I feel like every reply making a point against memorisation would benefit from having their definition of what is memorization, because every single one of those replies sound like they're still implicitly describing some sort of memorization as the better way

I feel like this is about the difference between rote/explicit memorization and organic/implicit/tacit memorization, for a lack of better words. I suspect the former could narrow/restrict your understanding because it may be constrained/limited by the vocabulary/definition itself.

I think perhaps there's a confusion of "memorization" with "rote memorization". The word "rote" connotes flashcards and dull drills, but memorization by itself, to me at least, is more like "a focused attempt at internalizing information", in whatever way that means to a person, as opposed to just ingesting it or letting it wash over you/osmosis.

But that's just my interpretation of the terms. I don't know what the "official" meanings are.

Exactly, everyone here is just describing different forms of memorization

Is it? If I don't remember any of the detail, but just the general "feel" of the concept.. is that memorization?

What do you call it when you remember things so you can repeat them but you can't generalize? E.g. if you learn a poem or phrase in a foreign language, but can't reuse the words in different contexts? Or being able to recite a rule, but not automatically applying it?

Is there a word for this?

Similarly, we should have a word for knowing how to reuse something in a different context, but not recall its origin or its canonical portrayal. Being able to apply a rule, without being able to recite it.

Do you think there's one word which means both of these things, which are opposites, as I've stated them?

> What do you call it when you remember things so you can repeat them but you can't generalize? E.g. if you learn a poem or phrase in a foreign language, but can't reuse the words in different contexts? Or being able to recite a rule, but not automatically applying it?

"Rote memorization"

Rote means learning by repetition.

And "rote memorization" is a compound term that means what you were asking for. It's one of those things you can't get the exact meaning of by just looking at the components.

Transfer learning.

Transferring skills from one context to another is surprisingly hard to do, but not impossible. AFAIK, contexts must be similar to each other for transfer to take place.

Modeling is not memorization. It's more generic and can't allow you to reproduce the memorized information, only describe its underlying structure.

I think I would call it internalization instead of memorization. People memorize equations not knowing what the variables are, others internalize the concepts of what is trying to be calculated.

> > and builds model

> memoization

Was this intentional and no one caught on? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoization

Or just a typo?

Typo. Funny typo given we're on hn.

If I cannot recall the information or even that I've come across it unprompted, is it really? Because that's my norm, and I still retain insights from that, that are then applicable across topics.