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.

>"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.

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.