61–70 of 372 posts
"Repetitio est mater studiorum" - repetition is the mother of learning. My creative writing professor, of all people, used to repeat this three times before every class. He was my favorite teacher at any level.
I was the sort of person who did not believe in memorisation as a solution for anything. Then I tried getting really good at spaced repetition for a year (yes, it is a skill that needs to be trained for good results) and I've completely changed my mind. Spaced repetition allows me to become proficient even in things I don't get the natural opportunity to practise daily, so that when the day comes and I need them, I h…
"It’s a little like building with lego bricks or something – spaced repetition helps ensure all the tiny pieces are in the right place, so that the big castle can happen without structural integrity issues."
The book Make it Stick (by Henry L. Roediger III) had a similar idea they called 'Structure Building'. Very similar to what you described, more experienced and effective learners were creating mental schemas of how the little, but crucial parts of a subject fit together, and successfully cut through the noise.
Structure Building was associated with interleaved practice (shuffling of problem types) and spaced retrieval practice.
All very nice and handwavey, but then you see the user’s current venture is scammy deepfakes as a service, which is about as creatively bankrupt as it gets. Shame about the national stereotypes as well. There is plenty of creativity in Asian countries. Just bizarre assertions all around.
Historically eastern Asian cultures have placed duty to a whole host of things before oneself, and in many cases the old aphorism "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down" applies as well. Plus Japan and Korea have well established cultures of adherence to tradition and mastering simple, time tested things to a ridiculous degree rather than trying to innovate. Not true of everyone, but if you compare a culture tha…
Is there anything substantive here? It’s just a bunch of arbitrary unprovable assertions. Everyone here seems to have, broadly speaking; neither a) the qualifications to knowledgeably comment of the (honestly poorly understood, afaik) function of “creativity” or b) anything more meaningful than “here is my naive personal lived experience and opinion” to contribute on the topic. It’s just armchair psychology. If you w…
"a flash of inspiration connecting internalized concepts" Well, okay, but rote memorization is neither necessary nor sufficient to internalize concepts. One of the reasons people make fun of the author's approach to creativity is that systematic memorization fundamentally can't teach taste —so the systematic approach reeks of awkward, try-hard, low-brow, tasteless art. More broadly, memorization doesn't help much wit…
I completely disagree with your assertion that "...rote memorization is neither necessary nor sufficient to internalize concepts." I would recommend reading the book Moonwalking with Einstein . There is a lot of discussion there on how memory is linked directly to creativity, and to understanding concepts deeply. --- A choice passage: "... If the essence of creativity is linking disparate facts and ideas, then the mo…
Although I'd say traditional mnemonic devices like memory palaces are basically linear information storage and recall devices. This can create issues in building a flexible web of information, because loci or the order of the path can become dependencies and you can run out of unique spots in a given space, leading to memory interference.
Even spaced repetition methods (e.g. Anki) tend towards fragmentation of micro-ideas. Its perfect for terms, languages, and simple one question -> one answer ideas.
I've found a hybrid method of images, nested loci and spaced repetition to be most useful, because its flexible over time, and preserves relationships of ideas.
(Context: I co-founded a SaaS in this space: www.sticky.study)
I think memorization gets a bad rep because you need to be acutely aware of what you're memorizing, like memorizing the sequence of an answer sheet instead of core concepts. But when done sufficiently rigorously, the foundations of memorization make room for higher-level critical thinking and reasoning. Practice is an oft suggested solution to developing mastery, but I did like how the article framed it: creating sub…
"a flash of inspiration connecting internalized concepts" Well, okay, but rote memorization is neither necessary nor sufficient to internalize concepts. One of the reasons people make fun of the author's approach to creativity is that systematic memorization fundamentally can't teach taste —so the systematic approach reeks of awkward, try-hard, low-brow, tasteless art. More broadly, memorization doesn't help much wit…
Thanks for reading and the response! One of the points I'm trying to make is that taste and elegance fundamentally stem from an internalized heuristic -- which at it's core is memorization. I understand the connotation of "memorization" evokes an image of blindly memorizing without connecting, but isn't the tastefully developed expertise just memorization of a better heuristic?
What I find instead, is that by just processing novel information, especially if I focus on analysing it, my brain internalizes insights and builds model of that type of thing, allowing me to either imperfectly reconstruct what I've seen, or to come up with an infinite array of permutations, extrapolations, etc which is where the real ideas come from.
Further, ideas crucially revolve not around just the information itself, but the "feel" for what role they play in the whole, how well they do it, in what way they're notable, etc.
In fact I'd straight up claim that memorization is antithetical to creativity - a perfect ML autoencoder or GAN would just regurgitate the training data. Creativity comes from generalisation while memorisation is analogous to overfitting.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for reading and the response! One of the points I'm trying to make is that taste and elegance fundamentally stem from an internalized heuristic -- which at it's core is memorization. I understand the connotation of "memorization" evokes an image of blindly memorizing without connecting, but isn't the tastefully developed expertise just memorization of a better heuristic?
I don't think I can agree, as an extremely creative person with extremely bad memory - to a point where I pretty much never memorize anything , whether intentionally or by accident. What I find instead, is that by just processing novel information, especially if I focus on analysing it, my brain internalizes insights and builds model of that type of thing, allowing me to either imperfectly reconstruct what I've seen,…
I feel like often the reason a creative person is hyper creative is they haven't memorized things so they are trying to rebuild information all the time in their heads from very sparse details.
This creates the transformative and relational combinations of information that a person memorizing can't see because it is created from a lack of organized specific information rather than a bounty of it.
Understanding -> Remembering -> Applying
If you don't understand the basics of a concept, and you're talking about memory, its probably just rote memorization. Students generally find this tedious, and since it's shallow its very hard to retain and connect to disparate but parallel ideas from other fields (roots of creativity).
But, most schools and students stop there. They hear 'memory' or 'memorizing' as only rote memory. Step 2 is critical if you want to get to higher levels of learning. As you said in the essay - "Creativity comes to those who have internalized the patterns of their art". At www.sticky.study this is what we focus on. It's fast 2D memory palaces + spaced repetition.
Only if you have understanding + remembering can you get to step 3 - applying what you learn reliably at relevant moments in your life. This is the gold standard that schools claim they desire - analysis, synthesis, application, broad transfer, and creativity. You can't reach master efficiently if you lose 80% of all you read or learn.
Is there anything substantive here? It’s just a bunch of arbitrary unprovable assertions. Everyone here seems to have, broadly speaking; neither a) the qualifications to knowledgeably comment of the (honestly poorly understood, afaik) function of “creativity” or b) anything more meaningful than “here is my naive personal lived experience and opinion” to contribute on the topic. It’s just armchair psychology. If you w…
It's strongly suspected that anterior forebrain pathway (AFP) may be a source of behavioral variability. We naturally age over time, including our vocal musculature, so in some sense we must constantly relearn how to use our muscles to deliver a song.
When a bird is deafened its birdsong will naturally drift, but when we precisely damage the AFP along with deafening we find that birdsong remains stable for a longer period of time, until of course inevitably it must drift due to aging vocal musculature.