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How to forget what you read

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Re: How to forget what you read

#31

Post by lqet »

GamerAlias wrote: post #30
lqet wrote: post #6

Katarina Janoskova, linked in the article, writes: > Is [reading] just a waste of time? Well, no, I don’t think so. Every book makes a mark. Even if it doesn’t stay in your conscious memory. Just as every single thing that happens to you does and every person you meet. I once read a short essay by Patrick Süskind (author of "Perfume - The Story of a Murderer"). I am paraphrasing, but in it, he discusses his embarrass…

Do you happen to have a link to said essay or know the name as I can't find it and would be interested in reading it. I also gladly confess to not remembering the plot of the vast majority of the works of fiction that I've read.

Here is the German original:

http://www.buecherlei.de/fab/autor/rs/suesk.htm

Re: How to forget what you read

#32

Post by tmaly »

samuell wrote: post #9

I think there is more to be said about the topic that organically sticks to you. I have realized that this depends a lot on what you are "up to" at the moment. In my experience, I have a really hard time internalizing information about a topic that is far from some topic or work I'm engaged with at the moment. This means, I think: 1. That you can to some extent influence what you are "up to". 2. That you should proba…

This reminds me a little bit of the idea of affirmations as a filter on the mind.

We tend to notice stuff based on our affirmations.

Re: How to forget what you read

#33

Post by tmaly »

shubhamjain wrote: post #17

> The first reason for this is that forgetting is a filter. When something you read resonates with you sufficiently for you to recall it without effort, that means something; it means it connects with your ideas and experiences in some relevant way. I take an issue with this assumption. When I leaf through my past notes, highlights—hell, even stuff I have written myself—I am surprised at many relevant things that I c…

I think the zettelkasten method works so well not because people record single thoughts, but because there is a process of revisiting and reviewing those thoughts and how they relate to other thoughts.

Re: How to forget what you read

#34

Post by tmaly »

rikketikm wrote: post #5

Last year, I aimed to read 30 books. But I realized I usually forgot most of the stuff, just remembering some main ideas. Really getting the hang of a topic takes time. So this year, I'll read fewer books but focus more on understanding what I'm reading.

Back when I use to listen to a lot of podcasts, there was a guest sitting in for Tim Ferris on his podcast.

The guy talked about just trying to take away one idea from what you read rather than trying to take a whole bunch of notes you’ll never remember.

Re: How to forget what you read

#35

Post by tmaly »

dustincoates wrote: post #11
voidhorse wrote: post #10

Spot on. Just another symptom of a quantity obsessed culture. It's telling that people ask how many books did you read this year and not what was the best book you read about (a question of quality, over quantity).

It's how you end up with Blinkist. Don't get me wrong, most books are overly stuffed and could stand to be much shorter, but you aren't going to take much from 5 minutes of a summary alone. I'm convinced that it's not really a learning app as much as it is for puffery.

Summaries just like asking ChatGPT to state the key takeaways of a book all lack the story and connection that helps us relate to the information in a human way.

Re: How to forget what you read

#36

Post by helboi4 »

dangus wrote: post #22

> Otherwise, wasn’t reading it in the first place a waste of our precious time? I weirdly wish the article entertained the answer of “yes!” Instead of doing that it barely backs the knowledge-obsessed away from the cliff in an attempt to convince them to just don’t take quite so many notes, maybe step back and stop pretending like you’re crunching for an exam and absorb the information you’re reading. But I would act…

I dunno there are tons and tons of really good books out there. I don't think you could go through them all in one lifetime. Books are easier to create and have been around for much longer than movies. Executing a whole movie well requires at least thousands, if not millions of dollars, loads of equipment, a huge team of people who need to all be top notch at a variety of different specialist skills, extras, onsite permissions and often years of time. A book can be written in about one year or less through the work of only one person, using just one skill that we all learn as a child. It's way easier to execute a book well. So, as you said, theres more of them, and definitely because of this theres tons of good ones. Experts or people with interesting lives really don't have the time, resources or skills to make a film but loads of them write books.

Most people who read almost constantly do read a decent amount of books that are less good than the others. Though they will often read more good books than you too. When I used to read books constantly, I could read faster and retain more. I could also write better. Now I read rarely because I only care to read the most useful things, it takes me way longer to read, I am less focused and retain less and my writing is somewhat worse. So I do think it's worth reading often for those benefits. Reading is so unenjoyable to me now I don't do it frequently. But it's not like I'm doing more useful and enjoyable things with my time either. Life isn't only about knowledge-based enlightenment, I agree, but it is usually about wasting a certain amount of time, whether you like it or not. So you might as well waste it well. In this case, waste it by reading lighter material so that your brain is always primed to read the good stuff efficiently.

At least, that's my new years resolution.

Re: How to forget what you read

#37

Post by jbstack »

dangus wrote: post #22

> Otherwise, wasn’t reading it in the first place a waste of our precious time? I weirdly wish the article entertained the answer of “yes!” Instead of doing that it barely backs the knowledge-obsessed away from the cliff in an attempt to convince them to just don’t take quite so many notes, maybe step back and stop pretending like you’re crunching for an exam and absorb the information you’re reading. But I would act…

Some books are a complete waste of time to read without retention. For example, there is no value to me in reading and forgetting a technical book on some piece of software that I only use infrequently but need to be reasonably competent with when I do use it. These books I'm reading purely for utility; if I don't gain that utility then reading it was pointless.

