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0 pointshiq2y ago0 comments

> Not all information needs to be remembered.

So that's where I'm experimenting with this stance: it's either useful and I'm better off remembering it, or it's useless and I don't even need to write that down (see my first comment in this thread).

> It's good to have a single place for all of that with the ability to easily move stuff from one place to another.

Why aren't our brains better places for this, provided we can retain the information? With SRS such as Anki, the cost of remembering the information on top of writing it down is negligible, and once I remember it, why would I write it down in some other system?

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machomaster2y ago

>it's either useful and I'm better off remembering it, or it's useless and I don't even need to write that down

No, that's obviously not how the universe and information work. Pareto principle here at play as well.

> Why aren't our brains better places for this

Because they aren't. That's a strange question. Reality is reality., Our brains are not made for remembering (rote memorization; a mere 3-7 items can be short-term remembered and juggled with at one time), but for thinking and making connections.

Computers are amazing at storing information, but can't think.

If one is smart, he utilizes the strengths of tools/opportunities that are available to him instead of using them inefficiently.

hiqOP2y ago

We're not talking about remembering whole Wikipedia articles though, and I'm guessing nobody puts entire encyclopedia articles in their Zettelkasten. Granted, we're not made to remember TBs of data, but the information I envision to find in somebody's Zettelkasten (well, mine, if I had one) is far more amenable to be remembered via SRS than TBs of random data. That was my conditional "provided we can retain the information": in my case, it'd be just as costly to enter it in my Zettelkasten as it'd be to remember it, so why not remember it instead?

I guess I'd need to see somebody either solely using a Zettelkasten, or Zettelkasten and SRS, and see what's in the Zettelkasten that I couldn't put in an SRS just as conveniently. It must also be content-specific; maybe I'd see a benefit if I were a sociologist like Niklas Luhmann was, but I'm not.

Another thing that changed since Luhmann's time is just how cheap it has become to retrieve most information. His Zettelkasten probably allowed him to quickly fetch information he remembered vaguely, faster than it'd be to open his books and see where it is. This benefit is mostly gone now that there are even faster options.

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