I agree with most of whats written here. I think there is a major point you're overlooking here. There is simply just too much information we're expected to know nowadays. You could argue that the amount of information we have to cram into our brains in such a short amount of time makes it very difficult to build good long term memories. High School and university curriculum's are forever expanding jamming more and more in the same period of time. Even in professional settings such as being a web developer or data scientist for example where new things are being invented by the second that then become the standard. At some point you'll need to offload long term memories to external sources. So while you may forget the actual content of what you need to know, you could for example remember what to google and the summary of the content you expect. Essentially our long term memories is transformed into pointers for external information banks. We only keep whats absolutely essential to perform our functions.
Learning Is Remembering
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Re: Learning Is Remembering
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
in what way is the definition limited / what should it be?
IMO, such a viewpoint about "learning" is limited to learning 'knowledge'; i.e. this sort of 'learning' is limited to repeating (replicating) facts external. I wonder, if learning is remembering, then what is "understanding"?? from my own viewpoint, learning is about something external; for example "what's the word for such and such concept?" ..in english or in spanish? point being that you need a corpus of consensus…
This is cognitive science in a nutshell. Most early philosophers argued exactly what "wisdom" means both externally and internally. Look to the Socratic philosophers for simplified explanations.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#33I wrote this and would love to know what you think about it. Am particularly interested in hearing any reasons why it's wrong
assuming our brain is a CPU, the 4-working-queue-short-memory is basically our L1-cache. We need L2 and hard drive for longer term memory, otherwise the system can not really function well. however long-term storage is just one vital factor, another one is the 'deep learning' neurons that understand the content it stores and more important to connect the dots among various neurons. we need both: understand and store.…
yes, we need understanding - the best way to get things into memory is to make connections between neurons through understanding. And this keeps it in memory for longer than if you just memorise it — and it will enable you to deploy the information in new contexts.
My takeaway from this article is that if you only focus on understanding (and so do not commit it to memory), you cannot reason using this information in unfamiliar contexts later on, once you've forgotten it.
So the best thing to do is to: 1. Make sure you understand something thoroughly 2. Test yourself on it using spaced repetition to ensure you keep it forever
For transparency: I'm one of the cofounders of Save All (linked site) alongside Petros the author
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#34The good news is that memory techniques have never been as accessible as they are now. I am fully in agreement with the conclusions drawn in the article, but the bad news is that even with those techniques it can be a slog. Any Anki user will tell you that maintaining dedication and avoiding burn-out is your Achilles' heel, not the limits of your human ability. Understanding something for the first time (in the Feynm…
All it takes then is just move from a method of remembering to another more efficient and enjoyable one, I can illustrate what I am trying to say using your Anki example by saying that once a language learner for example reaches a certain level in the language after acquiring a sized set of vocabulary, the learner can move to "abundant reading" as a way to memorize words through frequency as a more effective method of learning new vocabulary.
So it's all about remembering, but what differs is how someone approaches it depending on their level and understanding of the topic they are trying to learn.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#35You can remember something without fully understanding it. There is more to learning than just remembering.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#36I wrote this and would love to know what you think about it. Am particularly interested in hearing any reasons why it's wrong
Creating a tool to help others learn is awesome.
I think what the article misses is that there is a ton of knowledge we can't 'write down' and therefore memorization is not enough. For example learning to solve Integrals. Yes, there are some rules and tricks one can memorize which helps but I would argue the only way to get good at solving integrals is to interact, resp. solve them.
Another point are second order effects of how one learns, for example curiosity and resilience. There might be a long time negative effect on motivation of a topic, when there is too much focus on 'memorization' (It certainly was that for me in my French class;)).
I really enjoyed the 'bad reputation' part and agree that it is sadly viewed as not important enough by many.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#37Re: Learning Is Remembering
#38Per the author, they’re launching a service called “Save All” — which is simplified version of spaced repetition; might be worth explicitly stating this in the intro or footer of the linked blog post.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#39You can remember something without fully understanding it. There is more to learning than just remembering.
If you don't understand it then you don't remember the information that compromises an "understanding" of the thing
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#40You can remember something without fully understanding it. There is more to learning than just remembering.
I agree with the core idea of your comment, but I think the author is as far as I understood it think of learning as "fully understanding", so if you didn't fully understand it then you didn't learn it yet.