Re: On human memory management

Another aspect of (human) memory. It's similar to computer memory in that, if you store something in computer memory, it'll stay there until you tell it to forget, but, if you forget which address you put it in, then the thing is essentially lost.
Meaning that its possible that we still know everything we once learned, but due to non-use, the key to retreiving the information from our memories disappears. The things we use daily (or at least often) are of course the ones we remember better.

So, I think it's possible to know everything about a programming language (provided it doesnt evolve faster than we learn :) - But impossible to be able to recall all that knowledge, the more complex and different programms you write, the more parts of the language you will be able to recall. Which means that the day-to-day tasks are a limit, in my opinion.

Having a community such as this one, and not only asking questions, but also reading and answering others, is very important, if you want to go beyond your own boundaries.
I find I *like* to learn, reading questions I have no clue about usually makes me go look up the answer, and try things out. So I learn about things that I otherwise wouldnt have come across, and benefit from the view of others on the subject at the same time.

Comment on Re: On human memory management

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Re^2: On human memory management by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 31, 2003 at 13:38 UTC
This is very true. The human brain is basically a very efficient association machine fed by an incredibly powerful pattern matcher that builds connections even as it uses them. Knowledge you gain is never lost, but if you don't recall it often, it does not get associated with a lot of things. So the patterns you can feed your memory with to retrieve it are very exact, in other words, you will only remember it within a specific context. You can, however, with deliberate training improve your pattern matching ability and thus your ability to retrieve seldom needed facts from memory. In this respect, the mind is like a muscle - the more you strain it, the more capable it gets. This means it pays off to feed your memory stuff for two reasons. It will be there, even if you don't currently have the circumstances to recall it. And your matching abilities get better the more distantly related the facts you manage to associate are - for which broad and plentiful knowledge is a prerequisite. It's a feedback process. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]

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Re^2: On human memory management
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 31, 2003 at 13:38 UTC

This is very true. The human brain is basically a very efficient association machine fed by an incredibly powerful pattern matcher that builds connections even as it uses them. Knowledge you gain is never lost, but if you don't recall it often, it does not get associated with a lot of things. So the patterns you can feed your memory with to retrieve it are very exact, in other words, you will only remember it within a specific context. You can, however, with deliberate training improve your pattern matching ability and thus your ability to retrieve seldom needed facts from memory.

In this respect, the mind is like a muscle - the more you strain it, the more capable it gets.

This means it pays off to feed your memory stuff for two reasons. It will be there, even if you don't currently have the circumstances to recall it. And your matching abilities get better the more distantly related the facts you manage to associate are - for which broad and plentiful knowledge is a prerequisite. It's a feedback process.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]