[HN Gopher] Try thinking and learning without working memory (2008)
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Try thinking and learning without working memory (2008)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 89 points
Date : 2025-02-18 17:21 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sharpbrains.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sharpbrains.com)
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| ADHD makes a mockery of working memory. The number of times I'll
| have to go back to see what the the fourth, fifth and sixth digit
| of a six digit sequence were is truly frustrating.
|
| The article indicates that working memory can be improved though,
| going to have to give that a try.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > ADHD makes a mockery of working memory.
|
| Honestly, I don't find I have much of a problem with working
| memory. Sure, my ability to recall a meaningless number several
| minutes later is absolutely terrible, but a handling an
| analysis or conversation about a complicated subject (complex
| is a different matter that relies on raw intelligence more than
| working memory) with lots of important detail seems to be
| easier for me, to the point where other people tap out with
| "information overload" when I'm moving along just fine.
|
| Of course, _executing_ a complicated process is a whole
| different matter, because the ADHD brain quickly loses interest
| and focuses on something else.
| luckydata wrote:
| Well you're not just noticing the problem or you don't have
| ADHD because the working memory impairment is well documented
| and it's essentially THE symptom of ADHD.
|
| What you say about being more easily distracted is a side
| effect of impaired working memory for example.
| genewitch wrote:
| ADD is the lack of serotonin in the frontal lobe. The best
| way I've heard it described: there is no motivation except
| to not die. In the worst parts of the disorder, even that
| isn't motivating.
|
| I know it is over-diagnosed because high school and college
| kids want to to tweak legally. But it makes it harder for
| those of us that actually suffer with ADD
| AppleBananaPie wrote:
| I thought dopamine was the main focus
| hirvi74 wrote:
| Both chemical explanations are highly oversimplified, and
| to my knowledge, are still completely hypothetical.
| TransAtlToonz wrote:
| Why does ADHD take dopamine-oriented medication rather
| than serotonin meds? Does serotonin play a strong role in
| "motivation"?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| It's more complicated than that.
|
| For me, executive disfunction is the most significant
| issue; and that compounds the problem of limited working
| memory by wasting it on irrelevant stimulus.
| annie_muss wrote:
| I took a properly administered IQ test as part of my ADHD
| diagnosis. It was eye opening.
|
| All through the test I felt like I was crushing it. Spacial
| reasoning, pattern recognition, memory tasks. When the
| results came back I got 135 on spatial reasoning but 89 on
| processing speed and working memory.
|
| Looking back on my life I realize I had always made up for
| limited working memory with systems, mnemonics and other
| techniques. When you've lived your whole life with a
| limitation you can have a huge blind spot. You've never known
| what it's like to have "normal" working memory.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I actually think this is a danger with leaning more heavily on AI
| tools. What happens as you offload more of your thinking outside
| of your brain?
| bloomingkales wrote:
| You open up other spaces. Society mostly distracts you with
| busy work. It's really psychotic to have someone do anything
| for 8 hours a day.
|
| Think of it like this. You have other rooms in your house that
| you don't know what to do with. You might know how to decorate
| your first room, maybe even your second, but by the time you
| are lucky enough to have the fifth room, you won't really know
| what to fill it with.
|
| Luxury. It takes some imagination to fill it.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Ever hear of the curse of Thoth in relation to Plato on the
| merit of writing?
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I mean yeah, it gets brought up every time this topic is
| discussed. I'm not going to try to argue Plato was totally
| right, but I do think there is some merit to the argument.
|
| At least in my experience, the more stuff I can keep my
| working memory, the better I can solve problems. Contrast to
| popular opinion, I actually think memorization is a great
| learning strategy.
| theultdev wrote:
| Constantly ctrl-z just to see what I was doing a second ago.
|
| ADHD is a blessing and a curse. I can hold every line of the
| codebase in my head but I can't remember what I was just doing...
|
| You figure out how to work without working memory. Just offload
| it all immediately.
