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0 pointspm909y ago0 comments

Right but there is so much more information of every kind today than what used to exist at the time of Socrates. Attempting to remember all that information would probably be infeasible.

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11 comments · 4 top-level

Bakary9y ago· 3 in thread

Only a small fraction of that information is actually useful in improving our lives or giving meaning to them.

TeMPOraL9y ago

I think you'd be surprised. It's kind of like your house. The only necessary things there are the bed and the ceiling. And yet life would be much more miserable without all the random stuff you probably store in various cupboards.

Bakary8y ago

These days I think of it in terms of cost to benefit ratios. I've for instance spent countless hours on Reddit, and while I got some benefit from it it is clear that the overall cost was negative even if it is impossible to know the exact figures.

It's still unclear to me which parts of the Internet provide a good ratio.

1 more reply

copperx9y ago

Sure, but to get that tiny, useful portion you have to dig through mountains of information.

throwawaycopy9y ago· 2 in thread

"More and more information, less and less meaning." - Jean Baudrillard

"The more words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?" - Ecclesiastes 6:11

"Let's start from the premise that more information, more empowerment, is fundamentally the correct answer" - Eric Schmidt

One of these two quotes is not like the others...

wil4219y ago

“I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book.”

-Albert Einstein

pbhjpbhj9y ago

Which is clearly false: the meaning of words being readily looked up, for example, or common multiplications.

Probably he meant "I never make effort to ...".

Which IMO is foolish - for most people - but probably reflects more that he easily memorised facts without effort (something I was fortunate to experience in my youth and which is now sorely missed).

1 more reply

kornish9y ago· 2 in thread

In the same way that reciting Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing is infeasible, right?

(poking fun, but only a bit)

AnimalMuppet9y ago

That's feasible. Barely, but feasible.

Now try reciting the Library of Congress after one hearing. Or Wikipedia. That's a whole nother level of problem.

copperx9y ago

I really doubt it's feasible to memorize it in a single hearing without paraphrasing. The human brain couldn't have been different a few millennia ago, and we know that the greeks used the same memorization techniques we use today (e.g., the memory palace, chunking, ...).

1 more reply

iClaudiusX9y ago

Case in point: Tycho Brahe's exceptionally detailed and accurate astronomical observations. His recorded work on the position of Mars allowed Kepler to establish the laws of planetary motion using elliptical orbits around the sun. Without that data (and logarithm tables and trigonometry), it may have been impossible to test theories of celestial mechanics and physics that kick-started the scientific revolution.

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11 comments · 4 top-level

Bakary9y ago· 3 in thread

Only a small fraction of that information is actually useful in improving our lives or giving meaning to them.

TeMPOraL9y ago

Bakary8y ago

It's still unclear to me which parts of the Internet provide a good ratio.

1 more reply

copperx9y ago

Sure, but to get that tiny, useful portion you have to dig through mountains of information.

throwawaycopy9y ago· 2 in thread

"More and more information, less and less meaning." - Jean Baudrillard

"The more words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?" - Ecclesiastes 6:11

"Let's start from the premise that more information, more empowerment, is fundamentally the correct answer" - Eric Schmidt

One of these two quotes is not like the others...

wil4219y ago

“I never commit to memory anything that can easily be looked up in a book.”

-Albert Einstein

pbhjpbhj9y ago

Which is clearly false: the meaning of words being readily looked up, for example, or common multiplications.

Probably he meant "I never make effort to ...".

Which IMO is foolish - for most people - but probably reflects more that he easily memorised facts without effort (something I was fortunate to experience in my youth and which is now sorely missed).

1 more reply

kornish9y ago· 2 in thread

In the same way that reciting Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing is infeasible, right?

(poking fun, but only a bit)

AnimalMuppet9y ago

That's feasible. Barely, but feasible.

Now try reciting the Library of Congress after one hearing. Or Wikipedia. That's a whole nother level of problem.

copperx9y ago

1 more reply

iClaudiusX9y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse