...you no longer have to remember facts, you only need to remember where to go to get the facts.

I have seen this view stated many times over the years. And it is obvious that research skills are critical and getting more important as time goes on.

However I have yet to meet anyone who was good at aquiring the facts that they needed on demand who did not know a large number of facts already. Here are a few guesses as to why this might be:

  1. You get to be good at getting facts by actually doing it a lot. Eventually something will stick.
  2. In researching things it is critical to be able to make critical judgements on what turns up. An existing body of relevant knowledge helps immensely in that.
  3. Existing facts give you the context needed to absorb the information you are looking for when you find it.
  4. Needed facts often come up again. Being able to cache them for a period in your memory is faster than looking again.
  5. An imperfect memory of where and when you might have seen something vaguely like the thing you want to find is invaluable in coming up with search terms to find it again.
  6. With a good body of knowledge, you have additional options for how to figure out unknown information (eg reading source code becomes an option).
Therefore while I agree that learning how to find facts on demand is more important than possessing large numbers of them, this does not make it useless to learn a large number of facts.

In reply to Re: Re: Re: (OT) Finding the Ideal Employees by tilly
in thread (OT) Finding the Ideal Employees by Anonymous Monk

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