New post by Kirill Tretiakov

Kirill Tretiakov

Within the chapter of the Shallows entitled “Search, Memory” Nicholas Carr attemps to show how the proponents of outsourcing our memory misunderstand the difference between short-term memory and long-term memory. I for one do-not misunderstand the difference, and I’m also familiar with the neurological aspect of how the memories are formed. The main idea that Carr uses to illustrate his argument is the need to memorize ideas so that they can be rehearsed and encoded over time, because the encoding of the short-term memory takes a long time to create a long-term memory. So basically what Carr is saying is that sense we don’t bother memorizing things we are no longer spending the time to encode that short term memory of lets say a web page article into long term memory. The author further argues that due to this we forget a lot of what we learn off the Internet due to not giving the memory enough time to be transferred from short term to long-term state. What I would like to point out is that people are not learning concepts in short spurs on the Internet, what they learn are specific facts. So for instance when a person is thinking through a complicated Psychological concept and forgets the actual probability in one of his source studies, this person knows that the probability was high, he just doesn’t remember the exact number. As long as this person knows that the number is high he can go on with his cognitive deliberation in regards to the problem. The concept deliberation is not going to be damaged by the difference of p=.90 or p=.91. When he writes the paper he can look up the exact number and place it into supporting his main concept. Noone is proposing that we store entire concepts online without remembering or understanding them; we only propose to store precise pieces of those concepts. A well thought out concept doesn’t take one page anyhow, so to think we can get it in a flash from a browser is silly. The smallest concepts I’ve seen are 40page research articles that take hours to read and months to understand. So basically, when we store and retrieve Internet information we are not storing or retrieving entire concepts (which generally take a long time to compile), we are only storing and retrieving separate facts. So both, the concept organization and memories of facts are being encoded in the same way with the same devices (cortex, hippocampus, and sensory parts). And for both it would take a while to encode as the memory goes from short term to long-term state. We also know that there is a limit to how many short term memories one person can hold at a time, without starting to lose information. Why not leave as much space in your brain for the concept, and omit the part that is trying to remember the difference between p= .90 and p=.91. The P(probability) is high, and that’s all you really need to know about it, the difference of .01 is not going to affect the concept generation. The main point of this world is to comprehend the concepts, entire macro-systems of thought that take a very long time to place into long term memory. If we all were to spend our time trying to remember the formulas for Statistics and the Arrangement of Books at a library and had to remember the entire T-distribution table and F-distribution tables we would not have enough time to actually come up with the concepts. So the best thing to do is leave your long term memory encoding fully in the employ of generating a concept, and when you need a formula, or a T-distribution just look it up online. Even the most impressive people in the world don’t remember every mathematical formula and every table of contents, they know the concepts behind these ideas and know how to look the exact info up to create a research paper. They know this because they thought about the concept a lot, which caused the knowledge to become long-term memory. The long-term memory was formed as they conceptualized the writing while when needed consulting their sources whether that be an ancient manuscript a contemporary novel or a mathematical equation. It’s silly to think that you will gain some new insight into the understanding of an entire concept just because you memorized the table of contents or a T-distribution.  Your time would have been better spent if you were generating the concept, not rehearsing formulas and trying to remember that it’s p=.90 not p=.91. One can easily test this on self. I am sure there is a concept that you are trying to figure out right now. Why don’t you attempt to deliberate on that concept while trying to memorize every piece of info from every source you have used so far. And remember according to Nicholas you have to remember every word, and rehearse it, or it won’t go into your long-term memory! Anyone who tries this will soon find himself or herself very worn out, with very little progress being made towards actually conceptualization. Now try to work on that concept, and any time you are not sure about an aspect of it ( a precise piece of data or a formula), you consult the source write it down, and move to next aspect of the concept. This is the way most people go about generating deep concepts, and to think that we need to fill our encoding space with meaningless memorization is kind of silly.

-Kirill Tretiakov