51–60 of 276 posts
I hate this: "What use is it to read all these books if I remember so little from them?" Because reading is enjoyable?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/books/review/Collins-t.htm...
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-curse-of-read...
> Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. Hence the important art of keeping a journal. You can keep a transaction log of changes. The act of replaying the journal allows you to identify patterns in your thought processes and identify cognitive dissonances. The very act of reading should induce a reactive compulsion to write. As Burroughs taught in his later creative writing courses -- in orde…
> Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. Hence the important art of keeping a journal. You can keep a transaction log of changes. The act of replaying the journal allows you to identify patterns in your thought processes and identify cognitive dissonances. The very act of reading should induce a reactive compulsion to write. As Burroughs taught in his later creative writing courses -- in orde…
I'm definitely a fan of taking notes on things you've read (among other things, the effort to write notes makes you choose what you read more carefully). And I agree that it will help you remember the sources for various ideas. But I think a journal is the wrong model (i.e. time ordered entries, either electronic or paper). I have used a paper notebook in the past, but I would rarely go back and look at things, and i…
However when I'm reading specifically I keep notes in paper journals. First I find the immediacy of pen to paper to be intuitive. Second, and more importantly, the serial nature of the journal forces me to explain my thoughts. It is this specific constraint that allows me to see the process I went through to arrive at my current self.
It's not indexable or searchable, that's true. However I don't need the process of reflection to be fast and instantaneous. I have a lifetime to work it out. I don't mind reflection and introspection to be slow and tedious.
This sounds convincing but then an argument against reading fiction follows since fiction trains your model of the world with fake data.
There's also a danger associated to this phenomenon. If the source of your mental model is later debunked, you may not realize that you need to revise your model precisely because you don't remember what your source was. You may even read about the debunking of the source but fail to draw the connection and realize the implications that it has for your own view of the world. I think that perhaps very squishy subjects…
There are always areas where we do forget the provenance. In my case I stood up amoung friends in my thirties and announced that Ice cream was made from seaweed. After a few blank stares I remembered my father explaining to a much younger self on the beach that I did not want an ice cream - because they were made from that horrible floppy green muck. And he did not have to make a half mile trek back up the beach. Yet that "fact" and it's provenance stayed at the back of my brain for twenty years.
But even so the provenance was quickly recovered. I am not convinced we easily lose our source code. We can usually point to the module or package even if the line numbers are hazy.
But trauma does rewire us, and quickly, and is not to be discounted - I just think it is not the normal course of events.
If you haven't seen it, S01E03 of Black Mirror, The Entire History of You , deals exactly with what PG describes at the end of this post: technology that lets you review and relive your past. It's very much worth watching, and was recently added to Netflix's library: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089050/ http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70264856&trkid=33258...
I experienced this phenomenon starkly when I started a book, and felt it was filled with obvious remarks and little novelty. It took me 50 pages to realize I had already read it.
This is the primary downside of reading without a bookmark. Any book I've read on public transportation, I would guess on average each page gets read about twice (with some chapter intros reaching double-digits). It's hard to figure out if it's really something you've read before, or if it's just a very logical continuation of what you read yesterday. I also feel obligated to one-up you. One time in high school Engli…
I suspect this is also a key part of your inability to determine whether or not you have read a given page before. You are reading in an environment that does not lend itself to creating notable memories. This is purely personal conjecture but I suspect that if you went and read somewhere more interesting your memory of what you are reading would magically improve.
Books I read while at home or similar tend to disappear into some sort of memory hole. Meanwhile books I have read while visiting other countries tend to be easier to recall, both in terms of the book's contents and the circumstances I was in when reading it.
If you haven't seen it, S01E03 of Black Mirror, The Entire History of You , deals exactly with what PG describes at the end of this post: technology that lets you review and relive your past. It's very much worth watching, and was recently added to Netflix's library: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089050/ http://www.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70264856&trkid=33258...
I think this audience would especially like the series:
'Black Mirror is a British television anthology series created by Charlie Brooker that shows the dark side of life and technology. Brooker noted, "each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality. But they're all about the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes time if we're clumsy."'