At the other end of the scale, I read fiction purely for enjoyment. Attempting to make any notes at all or to memorise what I'm reading would make the process unnecessarily tedious and defeat the purpose of it, while gaining me very little value.

In between these are non-fictional / narrative books which contain useful insights or information which I don't necessarily need for my work but aren't strictly only for entertainment purposes. Examples of this might include biographies or personal development / self help books. With these I'm not interested in exhaustively memorising everything, but neither do I want to completely forget the most valuable points. Here, a hybrid approach works best; perhaps some highlighting and more selective note-taking, with a few key points turned into Anki cards if I feel that I want to retain the information long term.

The problem with the article is that it proposes a single method ("a much more relaxed approach to knowledge consumption") no matter the context, whereas I would argue that you should adapt the method to each book depending on what your goal is in reading it.

Re: How to forget what you read

#38

Post by hareket »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #24
taopai wrote: post #4

I used to take endless notes on .org documents and build myself small wiki sites in django... You know what makes the difference? Take a walk, or catch a train and think about what you read. Find the main ideas and how the material relates to yourself. Play with it and ask yourself questions about it. Then next day try to answer them in paper without extra material. And only after that reread the book to check or fin…

This is a truth about learning that people don't want to hear, but they need to hear it. Everyone wants to hear about magic productivity and learning hacks. They end up speed-reading and playing Anki, but they get nowhere. What's worse is they think they're getting somewhere, especially with the facade erected by games like Anki. There are no shortcuts to learning and memorizing what you read. You have to really dige…

While I respect your viewpoint, my personal experience significantly differs from that.

My familiarity with speed-reading is limited because I never deemed it worth, as I think reading should mostly be a slow pleasure, but Anki, like any well-designed spaced repetition routine, algorithm, or application, got me VERY far. I returned to high school as an adult and later attended university, which provided me with a variety of reference points to compare study techniques. Initially, I used conventional methods, but eventually, -- a few months in --, I discovered Anki. Not only did I start ranking among the top students, but I also completed both degrees in less time than typically required; something I never managed to do, no matter how hard I tried.

Recently, I've been experimenting with various study techniques, free from the constraints of formal education that could potentially bias the outcome, and I've observed a significant decline in my performance when I deviated from Anki or spaced repetition in general. Conversely, my performance improves when I reincorporate it. Mind you that I still have to put the required effort, carefully selecting what to memorize, and designing it well. You can't get away from that.

Re: How to forget what you read

#39

Post by bunderbunder »

infertainment wrote: post #25

>forgetting is a filter Exactly. Spaced repetition is a remarkably effective learning technique, but it can't tell you what to learn. At some point I think we have to stop listening to external authorities and rely on our own judgement about what to learn, and how to do so, as signalled by feelings of excitement about particular authors and ideas. One of the effects of formal education is to dampen or corrupt that in…

I'm coming to wonder if tools like Anki are even detrimental for most learning tasks. Because SRS is built around rote memorizing a bunch of isolated factoids, while the most important part of mastering most subjects is not memorizing facts, it's learning interactions and patterns that let you make use of those facts.

Like, imagine if someone learning to program put a huge amount of their effort into using flashcards to memorize the functions in their preferred language's standard library. I think most people would agree that this person is wasting their time because IDE tooling and Internet searches make it really easy to look up that information on an as-needed basis. So the real effort should be put into learning skills like domain modeling or how to read and debug code.

I think that the same principle might apply to most subjects. Even in language learning, one of the places where SRS is most popular. Academics seem to be pretty skeptical of using any sort of flashcarding to learn vocabulary. In part because the empirical evidence doesn't actually seem to support it, and in part on theoretical grounds. The contemporary model for how the brain models language is fundamentally connectionist. Definitions and lemmas aren't something we naturally memorize as a list of facts and then plug into a grammar, which is why native speakers often have difficulty reciting conjugation tables or defining words.

I think that formal education's tendency toward representing subjects as lists of factoids is fundamentally another manifestation of the McNamara Fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy). As long as educators have a mandate to (ostensibly) objectively quantify students' progress with grades and scores, they will have a need to represent the subject manner in a manner that permits easy quantification. And they will have to do so regardless of whether it actually makes sense to do so for whatever subject they're teaching.

Re: How to forget what you read

#40

Post by AlwaysRock »

will5421 wrote: post #8
taopai wrote: post #4

I used to take endless notes on .org documents and build myself small wiki sites in django... You know what makes the difference? Take a walk, or catch a train and think about what you read. Find the main ideas and how the material relates to yourself. Play with it and ask yourself questions about it. Then next day try to answer them in paper without extra material. And only after that reread the book to check or fin…

* Learning from a book is hard

This depends a lot on the person. I do not retain information that I read very well. I know this about myself so I try to ensure if I need to learn something I'm using other methods as my primarily way of learning.

My brother, and many others, have the ability to read something from a book and retain that information fairly well and without using some other method of learning or reinforcing it.

It's unfortunately that I didnt realize this until I was done with my schooling but its been really valuable to know this during my career.

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