I find my forgetting pattern similar to a garbage collector — not sure how universal it is, but I tend to forget things I no longer have connections to. Eg. I will quickly forget memories with people I no longer communicate.
New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
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Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#62My own experience: I play guitar, I like to think I play very well and lots of people have praised my playing. I do it in bursts, spending lots of time playing and practicing and recording for a stretch of some months then I… don’t play at all. Life makes that cadence happen as much as anything, but all of my significant strides forward in technique and creative breakthrough have come shortly after breaking long dry…
I have seen this too. My pet theory is that, at all times, the brain is busy doing gradient descent on all the problems you have ever encountered in your life. Everything is getting improved in parallel. So when you step away from the problem for months at a time and come back you are reaping the benefits of all that background computation.
Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#63My own experience: I play guitar, I like to think I play very well and lots of people have praised my playing. I do it in bursts, spending lots of time playing and practicing and recording for a stretch of some months then I… don’t play at all. Life makes that cadence happen as much as anything, but all of my significant strides forward in technique and creative breakthrough have come shortly after breaking long dry…
I've experienced the same thing, but always had to wonder: maybe you're on an underlying trajectory of improvement fueled by practice, which is not influenced by brief breaks.
However, after a break, you notice all the improvement that has accumulated during the break. By contrast, when you practice daily, the day to day changes are small and you don't notice them.
Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#64My piano teacher always told me "you learn to skate in the Summer and swim in the Winter" according to the Russians.
Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#65My own experience: I play guitar, I like to think I play very well and lots of people have praised my playing. I do it in bursts, spending lots of time playing and practicing and recording for a stretch of some months then I… don’t play at all. Life makes that cadence happen as much as anything, but all of my significant strides forward in technique and creative breakthrough have come shortly after breaking long dry…
I can relate, and I have to commend how well your comment put my in the picture for the article.
I have another hobby, that is language learning and etymology, which is notoriously plagued by false cognates and false friends. Arguably, forgetting about illconceived notions requires inhibition. Once I forgot about it, I will gladly accept the mainstream opinion.
Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
I frequently find myself contributing to conversations with knowledge that I don't recall specifically learning. Once in a while, I think "Wow, how did I come up with something that insightful? When did I ever learn that?" It seems there's a background activity in the mind that is actually synthesizing a wide variety of inputs from our environment. As in what I read, movies I watch, meetings I sit in on, Tweets that…
I think this is what happens during sleep (a part of it). There have been times where I've been unable to "fall" asleep, but stayed in my bed, completely unaware of my surroundings or anything else except what's going on inside my mind. It feels like my thoughts were starting from a single point, then randomly branching off into multiple directions (one after the brisk "completion" of the other), and each path had a…
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Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I frequently find myself contributing to conversations with knowledge that I don't recall specifically learning. Once in a while, I think "Wow, how did I come up with something that insightful? When did I ever learn that?" It seems there's a background activity in the mind that is actually synthesizing a wide variety of inputs from our environment. As in what I read, movies I watch, meetings I sit in on, Tweets that…
I think this is what happens during sleep (a part of it). There have been times where I've been unable to "fall" asleep, but stayed in my bed, completely unaware of my surroundings or anything else except what's going on inside my mind. It feels like my thoughts were starting from a single point, then randomly branching off into multiple directions (one after the brisk "completion" of the other), and each path had a…
Related to this: Since when I was young, maybe around six or so, on nights before special days I looked forward to a lot (like my birthday), I was desperate and agonized over the realization that my current self (what you call "train of thought") would end once I fell asleep, so this current longing that I had would never actually be fulfilled. This made me really sad, and it felt like my current "self" would die and get replaced the next morning by a somehow related "self", that was in it's essential emotional state very new and in that regard definitely separate. I continued to have this feeling from time to time (maybe 2-3 times per year, less later on) until well into my twenties, when it somehow receded. I have not talked about this often, but when I did, I never found anybody that could relate.
Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#68My own experience: I play guitar, I like to think I play very well and lots of people have praised my playing. I do it in bursts, spending lots of time playing and practicing and recording for a stretch of some months then I… don’t play at all. Life makes that cadence happen as much as anything, but all of my significant strides forward in technique and creative breakthrough have come shortly after breaking long dry…
I have seen this too. My pet theory is that, at all times, the brain is busy doing gradient descent on all the problems you have ever encountered in your life. Everything is getting improved in parallel. So when you step away from the problem for months at a time and come back you are reaping the benefits of all that background computation.
Alternatively, you where doing gradient decent with daily practice but got stuck at a local minima. Taking a real break helps you get past that.
However, I don’t think either represent what’s actually happening very well.
Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is what happens during sleep (a part of it). There have been times where I've been unable to "fall" asleep, but stayed in my bed, completely unaware of my surroundings or anything else except what's going on inside my mind. It feels like my thoughts were starting from a single point, then randomly branching off into multiple directions (one after the brisk "completion" of the other), and each path had a…
Related to this: Since when I was young, maybe around six or so, on nights before special days I looked forward to a lot (like my birthday), I was desperate and agonized over the realization that my current self (what you call "train of thought") would end once I fell asleep, so this current longing that I had would never actually be fulfilled. This made me really sad, and it felt like my current "self" would die and…
You may find this comic speaks to you quite a bit:
Re: New theory proposes ‘forgetting’ is a form of learning
#70My own experience: I play guitar, I like to think I play very well and lots of people have praised my playing. I do it in bursts, spending lots of time playing and practicing and recording for a stretch of some months then I… don’t play at all. Life makes that cadence happen as much as anything, but all of my significant strides forward in technique and creative breakthrough have come shortly after breaking long dry…
I have seen this too. My pet theory is that, at all times, the brain is busy doing gradient descent on all the problems you have ever encountered in your life. Everything is getting improved in parallel. So when you step away from the problem for months at a time and come back you are reaping the benefits of all that background computation.
I think what happens is that during the active learning part you heavily overfit and end up in a local minima. Afterwards life acts like a regularisation, and when you return to it you are no longer in a minima but now have a gradient to descend on again.