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Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

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Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#181

Post by knallfrosch »

lubesGordi wrote: post #169

Kind of shocking to see so much angst against memorization here. Memory has been long thought to be a critical component of intelligence, with elaborate mnemonics systems developed by people to help memorize more things (see Francis Yates' The Art of Memory, and to a lesser extent her book on Giordano Bruno). I would contend that memorizing concepts is a first step in understanding them. Also, that generally understa…

A fellow CS student didn't understand a theorem, because he didn't understand any of the three definitions used to state it. We went through the definitions together and suddenly the theorem was "trivial"

That is true understanding. He won't need to remember the theorem, because in his mind, it automatically follows from the raw data.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#182

Post by WalterBright »

zharknado wrote: post #132

OP and others here are stretching the definition of “memorize” to mean “anything that leads to something being retained in memory.” I reject this idea. The trauma of burning your hand on a hot pan creates a memory you won’t soon forget, but almost no one would understand it as an act of memorization. Memorization to me refers to a set of cargo-culty “learning” practices wherein we believe that by using language to dr…

The EEs I have known that carried around a card with:

    V = I * R
    I = V / R
    R = V / I
because they couldn't remember it were all bad at EE and bad at math.

If you can't remember the pieces making up a concept, how are you going to remember the concept?

> It’s disproportionately important for passing tests (And getting hired at tech companies!)

I don't remember anyone who couldn't pass tests but was really a great engineer.

BTW, one of the tests fighter pilots go through is they are blindfolded, and then have to put their hand on each control the instructor calls out.

I also have some written tests for certifying pilots. There are questions like max takeoff weight, fuel burn rate, max dive speeds, etc. Stuff a pilot had better know or he's a dead pilot.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#183

Post by bunderbunder »

kqr wrote: post #158
gwervc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s the difference between drilling vocabulary flashcards and actually reading, listening, or talking to someone. Those are not opposite activities. Drilling vocabulary flashcard is the most efficient way to start being able to read/listen/speak; and it's not even clear from research that output (speaking and writing) is useful at all for learning. Also good luck learning to read Chinese or Japanese without rote l…

> That's a bad argument: the life of a toddler is vastly different than an adult. Also it takes a surprisingly long time for children to learn language. I used to think it sorta-kinda happened over a year or two, but having children myself revealed how wrong I was. I have written up a fairly hefty dictionary of words they mispronounce or even just invent on their own because they don't know the one in their native to…

An anecdote I once heard provided in support of this point in a lecture: there are aspects of Spanish grammar that native speakers typically don't grasp until their teenage years.

I suspect that, if one were to sit down and count hours of practice so that we could do a better apples-to-apples comparison, we'd find that children learn languages at a glacial pace compared to adults. And the rest is pure selection bias.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#184

Post by WalterBright »

doubled112 wrote: post #164
nickburns wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have written up a fairly hefty dictionary of words they mispronounce or even just invent on their own because they don't know the one in their native tongue. Ah, beautiful little displays of an attempt to understand, not merely memorize.

Sometimes those made up words were way more fun than the correct ones. I could usually see why my little ones combined them that way.

I remember one where the kid was asked, "do you want some half-and-half?"

"No, I want whole and whole!"

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#185

Post by barrkel »

Izkata wrote: post #102
barrkel wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call it when you remember things so you can repeat them but you can't generalize? E.g. if you learn a poem or phrase in a foreign language, but can't reuse the words in different contexts? Or being able to recite a rule, but not automatically applying it? Is there a word for this? Similarly, we should have a word for knowing how to reuse something in a different context, but not recall its origin or its c…

> What do you call it when you remember things so you can repeat them but you can't generalize? E.g. if you learn a poem or phrase in a foreign language, but can't reuse the words in different contexts? Or being able to recite a rule, but not automatically applying it? "Rote memorization"

Rote means learning by repetition.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#187

Post by highfrequency »

A lot of debate in the comments about the definition of "memorization"; this is just semantics and misses the point. Creativity is aided by 1) exposure to a wide variety of existing ideas, 2) deep understanding and integration of those ideas, 3) recombination of those ideas.

Superficial exposure to existing ideas alone won't get you there, and neither will isolated deep reflection. You need both.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#188

Post by hosh »

Izkata wrote: post #171
gwervc wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s the difference between drilling vocabulary flashcards and actually reading, listening, or talking to someone. Those are not opposite activities. Drilling vocabulary flashcard is the most efficient way to start being able to read/listen/speak; and it's not even clear from research that output (speaking and writing) is useful at all for learning. Also good luck learning to read Chinese or Japanese without rote l…

> Also good luck learning to read Chinese or Japanese without rote learning a few hundred characters. Even native speakers learn them by repetition. I've tried this for years with Japanese kanji and never really got very far. Just didn't work well, they largely were just a big blob of lines. Then I found an Android app (Kanji Study) that mixes this in with informational screens that break down kanji into radicals and…

Learning to read Chinese is done by learning to write Chinese. The strict (but structured) stroke order while writing becomes part of muscle memory, and in turn, becomes a kind of kinesthetic mnemonic device while reading.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#189

Post by apsurd »

usrbinno wrote: post #161
zharknado wrote: post #132

OP and others here are stretching the definition of “memorize” to mean “anything that leads to something being retained in memory.” I reject this idea. The trauma of burning your hand on a hot pan creates a memory you won’t soon forget, but almost no one would understand it as an act of memorization. Memorization to me refers to a set of cargo-culty “learning” practices wherein we believe that by using language to dr…

> ...experts suck at empathizing with learners... Or maybe we just don't want to coddle them. When has learning anything been easy, and why do you expect people to be able to acquire new knowledge and skills without putting in the effort? It shouldn't be grueling, not for its own sake, but yeah, you might have to stare at a compiler error for a few hours or even a few days before you figure out what's broken. Truly,…

Parent is saying there's a big difference between being an expert in a field and being a good teacher.

Re: Creativity fundamentally comes from memorization?

#190

Post by Izkata »

barrkel wrote: post #185
Izkata wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you call it when you remember things so you can repeat them but you can't generalize? E.g. if you learn a poem or phrase in a foreign language, but can't reuse the words in different contexts? Or being able to recite a rule, but not automatically applying it? "Rote memorization"

Rote means learning by repetition.

And "rote memorization" is a compound term that means what you were asking for. It's one of those things you can't get the exact meaning of by just looking at the components.
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