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We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

zettelkasten.de

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Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#111

Post by AndyNemmity »

buellerbueller wrote: post #102
AndyNemmity wrote: post #92

Before the internet we asked people around us in our sphere. If we wanted to know the answer to a question, we asked, they made up an answer, and we believed it and moved on. Then the internet came, and we asked the internet. The internet wasn't correct, but it was a far higher % correct than asking a random person who was near you. Now AI comes. It isn't correct, but it's far higher % correct than asking a random pe…

If you are asking random people, then your approach is incorrect. You should be asking the domain experts. Not gonna ask my wife about video games. Not gonna ask my dad about computer programming. There, I've shaved a ton of the spread off of your argument. Possibly enough to moot the value of the AI, depending on the domain.

Before the internet, I didn't have the phone number of domain experts to just call and ask these questions. perhaps you did. For a lot of us, it was an entirely foreign experience to have domain experts at your finger tips.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#112

Post by skybrian »

buellerbueller wrote: post #102
AndyNemmity wrote: post #92

Before the internet we asked people around us in our sphere. If we wanted to know the answer to a question, we asked, they made up an answer, and we believed it and moved on. Then the internet came, and we asked the internet. The internet wasn't correct, but it was a far higher % correct than asking a random person who was near you. Now AI comes. It isn't correct, but it's far higher % correct than asking a random pe…

If you are asking random people, then your approach is incorrect. You should be asking the domain experts. Not gonna ask my wife about video games. Not gonna ask my dad about computer programming. There, I've shaved a ton of the spread off of your argument. Possibly enough to moot the value of the AI, depending on the domain.

This all assumes you have experts that you can talk to. But they might be difficult to find or expensive to hire. You wouldn't want to waste your lawyer's time on trivia.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#113

Post by reddit_clone »

komali2 wrote: post #80

I am either too stupid or too lazy to remember everything. Or my version of ADHD specifically restricts my ability to remember things, or to have sufficient energy to engage daily with the process needed to memorize information (e.g. build and review anki decks). I gave up on Anki. I abandoned org-roam and switched to trillium with very simple summaries of hand written notes. I don't summarize articles I read, I simp…

As a fellow sufferer of same issues, I sympathize.

You are too hard on yourself though.

It is like a running race, when we are required to carry 50 Lb bags on our backs, while others are running freely.

At some point we need to accept and not worry too much!

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#114

Post by skybrian »

keiferski wrote: post #43

I am sympathetic to memory-focused tools like Anki and Zettelkasten (haven't used the latter myself, though) but I think this post is a bit oversimplified. I think there are at least two models of work that require knowledge: 1. Work when you need to be able to refer to everything instantly. I don't know if this is actually necessary for most scenarios other than live debates, or some form of hyper-productivity in wh…

Live performance (like conversation or playing music) often relies on memory to do it well.

That might be a good criteria for how much to memorize: do you want to be able to do it live?

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#115

Post by nathan_compton »

mallowdram wrote: post #75
chrisweekly wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting take. I respectfully differ. IIRC, Feynman said something akin to my POV: Brains are for thinking. Documents / PKM systems / tools are for remembering. IOW: take notes, write things down. FWIW I have a degree in cognitive psychology (psychobiology, neuroanatomy, human perception) and am an amateur neuroscientist. Somewhat familiar w/ the brain. :)

Feynman wasn't a neurobiologist. I'd read Spontaneous Brain by Northoff (Copernican, irreducible neuroscience) or oscillatory neurobiology Buzsaki. The brain is lossless. I would agree that external forms of memory are evolutionarily progressive, that ability to utilize the external forms requires a lossless relationship. Once we grasp the infinitely inferior external of arbitrariness (symbols words) are correlated t…

"The brain is lossless."

Nothing is lossless.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#116

Post by constantcrying »

But in how many cases is the "why" more important than the "how"?

People can drive a car, without understanding any of the mechanical and electrical systems of a car. In fact understanding these does essentially nothing for what most people use a car for.

>If you can’t produce a comprehensive answer with confidence and on the whim the second you read the question, you don’t have the sufficient background knowledge.

And then what? Why would this matter at all? You can successfully use a workout schedule without understanding what its strengths and weaknesses are and how they align with your goals.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#117

Post by skydhash »

mmargenot wrote: post #88
rafaquintanilha wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It is requisite that a man should arrange the things he wishes to remember in a certain order, so that from one he may come to another: for order is a kind of chain for memory" – Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. Not ironically I found the passage in my Zettelkasten.

It's weird to read this from zettelkasten.de, given that the method is precisely about cultivating such a graph of knowledge. "Knowing enough to begin" seems to me to be the express purpose of writing and maintaining a zettelkasten and other such tools.

I would say they mean being able to recall, not having everything at once. It’s being able to answer the 5 why’s.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#118

Post by ergonaught »

The actual central point is that the brain requires conditioning via experience. That shouldn't be controversial, and I can't decide if the general replies here are an extended and ironic elaboration of his point or not.

If you never memorize anything, but are highly adept at searching for that information, your brain has only learned how to search for things. Any work it needs to do in the absence of searching will be compromised due to the lack of conditioning/experience. Maybe that works for you, or maybe that works in the world that's being built currently, but it doesn't change the basic premise at all.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#119

Post by mrguyorama »

rorylaitila wrote: post #74
trjordan wrote: post #50

I was talking with somebody about their migration recently [0], and we got to speculating about AI and how it might have helped. There were basically 2 paths: - Use the AI and ask for answers. It'll generate something! It'll also be pleasant, because it'll replace the thinking you were planning on doing. - Use the AI to automate away the dumb stuff, like writing a bespoke test suite or new infra to run those tests. I…

Yeah I think this is what I've tried to articulate to people that you've summed up well with "You've compressed all your thinking work, back-to-back, and you're just doing hard thing after hard thing" - Most of the bottleneck with any system design is the hard things, the unknown things, the unintended-consequences things. The AIs don't help you much with that. There is a certain amount of regular work that I don't w…

Also at the end of the day, humans aren't machines. We are goopy meat and chemistry.

You cannot exclusively do hard things back to back to back every 8 hour day without fail. It will either burn you out, or you will make mistakes, or you will just be miserable.

Human brains do not want to think hard, because millions of years of evolution built brains to be cheap, and they STILL use like 10% of our daily energy.

Re: We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds

#120

Post by mrguyorama »

mallowdram wrote: post #75
chrisweekly wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting take. I respectfully differ. IIRC, Feynman said something akin to my POV: Brains are for thinking. Documents / PKM systems / tools are for remembering. IOW: take notes, write things down. FWIW I have a degree in cognitive psychology (psychobiology, neuroanatomy, human perception) and am an amateur neuroscientist. Somewhat familiar w/ the brain. :)

Feynman wasn't a neurobiologist. I'd read Spontaneous Brain by Northoff (Copernican, irreducible neuroscience) or oscillatory neurobiology Buzsaki. The brain is lossless. I would agree that external forms of memory are evolutionarily progressive, that ability to utilize the external forms requires a lossless relationship. Once we grasp the infinitely inferior external of arbitrariness (symbols words) are correlated t…

Popsci books tend to be horseshit.

Reading one does not make YOU a neurobiologist.

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