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Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

productivegrowth.substack.com

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Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#141

Post by QuarterReptile »

90minuteAPI wrote: post #140
moonchild wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly the same, but I did some research a while ago on the environmental impact of ereaders vs paper books. They're actually quite close, though it depends on how much you read; the overall impact of the ereader is ~100-140x that of a single paper book. A full-on tablet is probably worse, as the display is more expensive to manufacture.

It’s a shame that the reading experience gets worse as you go from book to e-ink to tablet, at least for me. Like many HN readers I’m already staring at screens for many hours per day. Using the library for books seems like the way to go! I see bookshelves in so many houses and wonder, realistically how many of those will ever be opened again? I have books that will comfort or challenge me for decades to come, but mo…

Ideally, it's also for sharing with guests.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#142

Post by suicas »

samuell wrote: post #16

One aspect the article doesn't mention is spatiality, and how that aids memorizing. As you might know one very common technique used by memorizing masters is to place things you want to remember in some imagined 3D world. This effect is also something I've experienced strongly myself when listening to audiobooks while running. I figured I can actually remember the exact place along my running route in a nearby forest…

Another memorisation aid I accidentally observed was with using different pens/inks for note taking.

I started taking an minor interest in different pens at some point, and have about a dozen pens I switch between (a mix of cheap fountain pens and rollerballs mostly).

I found that I started remembering which pen or which colour ink I wrote certain things with, it seemed to add yet another memory link to whatever I was writing.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#143

Post by Pokepokalypse »

samuell wrote: post #53
slx26 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I think it's an even more general mechanism of association . And places might also be easy to remember because they also contain many elements we can associate. You can call it the connectedness of a memory. You can also try to repeatedly explain to others something you want to remember or whatever.

Could be, but to me it seems our brains are optimized a lot for operating in the spatio(temporal) world, and so spatial connections in particular seem to fit the wiring of our brains particularly well.

You're probably on to something there. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution for finding food and avoiding predators. At best: a few thousand for managing linguistic skills. (or possibly hundreds of thousands, when it comes to our ancestor's pre-linguistic abilities).

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#144

Post by Pokepokalypse »

fatnoah wrote: post #20
samuell wrote: post #16

One aspect the article doesn't mention is spatiality, and how that aids memorizing. As you might know one very common technique used by memorizing masters is to place things you want to remember in some imagined 3D world. This effect is also something I've experienced strongly myself when listening to audiobooks while running. I figured I can actually remember the exact place along my running route in a nearby forest…

Very interesting! In college, I strongly experienced the phenomena of taking a test and not being able to remember the exact content, but could accurately remember the layout of the page that the data was on. I also got into the habit of creating 1 or 2 page cheat sheets for tests, whether I could use them in the test or not, and the spatial organization of the data seemed to correlate very directly with my ability t…

Yeah - I do this too, and I also find that for learning new programming tasks, if I make my own cheat-sheet, I remember the content well enough that I don't actually need to use it that much. But when it comes to using someone else's cheat-sheet, I have a hard time remembering and I have to constantly refer back.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#145

Post by fma »

roughly wrote: post #106

> It’s not eco-friendly I'm actually curious about this point. I wonder about the actual environmental comparison between, say, going through 3-4 notebooks a year vs. a tablet with a 3-5 year span. A notebook "costs" trees, and in theory is use-once and disposeable, but it's biodegradable, the ingredients are relatively easily accessible, and the manufacturing process is pretty refined by now. A tablet, on the other…

Check out rocketbooks. It's erasable notebook basically. I don't use the scan feature but they have the option to have an app, take a pic and get it categorized.

I usually just need something written down for a few days/weeks as I work on projects and don't need it anymore.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#146

Post by samuell »

nitrogen wrote: post #92
samuell wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be, but to me it seems our brains are optimized a lot for operating in the spatio(temporal) world, and so spatial connections in particular seem to fit the wiring of our brains particularly well.

IIRC research in mice has even found grid neurons that are specifically firing for spatial locations, beyond just mere association.

Would love to check that paper, if you find the link.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#148

Post by rpeden »

anyfoo wrote: post #23
samuell wrote: post #16

One aspect the article doesn't mention is spatiality, and how that aids memorizing. As you might know one very common technique used by memorizing masters is to place things you want to remember in some imagined 3D world. This effect is also something I've experienced strongly myself when listening to audiobooks while running. I figured I can actually remember the exact place along my running route in a nearby forest…

Spatiality, that's it. It really seems to make a tremendous difference for me to know where something is written down, and sometimes even remembering doing it. I always felt that doing it on a computer was indeed too abstract, losing that spatiality. I also agree with the audiobook thing. For example, I recently thought back to a passage in an audiobook I enjoyed... and my mind instantly visualized how I was standing…

I get that weird concept/location thing too, and I usually can't figure out the association.

For example, when I hear "Turbo Pascal" I immediately see the intersection of Lawrence Ave. East and Pharmacy Avenue in Toronto from the perspective of a person standing at the northwest corner of the intersection, looking south. I don't think I've ever been there on foot. It's a pretty unspectacular intersection. I'm quite sure I like Turbo Pascal significantly more than I like the intersection, and yet my brain has decided to link them.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#149

Post by nitrogen »

samuell wrote: post #146
nitrogen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC research in mice has even found grid neurons that are specifically firing for spatial locations, beyond just mere association.

Would love to check that paper, if you find the link.

It most likely would've been on arstechnica.com/science, which usually has links to original papers.

Re: Why I’m a sucker for pen and paper

#150

Post by [deleted] »

90minuteAPI wrote: post #140
moonchild wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly the same, but I did some research a while ago on the environmental impact of ereaders vs paper books. They're actually quite close, though it depends on how much you read; the overall impact of the ereader is ~100-140x that of a single paper book. A full-on tablet is probably worse, as the display is more expensive to manufacture.

It’s a shame that the reading experience gets worse as you go from book to e-ink to tablet, at least for me. Like many HN readers I’m already staring at screens for many hours per day. Using the library for books seems like the way to go! I see bookshelves in so many houses and wonder, realistically how many of those will ever be opened again? I have books that will comfort or challenge me for decades to come, but mo…

[deleted]
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