4 ms·

Einstein famously refused to learn people's phone numbers, stating that he could look them up in the phonebook whenever he needed it. I don't think there is th

by malfist 7mo ago

Einstein famously refused to learn people's phone numbers, stating that he could look them up in the phonebook whenever he needed it. I don't think there is that much value in memorizing rarely used, easily looked up information.

gilleain 7mo ago
Agreed, it interests me how much some people emphasise knowing facts - like dates in history or dictionary definitions of words. Facts alone are like pebbles on a beach, far better (IMO) to have a few stones mortared with understanding to make a building of knowledge. A fanciful metaphor but you know ...
- animuchan 7mo ago
  This is an entirely false dichotomy though, is it not? One can both know facts and understand logic behind them, it's not like you're creating an RPG character and need to make a choice with limited character points. (Can't say time is the limiting factor either -- we're both in HN comments, valuing our own time at zero.)
  - randcraw 7mo ago
    And it ignores the fact that, if you refuse to remember any facts because they can be looked up, you'll be unable to form any new ideas because you'll know nothing, and you won't know what is out there to be looked up. And of course, what if your phone dies?
  - gilleain 7mo ago
    Yes I was not clear, it seems. Facts are necessary but not sufficient. There is limited time, of course - no one can learn everything, but you can pay attention to the important facts, and the connections between them. In some ideal world you would learn every fact there is, and the connections would fall out on their own, but in the real world we have to construct theories and frameworks to organise facts.
  - fendy3002 7mo ago
    I'm not an expert, however what I believe is brain has limited capacity, and old memories keep being deleted when unused after long time. It is impossible to remember everything unless you have photographic memory. It makes remembering facts like syntaxes challenging and most of the time useless, and keeping logic is better in the long run. Let's for example about html boilerplate, where you don't remember the syntax. What you remember is the components & why they are needed, then add them one by one as you recall your memory. Doctype, html tag, head, body, etc. It works because html is simple and common. Then for express it is harder, because you need to recall javascript syntaxes and express syntaxes, and most of the time you don't get involved with express outside req and res. You recall that express need body parser, register routers, and finally listen, whether you use http server first or directly from express. Now you compose one by one, looking at docs or web for the forgotten pieces, but you don't lose the understanding / logic of express, you just forget the syntaxes. As for stream where I keep forgetting it, I just need to remember that stream need source, event handler such as on data, error, finish / end. Pipe if needed. However I never remember whether to use writable, readable, streamable, etc because I seldom get involved with them, and can look up for references anytime.
- redsocksfan45 7mo ago
  [dead]
- helle253 7mo ago
  Knowing facts matters quite a lot imo, even if it doesnt 'seem' like it. To use another metaphor, you can't REALLY see the forest amongst the trees, if you don't consider the trees themselves. One of the reasons I like history so much is because, with enough facts accumulated, you can see how one piece of information flows into another - e.g. dates matter, because knowing the precise order in which important events occur helps you determine how those events may or may not have affected each other in the course of their unfolding. Sure memorizing dates is boring on its own, but putting them in contexts is exciting - you still need to comb the beaches to find the right stones!
  - gilleain 7mo ago
    I accept the ordering of dates is important, yes. History can be in the details, but as you say you need to comb the beach for the right stones. I guess an interesting counterpoint to what I said is something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory (and similar) where a grandiose framework tries to fit inconvenient facts into a shape that is entirely invented.
ThrowawayR2 7mo ago
The problem is that lazy people use the supposed Einstein quote as a convenient excuse to not know and internalize knowledge about their own profession. You can bet that Einstein memorized the relevant mathematics for his work thoroughly and completely.
- hansmayer 7mo ago
  Oh didn't you know - the legend has it, he was also bad at maths in elementary school, so that kid of your friends, failing the math this year, may be a genius too :)
hansmayer 7mo ago
> I don't think there is that much value in memorizing rarely used, easily looked up information. easily looked up - we don't have that any more since Google decided to entshittify search. What you now have is not looked up information, as that would look the same each time you "looked it up" - instead of a quick 3-4 word search pattern you now write an elaborate verbose "query", and get a chewed up re-interpretation by the shitty LLMs. And then since sometimes its not quite what you asked for, you have to ask it again or redirect it and just like that, you've wasted 5 mins of your time arguing with a goddamn neural network!
- theshrike79 7mo ago
  And this is why I pay for Kagi. It's in the top5 of services I cancel last if money is tight.
  - hansmayer 7mo ago
    This is something I've been curious about for a long time now. I would happily pay their top tier, but testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google ? Or was I not using it right? Just typing in same stuff and literally getting the same list of results. If you want to share more, I'd be happy to know.
    - theshrike79 7mo ago
      "testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google" So Kagi gave you ads, sponsored links, AI generated answers etc. as top results? =) It shouldn't, or you've registered for a scam site. That's the difference. With Kagi it feels like I'm using Google from 10 years ago. On Kagi I can go "searchword -notthisone +thshastobethere inurl:forum" and it actually works. You can also manually downrank sites in the settings so that they never appear in your results (as I've done for pinterest etc that are 99% crap, but have excellent SEO). Or boost sites with reliably good results.
      - 7mo ago

by malfist 7mo ago

gilleain 7mo ago

Agreed, it interests me how much some people emphasise knowing facts - like dates in history or dictionary definitions of words. Facts alone are like pebbles on a beach, far better (IMO) to have a few stones mortared with understanding to make a building of knowledge. A fanciful metaphor but you know ...