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| Treat reality as working memory substrate
| Glyptodon wrote:
| Working memory is waaaay more critical than you might think to
| all levels of functionality. There are many basic tasks, like
| walking to another room to get something and noticing something
| minor, like a pen on a table that should be put away, and doing
| both tasks, that depend on working memory. The same with mentaly
| reasoning through a complex system. The reason abstractions are
| so valuable is that they allow for compression of something into
| working memory.
|
| For me, personally, this is why I often approach things by
| scaffolding them into relationships with existing structures
| (mentally) - by integrating with an existing structure, I avoid a
| sort of fragmentation overload in my working memory.
|
| Anyway, I think it's one of those things you don't really notice
| until it goes bad somehow.
| yamrzou wrote:
| > Anyway, I think it's one of those things you don't really
| notice until it goes bad somehow.
|
| So true!
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Multiple small kids are incredibly disruptive to this. Just, a
| continuous "happening", constant out-of-context asks and
| "situations". 5 different things can happen between noticing or
| thinking of a task and being able to do anything about it. God
| help you if you have to go from one room to another because
| that in itself requires explanations (the best case is they
| quietly follow you to find out whats going on).
|
| There are long stretches of my day where functionally, I have
| no free working memory at all. The main way I stay barely
| functional is by keeping memory "in the state of the world".
| The way I remember I promised to fix the tap today is by
| placing the tool kit prominently next to the tap, etc. As a
| last resort I try to write things down.
| diob wrote:
| Working memory being terrible is one of the biggest issues I
| experience with my ADHD.
|
| I forgot why I went somewhere, or worse I do something
| different upon arrival.
| wduquette wrote:
| Regarding unconscious thinking: I've known for many years that if
| I'm trying to implement something and what I'm doing just _feels_
| wrong and I 'm not sure why, it's time to stop and come back
| first thing in the morning. Sleeping on it engages my back-brain;
| and invariably the next morning everything makes sense, sometimes
| immediately, and sometimes with just a small amount of work.
|
| Mind you, the solution I have in mind when I wake isn't
| necessarily the _right_ one; but I get to the right one pretty
| quickly.
| ggambetta wrote:
| I get this even on a shorter timescale with compiler errors. So
| many times I have a near-subconscious feeling that _something
| 's wrong_ with the code, and as soon as I run or compile it,
| there it is, a syntax error. I've been trying to train myself
| to pay more attention to these gut feelings, so I can act on
| them before the compiler gets to it.
| hinkley wrote:
| Time, doorways, and ritualized actions like sweeping, brushing
| your teeth, washing your hair, or walking tend to trigger those
| connections. Even going for a walk might set you right.
|
| That's usually when I would go for coffee when I worked in an
| office.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I fell into this trap for a while:
|
| > "The growing trend, especially among young people, to multi-
| task may seem wonderful. But actually, multi-tasking is most
| likely to interfere with focused attention and, in turn, degrade
| memory formation, recall, and thinking quality."
|
| Eventually I realized that parallelization is not really
| possible, you end up making a mess of everything, and trying to
| be a rapid context-switcher - similar to the illusion of
| simultaneous multitasking on a single CPU core - just takes too
| much energy and time - 15-30 min to unload, clear the slate and
| reload with something else seems common.
|
| Practically, this is why people working on difficult problems
| that require their full attention get really irritated by
| interruptions, and often prefer to work in isolation or only with
| like-minded individuals.+
| poincaredisk wrote:
| I love multitasking - I feel like I'm doing more than 100% and
| I like being productive.
|
| The trick is to pick a combinations that works:
|
| * listening to a language lesson when cycling (learning+sport)
|
| * repeating flash cards in a bus, instead of doomscrolling
| (commute+learning)
|
| * listening to a language lesson when cycling to work
| (learning+sport+commute - whoa!)
|
| * thinking about my programming project when cleaning my home
| (work+brainless menial work)
|
| In most cases this involves something that doesn't require to
| much too much conscious attention and something that does.
| AppleBananaPie wrote:
| I'm what you described 100%. I wonder if there's a different
| type of multitasking term that describes this because I swear
| it's a thing
|
| Multitasking two coding problems at once completely doesn't
| work for me but what you described works and I do that all
| the time.
|
| There seems to be a language disconnect for the type of
| multitasking that works vs. doesn't work.
