memorization. Sure there is a natural repetitive process that leads to base learning like L1 you mention. On the other hand no one adds or multiples enough in daily life for natural memory formation. Humans consider the skill vital enough that we have developed methods to memorize them. Same for spelling, especially for infrequently used words. Flashcards used with Spaced repetition isn't cargo cult, it is a well studied, and pretty good method of inducing memory formation.

zharknado 2y ago
I’d say that’s the definition of “remember” rather than “memorize.” To most people I’d wager “memorize” has a strong connotation for the synthetic version only, with an emphasis on a stripping-out of context. I recognize that stripping away context can be valuable—-drilling a tennis serve over and over outside the real-time context of a game is extremely helpful. Flashcards are rarely valuable in the same way. For semantically oriented tasks, an impoverished context is usually not very helpful. Receptive skills like letter and character recognition might be an exception. But even then you’ve got to make the leap to reading at some point. > no one adds or multiplies enough in daily life for natural memory formation To the contrary, there’s a fascinating study of children in South America who had very fluent mental math skills for making change because they sold fruit on the side of the road. They couldn’t solve the exact same problem in story problem format in a classroom, though. Synthetic contexts usually don’t transfer well to real life.
- kiba 2y ago
  Actually, my understanding is that contexts in general are hard to transfer.
jacobolus 2y ago
By far the best way to learn arithmetic facts is to ‘naturally’ use them in service of solving more interesting or relevant problems. Someone who spends the same amount of time doing nontrivial word problems, pattern-discovery projects, playing a game or solving a puzzle involving embedded arithmetic, or just talking about numbers in a group will come out vastly better prepared both for recalling or figuring out arithmetic solutions per se and for mathematical fluency in general than someone who does narrow practice drills. Arithmetic drills are not only a total motivation killer for most people, but also just suck at aiding retention. Time spent on arithmetic drills in school is somewhere between a waste of time and an actively harmful punishment. If anyone wants some primary school appropriate word problems, let me recommend the collections by Lenchner, e.g. https://archive.org/details/mathematicalolym0000lenc https://archive.org/details/mathematicalolym0000lenc Also try Kordemsky’s Moscow Puzzles https://archive.org/details/boris-a.-kordemsky-the-moscow-puzzles-1972/ https://archive.org/details/boris-a.-kordemsky-the-moscow-pu...

WalterBright 2y ago

The EEs I have known that carried around a card with: V = I * R I = V / R R = V / I because they couldn't remember it were all bad at EE and bad at math. If you can't remember the pieces making up a concept, how are you going to remember the concept? > It’s disproportionately important for passing tests (And getting hired at tech companies!) I don't remember anyone who couldn't pass tests but was really a great engineer. BTW, one of the tests fighter pilots go through is they are blindfolded, and then have to put their hand on each control the instructor calls out. I also have some written tests for certifying pilots. There are questions like max takeoff weight, fuel burn rate, max dive speeds, etc. Stuff a pilot had better know or he's a dead pilot.

agumonkey 2y ago
Some times the brain is wired to intuit the concept. That's something that fascinates me. You grasp the idea before any articulate explanation. Somebody shows you a problem and rapidly you start discussing solutions with the other person and even go further. Most of the time memorization is a key role for creativity, the easier you can jump between ideas the more combinations you can explore (seems like the brain is constrained by some cache bottleneck in a way).
jjk166 2y ago
> There are questions like max takeoff weight, fuel burn rate, max dive speeds, etc. Stuff a pilot had better know or he's a dead pilot. You don't want a pilot who is creative when it comes to max takeoff weight. Obviously there are good reasons to memorize certain things, creativity just isn't one of them.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >You don't want a pilot who is creative when it comes to max takeoff weight. In certain combat situations, or when smuggling coke across South and Central America, you certainly do.
  - lambda 2y ago

ugh123 2y ago

Makes total sense. Kinda like how we can't train an LLM how to speak by just giving it a dictionary.

lo_zamoyski 2y ago
I am not commenting on or agreeing with the OP, but your response is false. LLMs aren't given just a dictionary, and they do not know how to speak. Speech implies grasp of semantics. There is zero semantics in a block of text, only, according to some interpretation, various textual correlations.

pfortuny 2y ago

You are changing the definition of memory we have had for like 25 centuries in the West. That is your choice but there is no stretching on the other side. “To me” is not what defines what something is.

