Learning Is Remembering

Re:Learning Is Remembering by p-christ on Monday September 26, 2022 @11:28AM (#32984392)

I think it feels different because that knowledge is more deeply ingrained with what you already know. That knowledge has many connections and relationships with other knowledge you have. Whereas the name of a function is more like a leaf node, it isn't connected to very much and i think this is the source of the different feelings you describe.

To expand on this a bit - our memories maintain "schemas" of knowledge and whenever we learn something new it gets slotted into our "schema". The better something fits into our schema the easier it is to remember. I think if you googled schemas you'll be able to find more material on this

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Re:Learning Is Remembering by cloogshicer on Monday September 26, 2022 @11:32AM (#32984442)

I'm not sure I agree. I think what I tried to describe above couldn't be classified as "knowledge" at all.

To be honest, I think we (humans) don't understand this type of understanding very well. Which is somewhat ironic :-)

Edit: But thanks for the suggestion about searching for schema, will definitely take a look!

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Re:Learning Is Remembering by svnt on Monday September 26, 2022 @01:07PM (#32985553)

The keyword embodied may be fruitful — there is a lot of noise around the term but embodied understanding is closer to what you want, I think. You may have to relax some ideas about how things work for a while in order to absorb/integrate it.

The knowledge defined in the article is very rational and reductionist in its presentation. I don’t mean that derogatorily, but it does mean it can’t account for all the emergent features of our existence. The reductionist approach can be useful as a set of signposts for locating reliable mechanistic constraints.

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Re:Learning Is Remembering by cloogshicer on Monday September 26, 2022 @01:16PM (#32985649)

Thank you for that keyword! A quick search brought me to the wikipedia article [1], which sounds quite promising.

I agree completely with your analysis of the article by the way. Beautifully said!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition

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Re:Learning Is Remembering by p-christ on Monday September 26, 2022 @11:47AM (#32984613)

Understanding is just knowledge of how or why something works

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Re:Learning Is Remembering by cloogshicer on Monday September 26, 2022 @12:19PM (#32985004)

Intuitively, I don't believe it's that simple. But I'd love to learn more about it.

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Re:Learning Is Remembering by tighter_wires on Wednesday September 28, 2022 @08:43AM (#33007223)

There may be more to it but at a minimum understanding usually requires you to remember a how or why, so understanding is rooted in memory as well. Perhaps also the memory of a broader cognitive context of the world and how a given objects fit in that context. Without memory there would be no capacity for understanding.

Have you ever gained a solid understanding of a complex topic after a lot of study? When you start to forget the relevant details of the context you’ve created, your understanding fades as well. “Understanding“ is just a complex function of memory to a large degree.

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