animuchan 7mo ago
This is an entirely false dichotomy though, is it not? One can both know facts and understand logic behind them, it's not like you're creating an RPG character and need to make a choice with limited character points. (Can't say time is the limiting factor either -- we're both in HN comments, valuing our own time at zero.)
- randcraw 7mo ago
  And it ignores the fact that, if you refuse to remember any facts because they can be looked up, you'll be unable to form any new ideas because you'll know nothing, and you won't know what is out there to be looked up. And of course, what if your phone dies?
- gilleain 7mo ago
  Yes I was not clear, it seems. Facts are necessary but not sufficient. There is limited time, of course - no one can learn everything, but you can pay attention to the important facts, and the connections between them. In some ideal world you would learn every fact there is, and the connections would fall out on their own, but in the real world we have to construct theories and frameworks to organise facts.
- fendy3002 7mo ago
  I'm not an expert, however what I believe is brain has limited capacity, and old memories keep being deleted when unused after long time. It is impossible to remember everything unless you have photographic memory. It makes remembering facts like syntaxes challenging and most of the time useless, and keeping logic is better in the long run. Let's for example about html boilerplate, where you don't remember the syntax. What you remember is the components & why they are needed, then add them one by one as you recall your memory. Doctype, html tag, head, body, etc. It works because html is simple and common. Then for express it is harder, because you need to recall javascript syntaxes and express syntaxes, and most of the time you don't get involved with express outside req and res. You recall that express need body parser, register routers, and finally listen, whether you use http server first or directly from express. Now you compose one by one, looking at docs or web for the forgotten pieces, but you don't lose the understanding / logic of express, you just forget the syntaxes. As for stream where I keep forgetting it, I just need to remember that stream need source, event handler such as on data, error, finish / end. Pipe if needed. However I never remember whether to use writable, readable, streamable, etc because I seldom get involved with them, and can look up for references anytime.
redsocksfan45 7mo ago
[dead]
helle253 7mo ago
Knowing facts matters quite a lot imo, even if it doesnt 'seem' like it. To use another metaphor, you can't REALLY see the forest amongst the trees, if you don't consider the trees themselves. One of the reasons I like history so much is because, with enough facts accumulated, you can see how one piece of information flows into another - e.g. dates matter, because knowing the precise order in which important events occur helps you determine how those events may or may not have affected each other in the course of their unfolding. Sure memorizing dates is boring on its own, but putting them in contexts is exciting - you still need to comb the beaches to find the right stones!
- gilleain 7mo ago
  I accept the ordering of dates is important, yes. History can be in the details, but as you say you need to comb the beach for the right stones. I guess an interesting counterpoint to what I said is something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_conspiracy_theory (and similar) where a grandiose framework tries to fit inconvenient facts into a shape that is entirely invented.

ThrowawayR2 7mo ago

The problem is that lazy people use the supposed Einstein quote as a convenient excuse to not know and internalize knowledge about their own profession. You can bet that Einstein memorized the relevant mathematics for his work thoroughly and completely.

hansmayer 7mo ago
Oh didn't you know - the legend has it, he was also bad at maths in elementary school, so that kid of your friends, failing the math this year, may be a genius too :)

hansmayer 7mo ago

> I don't think there is that much value in memorizing rarely used, easily looked up information. easily looked up - we don't have that any more since Google decided to entshittify search. What you now have is not looked up information, as that would look the same each time you "looked it up" - instead of a quick 3-4 word search pattern you now write an elaborate verbose "query", and get a chewed up re-interpretation by the shitty LLMs. And then since sometimes its not quite what you asked for, you have to ask it again or redirect it and just like that, you've wasted 5 mins of your time arguing with a goddamn neural network!

theshrike79 7mo ago
And this is why I pay for Kagi. It's in the top5 of services I cancel last if money is tight.
- hansmayer 7mo ago
  This is something I've been curious about for a long time now. I would happily pay their top tier, but testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google ? Or was I not using it right? Just typing in same stuff and literally getting the same list of results. If you want to share more, I'd be happy to know.
  - theshrike79 7mo ago
    "testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google" So Kagi gave you ads, sponsored links, AI generated answers etc. as top results? =) It shouldn't, or you've registered for a scam site. That's the difference. With Kagi it feels like I'm using Google from 10 years ago. On Kagi I can go "searchword -notthisone +thshastobethere inurl:forum" and it actually works. You can also manually downrank sites in the settings so that they never appear in your results (as I've done for pinterest etc that are 99% crap, but have excellent SEO). Or boost sites with reliably good results.
    - 7mo ago