The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory

Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by talldatethrow on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @04:41PM (#36606794)

People decide what they want to memorize. If people want to spend memory on goofy things, that's up then I guess.

I barely know the streets I take to my office, 6 months in (and I'm not just talking about their actual names). I use nav every time. My father thought I was losing my mind.

But at the same time I can remember basically every small block of code in a large saas I single handedly built a few years ago, even today.

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by coldtea on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @04:59PM (#36607018)

>People decide what they want to memorize.

Not exactly the case when you have ADHD.

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by bmoxb on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:28PM (#36607406)

I wouldn't say it's true in general. You can certainly choose what to put active effort into learning/revising, but memorisation isn't really something we have direct, conscious control over.

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by anthk on Thursday July 06, 2023 @05:15AM (#36613268)

You might love Gemini and Gopher networks then. Try Lagrange either on PC, Win, Linux, Mac or Android and head to gemini://gemi.dev and gopher://magical.fish, the news section.

No bullshit content, no doomscrolling, no ads, no notifications.

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by dktnj on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @05:07PM (#36607129)

> But at the same time I can remember basically every small block of code in a large saas I single handedly built a few years ago, even today.

Trying to replace that with something useful here at the moment. Much more difficult than it looks.

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by balder1991 on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @08:27PM (#36609246)

I guess the case of remembering old things, likely because you have some sort of emotion associated with it, is not the same as working memory.

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by Llamamoe on Thursday July 06, 2023 @02:54AM (#36612248)

> People decide what they want to memorize.

Advertising wouldn't exist if we actually had control over what we pay attention to and memorize.

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by isaacremuant on Thursday July 06, 2023 @06:00AM (#36613610)

It's relatively easy to dismiss advertisement provided you don't get bombarded with them frequently, at which point, it's simply learning via spaced repetition.

I get your point that a lot of knowledge acquisition that goes into short and long term memory has more to do with the environment (passive learning) and less to do with intentional learning.

Blocking the input entirely will always work (using headphones, not reading certain things).

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by feoren on Thursday July 06, 2023 @12:53PM (#36618956)

Which is why I go out of my way to avoid advertisements as much as possible.

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Re:The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limit... by talldatethrow on Thursday July 06, 2023 @06:54PM (#36624397)

I don't really agree. There are countless ads I have zero recollection of because I don't care in the slightest. I'm a guy, and I remember Playtex commercials for women, because it is interesting in a way what women deal with IMO. Now, you can argue that advertising works to make me interested in something enough to choose to care, but that's different.

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