Weekly I/O: How to improve working memory, Write to transform non-linear to linear, What makes scientific advancement possible
#81: Working and External Memory, Write Web to String, Notes Make Intellectual Possible, Read Yourself Stupid, Unique Messenger not Message
Hi friends,
Greetings from Sunnyvale!
I’m reviewing some of my previous notes for my next article about my own writing. Therefore, this week’s learnings are mainly related to writing. I hope you enjoy it!
Input
Here's a list of what I'm exploring and pondering on this week.
1. Our working memory has a limited capacity for task-related information. To perform complex tasks, we should offload some mental load onto an external medium.
Article: Working Memory and External Memory
Working memory is a temporary storage where our brain deposits information critical to the current task. Unlike long-term or short-term memory, working memory is like things you need to know but don't want to remember later.
This memory system is task-oriented and has a limited capacity. When the information required for a task exceeds its capacity, we must offload current items in our working memory to make room for new information. Constantly swapping items in our working memory is inefficient and error-prone. For example, consider the task of mentally multiplying 357 by 123. It can be challenging due to the need to remember each carry number while doing multiplication.
An effective way to make the memory system more effective is to offload items from working memory to easily accessible external memory. For instance, performing calculations on paper is easier than purely in our minds because of the visual support provided by the external medium.
This principle also explains why reading long articles on a laptop is often easier than on a mobile phone. A larger screen can act as an extension of working memory, reducing the need to scroll and remember previous content. Similarly, using comparison tables for shopping or creating customized spreadsheets are examples of relieving the load on our working memory by externalizing information management.
You can also learn more about working memory at Huberman's Tools to Enhance Working Memory & Attention.
2. Writing is the process of encoding a web of ideas into a string of words using a tree of phrases.
Book: The Sense of Style
In his book The Sense of Style, Steven Pinker states, "The writer's goal is to encode a web of ideas into a string of words using a tree of phrases." In other words, writing is the practice of rearranging a non-linear network of thoughts into a linear sequence of sentences.
The phrase reminds me of Ted Nelson's critique that this non-linear to linear transformation is inefficient. He argues that writing forces us to arrange ideas, which naturally have their own spatial structure, into a linear form. Readers must then decode this linear structure to reconstruct the original web of ideas. There are additional steps of deconstructing nonsequential thoughts into a sequence and then reconstructing them back as nonsequential.
Nelson's solution is the concept of hypertext, nonsequential writing that allows readers to navigate through text non-linearly, offering different pathways through interconnected chunks of text. As suggested in Literary Machines, hypertext should save both the writer's time and the reader's time and effort in putting together and understanding what is being presented.
While Ted Nelson's ideas make a lot of sense, I think the struggle to encode and decode linear text is actually what makes writing and reading rewarding. It has to be inefficient, so we must engage with the content more.
3. Taking notes on paper or screens doesn't merely simplify complex tasks like contemporary physics or other intellectual pursuits. Taking notes makes them possible.
In Neuroethics and the Extended Mind, Neil Levy wrote: "Notes on paper, or on a computer screen (or mathematical models, or what have you) do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavor easier, they make it possible."
"In any case, no matter how internal processes are implemented, insofar as thinkers are genuinely concerned with what enables human beings to perform the spectacular intellectual feats exhibited in science and other areas of systematic enquiry, as well as in the arts, they need to understand the extent to which the mind is reliant upon external scaffolding."
Our working memory has limited capacity. To perform complex tasks, we should offload some mental load onto an external medium.
This concept also links to the idea that Writing is thinking. You write first and then derive clear perspectives from your own writing.
4. When we read, the author thinks for us. We can read ourselves stupid if we just repeat the author's mental process. People who just let their own thoughts wander can be more creative than those who just read.
Book: Parerga and Paralipomena
From Arthur Schopenhauer in Parerga and Paralipomena Chapter 24 on reading and books:
"When we read someone else thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. This is like the pupil who in learning to write traces with his pen the strokes made in pencil by the teacher. Accordingly in reading we are for the most part absolved of the work of thinking."
"This is why we sense relief when we transition from preoccupation with our own thoughts to reading. But during reading our mind is really only the playground of the thoughts of others. What remains when these finally move on? "
"It stems from this that whoever reads very much and almost the whole day, but in between recovers by thoughtless pastime, gradually loses the ability to think on his own – as someone who always rides forgets in the end how to walk. But such is the case of many scholars: they have read themselves stupid. For constant reading immediately taken up again in every free moment is even more mentally paralysing than constant manual labour, since in the latter we can still muse about our own thoughts."
"But just as a coiled spring finally loses its elasticity through the sustained pressure of a foreign body, so too the mind through the constant force of other people's thoughts. And just as one ruins the stomach by too much food and so harms the entire body, so too we can overfill and choke the mind with too much mental food."
"For the more one reads, the fewer traces are left behind in the mind by what was read; it becomes like a tablet on which many things have been written over one another. Therefore we do not reach the point of rumination; but only through this do we assimilate what we have read, just as food does not nourish us through eating but through digestion."
5. “There are no unique messages, only unique messengers.” - Jadah Sellner
Quote
We don't have to wait to create something unique. We and our authenticity are the elements that make anything unique.
Output
Here's what I've published since the last time we met.
1. Rumination #6: Behavioral Economics, Creativity, Learning Theories and more
Some learnings that I found worth reviewing in all 50 inputs from Weekly I/O#51 to #60 with their related inputs from the Weekly I/O learning archive.
Photo of the Week
Kodak Portra 400, Hill.
That's it. Thanks for reading. Please share which input you found the most helpful or intriguing. Just reply to this email with a number—it's quick and easy!
And as always, feel free to send me any interesting ideas you came across recently!
Looking forward to learning from you.
Cheers,
Cheng-Wei
Thank you cheng..this article is very insightful..Hope you are doing well.--Regards,Anil.