People who haven’t used a memory system tend to think of it as a tool you might apply “when you want to memorize something.” But this misses the point. Without augmentation, explicitly memorizing information is quite onerous, so it's done rarely, for extremely important details.
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With an efficient memory system, remembering something is a low-stakes decision—a fraction of a minute over years. Such systems wouldn’t be very interesting if you use them only to memorize the kinds of material you already memorize, because people don’t explicitly memorize much.
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Not only do memory systems make memory a choice, but they make it an almost costless choice. Emotionally it’s closer to choosing where to highlight or write marginalia on a page. Practically, when an expensive resource becomes ~costless, surprising things happen (eg electricity).
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The way I add things to memory systems feels like a *gesture*. It’s usually not that purposeful—more like mentally “underlining." Much like how I use the Twitter like button. Not a bookmark, not a vote, not costly; liking a tweet is a habitual unconscious way I indicate interest.
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Most likely the same as all of us: a form of structural coupling of psychological & social systems / consciousness & communication / neural network & body, trying to learn what changes when interaction has to deal with the interference of other processors called computers.
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They're also missing the key point that knowledge builds upon itself - the more interconnected 'chunks' of information or 'useless' facts, the better you'll remember 'important' things
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What do you mean by "Without augmentation"? I'm guessing you mean that everyone should have a memory system, and it should be used as naturally and often as putting on your shoes when you go out - and not as that dress you only wear in special occasions, but I am not sure...
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And what do you mean by "memory system"? Clever mnemonic system/tricks, apps, note-pad? What memory system(s) do you use?
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I can’t speak for Andy but most of the time I see people talking like this they’re referring to Spaced Repetition Systems (SRS), and specifically Anki
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