How relatively bad is my memory for ideas?
July 23, 2022 8:09 AM Subscribe
I realized that I have to read "idea-heavy" material two or three times before I can remember some of the key points that interested me on first reading. How abnormal is that?
As a concrete example, I just read an excellent essay on some of the misuses of statistics in science, and it gave the theoretical case of a study showing 65/100 patients given a drug getting better, versus 40/100 patients getting better given a placebo. Author argues that rather obsessing about statistical significant and p values, scientists be putting their energy into exploring why the drug may have worked in some patients and not others, mechanism of action, etc.
Anyway, after the first reading, I remembered that I thought essay was well-written, had some excellent points, but couldn't remember specifically what they were other than "statistics have a downside."
(FWIW, I have an above-average memory for numbers and word definitions. Very strange...)
As a concrete example, I just read an excellent essay on some of the misuses of statistics in science, and it gave the theoretical case of a study showing 65/100 patients given a drug getting better, versus 40/100 patients getting better given a placebo. Author argues that rather obsessing about statistical significant and p values, scientists be putting their energy into exploring why the drug may have worked in some patients and not others, mechanism of action, etc.
Anyway, after the first reading, I remembered that I thought essay was well-written, had some excellent points, but couldn't remember specifically what they were other than "statistics have a downside."
(FWIW, I have an above-average memory for numbers and word definitions. Very strange...)
My problem is more like JZig's above, but I have many friends/colleagues who sound like you. I have the (unscientific) impression that most of us fall into one camp or another.
Either way, writing something down, or telling people about what you've ready as soon as you can, might help with retention.
posted by rpfields at 8:48 AM on July 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
Either way, writing something down, or telling people about what you've ready as soon as you can, might help with retention.
posted by rpfields at 8:48 AM on July 23, 2022 [1 favorite]
I feel like this is just a way brains work and I've thought about this specific inclination or lack of it because of my love relationship.
My spouse el_lupino is a philosophy professor, so about as good at humans get at ideas and how they link together. He’s spent decades reading in that field. Before I was disabled, I was in the food business - I held jobs at retail, the business side of manufacturing, supporting agriculture. I've read hundreds and hundreds of cookbooks, food history books, food marketing books, food technology books, food politics books, food novels.
If he wants to explain a philosophical idea to me, despite being an excellent teacher, it always takes several repetitions and a lot of elucidation for me to get what he's explaining to hook onto anything in my brain. It's frustrating for both of us, but particularly for me, because I feel like I should be getting the connections and I'm not. That said, even as a professional philosopher, he will tell you he reads (admittedly very complex) texts in his field several times before he feels he’s understood and absorbed them.
Because of the kind of reading I've done, I have at hand a wealth of procedures, processes, harmonious combinations, evolutions, historical antecedents, etc. (He once said, "You're like a server with 50,000 webpages on it, and *all* of the tags are food.") And trying to explain to him anything reasonably involved to do in the kitchen, despite having done a lot of recipe writing, including professionally, inevitably fails somewhere. There are just so many tiny details and decision points that I know so well that they're second nature, and he'll get to some juncture where I swear I've explained it and will make a contrary guess that makes no sense to me because of my knowledge base.
I don't think this is merely a matter of practice; I don't think we could have traded our expertise for the other’s even if we’d started early. He got interested in philosophy because he saw the name of a philosopher and a school of thought on a blackboard in a classroom he walked into mistakenly, looked it up, and as he began reading the work instantly began arguing with it; I was interested in food from a very young age and it's obvious when I look back, from undertakings I chose, that it was really always there.
I think one can get better at a thing one's brain is not aligned to, but it certainly takes more practice and attention greater than what one's brain seems to slot into naturally.
posted by jocelmeow at 2:10 PM on July 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
My spouse el_lupino is a philosophy professor, so about as good at humans get at ideas and how they link together. He’s spent decades reading in that field. Before I was disabled, I was in the food business - I held jobs at retail, the business side of manufacturing, supporting agriculture. I've read hundreds and hundreds of cookbooks, food history books, food marketing books, food technology books, food politics books, food novels.
If he wants to explain a philosophical idea to me, despite being an excellent teacher, it always takes several repetitions and a lot of elucidation for me to get what he's explaining to hook onto anything in my brain. It's frustrating for both of us, but particularly for me, because I feel like I should be getting the connections and I'm not. That said, even as a professional philosopher, he will tell you he reads (admittedly very complex) texts in his field several times before he feels he’s understood and absorbed them.
Because of the kind of reading I've done, I have at hand a wealth of procedures, processes, harmonious combinations, evolutions, historical antecedents, etc. (He once said, "You're like a server with 50,000 webpages on it, and *all* of the tags are food.") And trying to explain to him anything reasonably involved to do in the kitchen, despite having done a lot of recipe writing, including professionally, inevitably fails somewhere. There are just so many tiny details and decision points that I know so well that they're second nature, and he'll get to some juncture where I swear I've explained it and will make a contrary guess that makes no sense to me because of my knowledge base.
I don't think this is merely a matter of practice; I don't think we could have traded our expertise for the other’s even if we’d started early. He got interested in philosophy because he saw the name of a philosopher and a school of thought on a blackboard in a classroom he walked into mistakenly, looked it up, and as he began reading the work instantly began arguing with it; I was interested in food from a very young age and it's obvious when I look back, from undertakings I chose, that it was really always there.
I think one can get better at a thing one's brain is not aligned to, but it certainly takes more practice and attention greater than what one's brain seems to slot into naturally.
posted by jocelmeow at 2:10 PM on July 23, 2022 [3 favorites]
Your memory isn't abnormal. Or at least it's like mine. I remember very little from something I read unless I make a point to remember it. First that means isolating a specific fact or summarizing a concept into a sentence. Then I have to do something to encode it into long-term memory. Might mean reviewing the notes frequently. Might mean talking to people which tests my recall. Most often it means creating a flash card (using the Anki app) and working on it until I've remembered it.
posted by conrad53 at 7:50 PM on July 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by conrad53 at 7:50 PM on July 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
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If you want to get better at remembering ideas, I recommend trying to write about it immediately afterwards. I have been keeping Google docs of notes about random things I read and that definitely helps me retain stuff. I recently started keeping a local Obsidian wiki instead because that lets me see the connections between authors and ideas in a more visual way.
posted by JZig at 8:21 AM on July 23, 2022 [4 favorites]