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Are we losing our ability to remember?

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Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#51

Post by scotthtaylor »

nishparadox wrote: post #48
spicymaki wrote: post #32

I feel that in general we are consuming a lot more information than we really need. I am not sure the human brain was evolved to handle a large amount of information that does not have any physical references. I find myself not only forgetting myriad facts and figures, but also mixing up information or having false memories. Many of my memories have nothing to anchor on. I think the trend today is to prime the brain…

Ditto. This reminds me of write-up by Morgan Housel: long-term knowledge vs expiring knowledge[0]. To optimize that trade-off, I generally try to review, on a weekly basis, what I consume from the internet-verse. This has helped me in some ways. Not sure if it's gonna work or not for other people... Plus, moving the scale towards consuming long-forms is also helping me out. (I guess it depends on what type of bubble…

Agree 100% — nicely written up!

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#52

Post by me_me_me »

Swizec wrote: post #45
me_me_me wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but its us that live in era of weaponized attention grabbing. People are being paid millions to figure out how to hijack your attention, how to use yourself (body, mind functions) against you. Writing is a tool, it doesn't try to work against you, or have an agenda that might not be aligned with yours.

Greek oration was all about weaponized attention grabbing and getting people to join your school not those other terrible terrible oh so bad schools. We’ve had weaponized attention grabbing as long as wemve had humans I bet.

It was an art of oration.

Not a science driven exploitation of basic human instincts.

They didn't have a focus groups A-B testing and neurological studies back then.

That's a bit like saying that the impact on climate change back 1000 years ago and now is the same, as in both cases we are releasing carbon into atmosphere.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#53

Post by Daynil »

Memory is fundamentally limited anyway. Unless you're going to set up an Anki deck for your Zoom meeting notes, it's unrealistic to try to remember action points from every Zoom call we're on. The brain is an efficient machine, and it will naturally remember things that come up often enough. It works quite well on its own. I don't think I've ever sat down to try to remember how to write a for loop in whatever my preferred coding language is at the time - you just remember it after a few semi-regular lookups.

If you feel your memory is limited in an area you do value instant recall that doesn't inherently produce regular repetition, there are ways to steer your long term memory consolidation. For example, you can train yourself to remember everyone's names when you meet them, if you value that. If you don't value it or put any particular effort into training it, there's no reason to think you've gone senile if you forget the name of most people you meet the first few times.

For most things, I think the second brain solution is ideal. You value something enough to want to be able to recall it at a moment's notice, but you don't have any real need to instantly recall it without reference. We're not taking closed book exams outside of school [1]. This is where all the Zoom notes and book quotes are placed, where you can further digest, interpret and later recall them if and when they become relevant.

[1] https://fortelabs.co/blog/knowledge-building-blocks-the-new-...

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#54

Post by shrugthug »

For anybody interested in diving deeper into this subject, I would recommend reading The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. It was written in 2011, but is still very applicable today. Brain plasticity is a real concept and our constant connection to the Internet affects us.

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#55

Post by scotthtaylor »

Daynil wrote: post #53

Memory is fundamentally limited anyway. Unless you're going to set up an Anki deck for your Zoom meeting notes, it's unrealistic to try to remember action points from every Zoom call we're on. The brain is an efficient machine, and it will naturally remember things that come up often enough. It works quite well on its own. I don't think I've ever sat down to try to remember how to write a for loop in whatever my pref…

Awesome write-up!

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#56

Post by EForEndeavour »

drdeadringer wrote: post #26
jraph wrote: post #7

> So I wouldn’t say we are losing our ability to remember, as I posed at the start of this post. I think people (me included) just don’t do enough work to move stuff from our working memory into our long-term memory. I'd say we could be better at remembering that some piece of information exists and where to find it instead of having to memorize it. This seems more powerful. And for things you do often, you will prob…

> I'd say we could be better at remembering that some piece of information exists and where to find it instead of having to memorize it. This seems more powerful. [paraphrase] "I wrote it down so I don't HAVE to remember." --quote from Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade Seems similar to Einstein's "Never memorize what you can look up.".

> "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.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#57

Post by snarfy »

spicymaki wrote: post #32

I feel that in general we are consuming a lot more information than we really need. I am not sure the human brain was evolved to handle a large amount of information that does not have any physical references. I find myself not only forgetting myriad facts and figures, but also mixing up information or having false memories. Many of my memories have nothing to anchor on. I think the trend today is to prime the brain…

Some of my most vivid childhood memories are dreams I had. When recalling the events in my life, it's not always easy to recall which were dreams and which really happened. It's terrifying.

It's all too much information. I worked on cdrom technology 20 years ago. I don't want to know the sector size is 2532 bytes, but I do.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#58

Post by Grimm1 »

"Something had to be wrong! I started to notice (increasingly!) my inability to recall trivial things; for example, the action points from a Zoom call, or a quote from a book that I had read a couple of months ago. Surely this can’t be normal?"

Except it's fairly normal under stress for people's memory to function more poorly and since we're experiencing a Global pandemic that has completely up ended our normal mode of living I would expect baseline stress for almost every one to be up considerably.

So that's my hypothesis, which requires less assumptions than "people are losing the ability to remember because of computers" but doesn't result in a blog post where I can talk about Anki or equivalents.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#59

Post by freetonik »

shrugthug wrote: post #54

For anybody interested in diving deeper into this subject, I would recommend reading The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. It was written in 2011, but is still very applicable today. Brain plasticity is a real concept and our constant connection to the Internet affects us. https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/d...

Second this recommendation, I enjoyed that book very much. However, I felt defeated by the end, because I couldn't act on the presented information in any meaningful way.

Halfway through the book the author tells about how much he had struggled to write and had to isolate himself from technology for a while, but only temporary. He then came back and felt the "shallows" once again.

Re: Are we losing our ability to remember?

#60

Post by leetcrew »

snarfy wrote: post #57
spicymaki wrote: post #32

I feel that in general we are consuming a lot more information than we really need. I am not sure the human brain was evolved to handle a large amount of information that does not have any physical references. I find myself not only forgetting myriad facts and figures, but also mixing up information or having false memories. Many of my memories have nothing to anchor on. I think the trend today is to prime the brain…

Some of my most vivid childhood memories are dreams I had. When recalling the events in my life, it's not always easy to recall which were dreams and which really happened. It's terrifying. It's all too much information. I worked on cdrom technology 20 years ago. I don't want to know the sector size is 2532 bytes, but I do.

it's weird how dreams and "real" memories can blend that way. last week I was half-awake half-asleep during a rain storm and I felt water dripping on my forehead from the ceiling. it felt quite real, but out of laziness I decided to just deal with it in the morning and go back to sleep. when I woke up, my bed was dry and there was no evidence of a leak anywhere. I'm still not quite sure whether it was real or imagined. I'm assuming it was just a dream, but usually I don't have such vivid physical sensations in dreams.
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