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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3425 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 25, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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How do you remember large amounts of information indefinitely without making a sustained, concerted attempt to do so? The system I have developed so far is to maintain a series of detailed notes which I refer to periodically whenever I want to recall things. But these notes have become almost prohibitive in length, and read any section of these notes infrequently enough and it's like the information is Teflon-coated, things become difficult to recall very quickly and this is especially true after I've made concerted attempts to cram new information into my head. It gets displaced by other things and the topics I want to learn (and argue) about are typically topics which are quite deep.

This is partially for the sake of helping me make persuasive cases in real life. It's something I've been trying to do more of for the past half-year, and it is at least part of the reason why I am participating less on social media now (other reasons for this include personal stuff, such as a family member having a stroke - this has put things into perspective a little bit and has made me deprioritise spending as much time on political screaming matches on the internet as I used to).

It would also be nice to get tips on how to handle real-time debate. I think I've generally been doing well and think I've been able to marshal a good amount of evidence in favour of the claims I make, but sometimes I trip up because I'm still not acclimatised to the dynamics of real-time debate and haven't yet grown fully accustomed to the unique characteristics of that specific debate format. Online, the speed of information recall is less of an issue simply because you can take time to refresh your memory, compose your thoughts, smooth out any holes, etc, before putting out the best version of your argument you possibly can. In real life, discussions are very scattershot and claims and counter-claims get thrown around all the time, questions get posed to you that you aren't always capable of recalling the answer to, and you need to remember and consolidate all the information you have in your brain in order to cope with it. No mistakes or hesitations or God forbid admissions of "I don't 100% remember at the moment, but I think..." are allowed, or your credibility slips. You have to be very careful with the words that come out of your mouth, and momentary slips in concentration can be fatal to your persuasiveness.

I would like to debate as well as I possibly can, and while that's easier online (you just have to put in a lot of detailed work, which I can do) in a real-time setting the demands and pressures are different.

Depending on what you want to achieve, Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay (yes, really) have a book: How to Have Impossible Conversations

They generally advise not marshalling evidence for your claims, but instead seeking to understand why your opponent believes their claims, then just asking if they can think of any evidence that would change their mind. This both helps get to the root of the disagreement, and also zeroes in on the kind of evidence you could provide if asked.

I think the way you're encountering the information is relevant—it's a lot harder to commit to memory information that's coming across in a list than whatever the scattered thing me naturally coming across information on topics that interest me is.

I suppose something that vague doesn't help, and it's not like I do something too different from you if I'm deliberately memorizing.

I try to engage in discussions based on what I've been reading and those solidify things in my memory. Maybe I won't remember the specific facts but I'll remember that I've talked about them and know where to look for a quick recap if they become relevant again.

Yeah, having had a discussion on the topic before definitely helps on later ones, assuming similar points come up.

I simply read it once and remember it for the rest of my life (unless it is a specific number. I can only remember ratios or formulas without trying hard; so I try to cast numbers I need to store as ratios of each other).

I am simply built different. Built autistic, if you will.

I don't know why I have the speed of light in meters per second memorized down to the standardized value, but I'm sure it'll come useful when I'm inevitably thrown into an uplift isekai.

Do you know what a "meter" or a "second" is, though?

Heading off on a tangent, one thing that annoys me about (most) uplift isekais is that the authors know less about physics (etc) than their characters do, and their worlds act on highschool (or simpler) physics as well.

As an example, Delve has a scene where the main character calculates the elastic energy stored in a bow at different draw lengths (fortunately, the draw force is linear). He has a magic measuring stick, so getting meters and seconds (and therefore probably kilograms as well) is possible, but the results are insane to anyone who has done a physics experiment: It is exactly two points of damage per joule of calculated energy input. A second trial had a 2.5% error. Either the System doesn't care about the arrow as a physical projectile, or else the energy lost to the limb mass, air resistance, dampening in the material, etc. "coincidentally" line up and cancel each other out.

As a counterexample, Ar'Kendrithyst has a scene where the main character doesn't know about the (low) hardenability of austenitic stainless steel, but his teacher does.

