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> Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.
Writing memorably is a skill.
Granted, that one may have to read it again to remember the finer details, but rarely is a technical book written with the aim engaging the reader in as many ways as possible.
This is why telling a story is so important. People remember stories.
slightly ot, but pg just recently wrote an essay about the issue: > Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why. http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html
He said, "I can't always remember what my wife cooked for me last night, neither can I last week, or even many of the meals she's lovingly prepared for me over the last 10 years. However without them, I wouldn't be here today"
Bringing it back to topic, I forget very easily but read quite often. When I do read, I find it often helps if what I'm reading is of interest to me or at least inspiring in some way.
As a kid I figured that this was why peoples who didn't have writing passed on knowledge in stories (easier to remember). But I've never found any support of that theory one way or the other (at least that I can recall!)
I think the most important thing is chunking[1]. You remember key things, such as storylines or plots from fiction, or, with technical writing, where to return if you find yourself needing a particular concept in practice.
Before I turned ~20 years old, I was able to remember almost everything from a book, except exact numbers and foreign names. Along with getting older, I could remember less and less. However, I feel a good book has greater and greater influences on me. It makes me think more, gives me more perspective, makes me realize more how little I know and understand. I paused more often to think what I just read, instead of just browsing through the book.
This also applies to technical books. Take books on programming languages as example. When i was young, I could remember most of its syntax after finishing a book on a new language, and I could jump into writing a program using the language that could actually be compiled and run. Now, I cannot remember much about syntax, but I feel I understand more about the new language, in term of its design, internals, pros and cons, etc. When I am ready to get hands dirty, I have to keep checking manuals for syntax.
http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7514/what-is-the...