coldtea 2y ago

>OP and others here are stretching the definition of “memorize” to mean “anything that leads to something being retained in memory.” They "stretch" it to its dictionary definition? >The trauma of burning your hand on a hot pan creates a memory you won’t soon forget, but almost no one would understand it as an act of memorization It still is a kind of memorization, just not a voluntary one. And such learning is still is a very important function of mental development and evolutionary fitness, that shouldn't just be shunned "because trauma". >Memorization to me refers to a set of cargo-culty “learning” practices wherein we believe that by using language to drill exposure to an abstract representation of a concept, that somehow we will absorb the concept itself Well, I see your cargo cult and I raise you tried-and-true. "Absorbing the concept itself" might take more effort (including personal, for logistical reasons, not everything can be tailored to the individual learner, who might not even care enough for learning compared to all kinds of diversions, and have zero passion for the subjects, even if a clone with the teaching skills of Feynman with the presentation skills of Tonny Robbins, and the passionate conviction of Jean D' Arc was to present it to them. But absorbing the concept is not enough, there needs to be instant recall, or at least fast enough recall) of all kinds of facts and factoids and tables, and also this "absorbing" also needs to encompass boring concepts, that are nonetheless crucial, if one is to be succesful in anything technical or scientific, or generally creative in any sort of organized way that combines concepts and information (not just Jackson Pollocking away).

LoganDark 2y ago
> They "stretch" it to its dictionary definition? To memorize means to commit to memory. It is an action. But memories are created by not just actions, but experiences. Experiences can create memories without you having committed them; without you having memorized anything.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >To memorize means to commit to memory. It is an action. There is no action of "commiting to memory". It's not an action we do, it's a process that results in that. The actual action we do (when we consciously try to remember something) is e.g. to study (read, repeat, and so on).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

josephg 2y ago

> We do this mainly because experts suck at empathizing with learners and fail to understand that the symbol has meaning for them but not for the learner. I hear you; but teaching deep expertise is really hard. We can use your example of a child learning their first language. They will really understand it. But people are famously, hilariously terrible at teaching their native tongue. We know how to conjugate, and how to use verbs and adverbs and all the rest. But it’s all intuitive - we have no symbolic understanding of it. If that’s the case, we can’t explain it in words. Here’s a weird fact: if you look around the room you’re in now, I bet you know what it would feel like on your tongue to lick everything you see. We probably learned that in the “put everything in your mouth” baby phase. You are an expert. But if you wanted to, how would you teach that? I think the learner would just have to go lick a lot of things for themself. I believe a lot of real learning is actually like that. When I taught programming, I think I was a frustrating teacher. My students would ask things like “what’s the best way to structure this program?” And I would say “I don’t know. Let’s brainstorm a few ways then you should pick at least one and try writing it like that. Figure it out in code.” I think you become great at programming by licking all the programs you can find. Same with music and art and languages (go have conversations with native speakers). There is only so much the best teacher can teach. Sometimes you just have to walk around licking things.

azeirah 2y ago
Yes. Tacit knowledge is hard to teach.
- josephg 2y ago
  Right. And, I think, real expertise in any subject is choc full of tacit knowledge. Even - and especially - in areas where we have good symbolic representations. (Like music, math, programming and languages.)
  - thanksgiving 2y ago
    The problem with English is I don't actually know the rules. Something just feels "off" sometimes when someone makes grammatical mistakes. I doubt I will ever gain this feeling (for lack of a better word) with another language. I mean how could I? Everything sounds weird and "off" when you're a beginner, right? For example: el bano, el agua, la naranja, la sillas. You're constantly suppressing warning signs flashing in your head. For example, I remember being forced to memorize the multiplication tables. I doubt we do that in schools anymore. I feel like all that time could have been better spent learning something else.

throwaway14356 2y ago

haha, no man, the "creativity" cargo cult should be entirely ignored. You shouldn't even consider what mechanistic formula they've invented. If you do you might buy into it and your creativity will be less your own. Never listen to the grownups, everything they say is a lie.

cjfd 2y ago

Drilling vocabulary flashcards is very helpful in learning a language. As is reading, listening, or talking to someone. To learn a language well, you need to do both. Although children ultimately reach the level of being a native speaker, they do not do this very quickly considering that they say their first words when they are about 1 year old.

jamager 2y ago

> They aren’t being “drilled” to learn “mama They actually are, thou. Small kids are repeated the same things over and over, hundreds of times. They watch the same Bluey episodes dozens of times, get them read the same books dozens of times, listen to the same songs dozens of times. They drill in their own ways, but they drill.