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Are we losing our ability to remember?

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Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#101

Post by suyash »

sixdimensional wrote: post #61

I once took a class in college, “Cars and Culture”. I never forgot a line from that class - that “cars provided an extension of our legs”. Ever since then, I have told many people and thought to myself many times, that tools, take Google for instance (search and indexing), knowledge management systems (Wiki and other techniques) - these are all extensions of our brains. We evolve with technology, and it evolves with…

That's a dangerous path to tread, I would never compromise my cognitive abilities with technology, technology is an aid when I need it and I know when not to need it and try to use my God given brain. Suggest you start using your brain or risk loosing it, specially when you can't even remember what to search on Google.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#103

Post by SstnMbgty »

whatshisface wrote: post #79
ravenstine wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a few ways in which this overload of information manifests. You've got the people who consume a lot of "information" yet can't make much sense of it, or at least in a way that lines up to shared reality. I'd say this represents the average person. The main coping mechanism for these people is to consume information as entertainment and otherwise not think about what they're taking in. Otherwise, they mig…

> Even if my models of reality don't line up on a factual basis, the more important thing to me is whether I get results. Without specific memories, how can you tell whether or not you have been getting results? :)

Interestingly, this can be seen as an extension of the same principle; in a given person's life, there are impossibly many events going on all the time, each of which is providing some benefit, or negative result, and you could if you choose, try to look for specific memories of achievements or failures in order to benchmark your life's progress, falling back onto them and recalling these specific moments.

The obvious problem with such events is that they may not be representative, and so like a gambler remembering the last few wins, you could keep trying to solve a problem.

Conversely, you could try to remember conclusions, and a few simple procedures, while also passively using a diary or data entry system, such that you have a general feel of "how things have been going lately", without any specific examples, and then occasionally rerun your procedure, taking stock of recent events from recorded data, and update your abstract value.

Then there's the hybrid approach; working on a dataset, find a few specific data points that most properly represent the diversity of your current experience, then remember those, the general feeling associated with them, and your procedure for updating them.

That way you use your emotional episodic memory, but tie it to things that are verified by more careful reflective analysis.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#105

Post by tzs »

Has anyone built something to try to automate setting up spaced repetition?

For example, I've looked up numerous PHP functions on www.php.net, numerous Python functions on docs.python.org, numerous Perl modules on metacpan.org or with the perldoc command, and numerous JavaScript functions on MDN.

It would be neat if there was something that could automatically note what I've looked up, and turn that into flash cards for use with something like Anki.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#107

Post by warkdarrior »

dunce2020 wrote: post #81
EForEndeavour wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Never memorize what you can look up." I can look up all the definitions and grammar rules of English, but without memorizing them, I wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone around me.

I don't know any of the definitions, grammar rules of English yet I'm still able to effectively communicate with and understand others.

If you are a native speaker of English, you learned those rules over your whole childhood, by example instead of being explicitly taught the rules.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#108

Post by pessimizer »

kstenerud wrote: post #95
franze wrote: post #90

Whenever I do a SEO workshop I ask 3 questions to my audience: * How often did you Google this week? * What was the last thing before the last thing that you Googled? For the first question, I get laughs. For the second one blank stares. Later, I shoot another question: * What is the last thing you read, that you googled before, top to bottom? For the last question everybody looks at their feet. The use case I optimi…

40 years ago it would have been: * How often did you read articles in newspapers this week? * What was the last article before the last article that you read? * What is the last newspaper article that you read, top to bottom? Or, for tech people: * How often did you read manpages this week? * What was the last manpage before the last manpage that you read? * What is the last manpage that you read, top to bottom? We r…

There's are two serious differences between 40 years ago and now.

1) I can look up a thing I can't remember (or don't know) both specifically and immediately. 40 years ago this might have taken a week and an inter-library loan. I'd certainly be sure to remember what I'd learned afterwards. And,

2) Things that I once looked up can be silently changed or removed the next time I try to look them up.

I don't think it's useful to handwave the material differences away with a general "People always say stuff about everything."

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#109

Post by tzs »

franze wrote: post #90

Whenever I do a SEO workshop I ask 3 questions to my audience: * How often did you Google this week? * What was the last thing before the last thing that you Googled? For the first question, I get laughs. For the second one blank stares. Later, I shoot another question: * What is the last thing you read, that you googled before, top to bottom? For the last question everybody looks at their feet. The use case I optimi…

That reminds me of Joel Spolsky's book "User Interface Design for Programmers", in particular chalter 9, 10, and 11 which are titled "People Can't Read", "People Can't Control The Mouse", and "People Can't Remember".

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#110

Post by pessimizer »

sixdimensional wrote: post #61

I once took a class in college, “Cars and Culture”. I never forgot a line from that class - that “cars provided an extension of our legs”. Ever since then, I have told many people and thought to myself many times, that tools, take Google for instance (search and indexing), knowledge management systems (Wiki and other techniques) - these are all extensions of our brains. We evolve with technology, and it evolves with…

I always thought that the most terrifying thing in the book 1984 (and the most relevant to the pending future) was that people weren't allowed tools to write anything down, they had to use the "speakwrite," which would monitor the user and refuse to write things that weren't allowed to be written.

Orwell wasn't prescient enough to imagine the type-remember, where you kept your entire perception of the world on machines that weren't controlled by institutions with your best interests at heart.

That had to wait for Fahrenheit 451 to create an entire administration and police force to get rid of your old encyclopedias.

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