| joeyagreco wrote:
| > see http://thankyoubrain.com
|
| oh... oh god
| wasabi991011 wrote:
| For others: it is supposed to be a website promoting the
| article author's book, but since it is from (2008), the link is
| now to an Indonesian slots website.
| layer8 wrote:
| The referencesd book is " _Thank You Brain, for All You
| Remember: What You Forgot Was My Fault_ " by William Robert
| Klemm, Benecton Press, 2004, ISBN 0975522507.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Gwern has a lot of research and meta-research about this (if
| memory serves, hah), and in general I seem to recall that doing
| brain games like dual-n-back makes you better at brain games like
| dual-n-back.
|
| Which is perhaps not without merit, but...
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Concur seeing same research, a thought in the back of my head -
| does learning one of these games makes you faster at learning
| other games? Does that translate at learning faster in areas
| that would use similar recall patterns. There is some research
| that when you learn N>5 languages
| (https://news.mit.edu/2024/mit-study-polyglots-brain-
| processi...) the brain layout changes. What happens when you
| practice / master >X memory recall games.
| yamrzou wrote:
| Link to Gwern's article: _Dual n-Back FAQ_ -
| https://gwern.net/dnb-faq
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > We know that the subconscious mind is processing information
| (i.e. "thinking") all the time, even while we sleep. The evidence
| for this kind of "sleep learning" is incontrovertible and
| summarized in my memory improvement book...
|
| No. Just the opposite. A quick search shows majority of the
| scholarly papers question "sleep learning". Maybe 16 years of new
| data?
|
| e.g.,
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2869....
|
| and, as @joeyagreco noted the link is (might as well be) dead.
| onnnon wrote:
| Reminds me of the "Hammock Driven Development" talk from Rich
| Hickey:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc&t=1270s
| dgan wrote:
| I have found that setting to myself a limited, 30 or 40min
| window, where i am not allowing myself to do anything else but
| the task I have to do, is actually a sensible way to trick the
| brain to work on things. Then i swith context. Like coding for
| 30min,then filling a visa application
| rickcarlino wrote:
| Being a caretaker for someone with Alzheimer's has been a real
| eye opener to how critical working memory is. I think a large
| portion of our personal success in life is contingent on our
| working memory or the ability to manage it effectively.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Can working memory actually be improved as this article suggests?
| Links to apps to change my life please.
| yamrzou wrote:
| See: https://gwern.net/dnb-faq#n-back-improves-working-memory
| and https://brainscale.net/
| eschneider wrote:
| Absolutely. I find having a notebook open when
| writing/debugging code is a godsend. Just keeping a scratchpad
| of design notes/ideas/tests while I work let's me keep a lot
| more in my head. Think of it as increasing your level 1 cache.
| :)
| OracB7 wrote:
| Every time I have googled for it, the only method of working
| memory training that comes up is N-Back.
|
| So I'm happy that the article mentions another method. Apart from
| playing "Simon" (yes that circular game with lights), those are
| the only two I know.
|
| Anyone know of any other methods?
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I am a bit confused by this approach.
|
| From what I've read, the training isn't necessarily
| transferable. You just get better at these sorts of brain
| games, which doesn't necessarily mean your working memory is
| increasing.
|
| Even while reading gwern's blog that seemed pretty positive of
| this kind of training, there was limited evidence that you
| shouldn't learn just a new instrument or language or new sort
| of math discipline.
|
| Why do people keep thinking that "training" can improve working
| memory?
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| I agree that if you want to get better at specific things you
| should just do those things.
|
| Usually when you "learn" something you improve your
| understanding of the domain, you start chunking things up
| into patterns and structures. This reduces your mental load
| and lets you use your "working memory" more effectively.
|
| I think the intuition with say, "n-back" is that there's
| supposed to be no structure beyond the memory task, so any
| increase in performance _must_ be an improvement in some sort
| of generalised "working memory".
|
| As I understand it people have shown that there is
| "transferance" between these various types of working-memory
| based brain games (i.e, getting good at one can improve your
| performance on others that you haven't done before). But no
| one has shown that getting good at (say) dual n-back produces
| a strong improvement in "real tasks" that aren't just memory
| games.
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