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Comment by snowpiercer | Hacker News Reader

Don't you think you actually did well in your exams because you really understood it and not because you blindly memorized it ?

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That is false dichotomy that is running around.

To really understand something first you blindly memorize - but that is not enough, once you do examples and exercises using what you blindly memorized you get to understand things quicker, a lot quicker.

Not memorizing stuff and figuring things as you go is mostly recipe for disappointment.

Like in chess - people think that chess players are somehow super intelligent - but being super intelligent without rote memorization of loads of chess settings will not help winning grand master title.

>"To really understand something first you blindly memorize"

Because of this sort of advice ppl equate memorization with "not understanding" and cramming.

Never memorize things you don't understand.

They must be performed in lock step. Fully agree.

It similar to the question, "if you could do just one exercise, what would you do?" And you have all these answers, it is the squat, no, it is the deadlift, please guys it is the power clean. It is not a useful question because you will never be in the position of choosing just one exercise to be done for the next month, year or decade.

Memorization is important and understanding is important, and the two are not in any conflict whatsoever.

There's actually an interesting section of the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" where it talks about a study was done on chess masters where they showed them the board in positions that would be impossible under the rules and suddenly the master chess players didn't do all that much better than random people.

The suggestion in the book was that really Grandmasters have spent so much time practicing, that they have memorized the game and the board to a certain extant that allows them to more easily handle the board and all the pieces on it cognitively.

Off-topic, but I dislike chess and adore chess960/fischerrandom chess for essentially this reason. It's almost disheartening enough to want a different hobby when you review an online game and realize what you thought was a clever solution to an interesting "puzzle" of a board position was really just one you learned by experience a week ago. More variety in piece arrangement makes playing feel far more like doing chess problem solving than remembering the last time you messed up the same chess problem.

Memorization only works well if your approach leads to chunking. They have done studies on chess players specifically, which supports what you are saying. Masters are no better than a beginner at memorizing a random chess board. This critical mass of memorization, when finally encoded into chunks is what I think a lot of people are describing as the “aha” of memorizing to conquer complex topics. So it isn’t really the blind memorization, but the process of learning and getting information and concepts into coherent and related chunks.

You are making a very important assumption that doesn't hold in most situations.

Chess and math are regular domains. They are bounded. There is right and wrong. Most domains are not like this. Ex: art, software engineering, investing, etc.

You can't memorize your way to understanding in an irregular domain. It also doesn't tend to do well in non-knowledge work domains. Ex: sports.

I disagree becuse rote repetition is the only way to learn how to draw. One cannot simply draw something complex without trying out again and again to draw something.

For sports rote repetition is basis to excel or at least getting good at any sport.

I agree one cannot "memorize to understanding" because one has to actually apply what he memorized in practice.

I've picked up a lot of (human) languages over my life, and I've used SRS to great effect (I started on JMemorize, a now defunct Java app.) I have a simple strategy:

1. Read a text

2. Lookup unknown word/grammatical pattern

3. Create a flashcard for it

4. Apply SRS

and it works great. I've also tried to use other people's Anki decks and they've never worked particularly well. Personally engaging with the material is still the prerequisite for memorizing it, but memorizing means you don't need to struggle to figure out basic concepts constantly and can instead move onto the higher level of meaning.

I've used SRS over the years for many, many things. I've used it for memorizing divisibility rules, used it for annoying math lemmas, used it for data structures, and more. Each of the time I've attempted the material by myself and then turned my knowledge/engagement into a flashcard. I've even considered using it to learn tools like Blender so I can dial in workflows.

> I've even considered using it to learn tools like Blender so I can dial in workflows.

I've used it effectively for vim and photoshop.

All of the courses that I did really well in I memorised the entirety of the book that was the core of the course. Everywhere where I didn't feel like doing it, I was strictly mediocre. If you think you can understand something without knowing all about it, I must say I think you are mistaken.

My (entirely uninformed… though I am a “doctor” har har) theory is that some sort of compression occurs in the brain. I also wrote out the answers to my flash cards by hand. I feel like these actions accelerate the compression process.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

"really understood" is ambiguous.

"solve ___ on a blank piece of paper" is not.

Human brains drop unused stuff especially ones that dont fit a known pattern.

No Real understanding without repetition. Repetition breeds memorization.

One without the other is fooling yourself either way.

I've really understood a lot of stuff that I've since completely forgotten. For example, if you don't speak your native language for 20 years, you'll be surprised how hard it is to find any of it when you need it.

I imagine it's possible that they are related. In my life, I've only witnessed it as a required for being an expert at any topic: experience and memorized knowledge, of a topic.

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