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There was a post not too long ago (I can't remember it unfortunately) where someone argued that memorization (they used software development specifically as the example) could help in connecting concepts. You can be a developer who knows what to google. Or you could be one who knows lots by heart and connects everything they know. I'm a bit sceptical myself, since rote memorization seems like something that is easily forgotten after a few months..

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The point of Anki is that you will never forget an ever growing library of information if you maintain the habit.

I feel like understanding rather than pure knowledge is what allows you to connect concepts.

Yes, but some knowledge is a requirement to really understand something. Trivial example: can you really understand addition of numbers if you can't remember how to do it?

Pure memorization of facts is also really helpful to creating new understanding: Have you ever read a textbook that stacked definition upon definition and at some point you can't really keep up anymore because you're going back to the previous paragraphs all the time? At that point, pure memorization of definitions (even without understanding them really) already helps massively to reduce cognitive overload and makes forming new understanding form the rest of the text even possible.

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