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Comment by errcorrectcode | Hacker News Reader

Memorizing facts is a pointless exercise and waste of cognitive energy because there is too much information and it's easily replaced by inorganic storage media. What's more valuable than winning Jeopardy! or being a London black cab driver is 1. developing critical reasoning skills, learning skills, and mastering first principles and 2. offloading important factual details onto searchable, error-free documentation that others can use. It's far more useful and reliable than fallible, car-crash-vulnerable, knowledge-hoarding.

Crossword puzzles and memorizing lists won't stave off dementia either.

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Knowing facts personally is very important. Obviously the type of facts you're describing here are usually not useful. However if I had to look up the syntax for a while loop that would be horrible! Imagine if I had to look up what looping structures were available! Your personally known set of facts is a huge factor in how effective you can be in any given endeavor

Very true. Being able to do routine things quickly and accurately without much mental effort reduces cognitive load that makes capacity available for tackling larger more complex problems. The other thing to note is that we are not only limited in size of what we can hold in our head, but also time. Not having to look up an easily found answer means that we can get to a solution before running out of time.

This is a really great point!! It's not only about knowing facts, it's also a bit more meta and it's knowing what to know and what's worth jolting down somewhere

If you use the loops in this particular language often, then you memorize it just by practice along otherwise there is nothing wrong to look up a syntax for a language you use once in a blue moon (f.s.)

> there is nothing wrong to look up a syntax for a language you use

Of course not. My only statement was that the person who doesn't have to look it up will be (all else equal) more effective.

The effort to memorize the syntax may exceed the number of times you actually use it--wasted effort is not efficient.

If you are coding in 5 different languages at work, then I am afraid you will have 5 cheatsheets open in front on you, no matter how good your memory is. Cheatsheet access can be faster than human memory access, especially for the infrequently used stuff.

> Crossword puzzles and memorizing lists won't stave off dementia either.

No, it actually will, since your brain will have more connections so it will take longer for it to degenerate to the point of dementia. So as an example, someone would develop dementia at 85, but the brain activities will push it to 20 years later, probably beyond the death point.

Disruption and creativity are often best when pulling arbitrary knowledge from between different domains/industries.

I keep a key list of links, but more importantly a strong basic reference knowledge of everything I've read, to be able to quickly find the more in-depth knowledge when needed.

What I've read is that e.g. doing Sudoku puzzles won't save you from dementia, but you'll be starting from a higher point so that you'll be older when you reach a certain diminished level than if you didn't exercise your abilities beforehand--use it or lose it (sooner).

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