Also, I'll recommend https://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles/silver/silverbullets.shtml for an author's quest to cast silver bullets.

I know that a meter is approximately 1/millionth of the length of a Great Circle on Earth (or so I remember, I haven't checked yet).

Assuming the world was earth-like, that could help.

As for a second, no I can't think of any easily conserved phenomenon I could represent it in.

Your own height? Should get you within 1% or so. The "one 10 millionth of the way from the equator to the pole" will get you more accuracy, if your isekai destination is an actual alternate earth and not just an earth-like planet, but in that case "24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute" might get you even more precision on the time front, and then you can do either stuff with pendulums or with rotating mirrors depending on the tech level of your destination.

Not that I've spent any time thinking about this, ha ha why would I have put a lot of thought into this.

You seem unusually prone to being nerd sniped, but is that really a bad thing when the world rewards being a talented nerd so much these days? Haha

You certainly put a lot more effort into things than most posters here, myself included!

1/40,000,000 of the Great Circle (10,000 km from pole to equator through Paris set the standard, IIRC)

Aside from the obvious fraction of a day, there aren't really any easy ways of precisely rederiving the second without modern technology. If you know what a meter is and are in a 1 g gravity field, then you can build a 1 meter long pendulum which has a period of about 2.006 seconds. If you have perfect pitch, then the second is 440x the period of middle A. Other than that, you're out of luck as far as I can tell. It's not like you're going to be looking at any cesium atoms in your spare time.

I don’t think there’s much utility in having information memorized versus having it nearly organized in your phone by topic, but for maximal memorization you’d have to go the route of

  • Anki, or other spaced repetition software

  • Memory Palace

The memory palace method was common among intellectuals memorizing information for almost two thousand years, and Anki is used among doctors.

I'm a doctor and I use Anki!

Well, with massive caveats on use, I downloaded the app and a deck oriented for the USMLE, but found it to be useless for the PLAB. I'm certainly not patient enough to make my own flash cards in any numbers.

However, I will still endorse spaced repitition in any form, it's quite effective, and even when I didn't have the patience for flash cards, I was still aiming to follow the basic principles to engrain vast gobbets of facts in my head.

In real-time debate, are you trying to win, or persuade?

Just because "I don't remember at the moment, but…" is probably better when you're in a setting where the second is understood to be the aim?

I'm typically trying to achieve a little of both. I would agree that admitting ignorance when you're not certain about something is always the better tactic (additionally, making errors during a discussion disturbs me so much that I often feel the need to retrospectively correct it in future discussions when the opportunity presents itself).

Of course, the optimal strategy is to remember as much of the information you've encountered as humanly possible, but that requires a concerted effort and is a huge time sink.

Not an answer to your question, but what is the driving force behind your desire to debate or out-argue someone? In real-life this kind of behavior is like planting dragon's teeth, and online it seems like the payoff of feeling you've out witted some random person isn't worth the candle.

You've no obligation to respond and I know I am not answering your question. My condolences on the family member's stroke. Unfortunately, I experienced a similar situation only a year or so ago, and it's a grueling experienceI wouldn't wish on anyone. I hope that in your case he/she can recover.

Not an answer to your question, but what is the driving force behind your desire to debate or out-argue someone? In real-life this kind of behavior is like planting dragon's teeth

Feel free to ask questions.

I agree that it's like planting dragon's teeth and certainly has the effect of making everyone unhappy. I'm personally happy to just generally not touch the topic of politics in real life, and I've really tried to get off it, but debate often organically arises when other politically-minded people bring politics up. Let it go unchallenged, and if they know their assertions are going to be allowed to stand their rhetoric just continues to escalate, in many cases it escalates into regular outgroup-bashing because they have learned they can do it around you.

This is, to say the least, an annoying situation to be in, especially if engaged in by someone you are interacting with regularly. Letting them know that bringing up politics is poking a hornet's nest, and enforcing that rule, is the only way to deal with it. Tit-for-tat. If they defect, you defect, and you do it better. Having your beliefs challenged is unpleasant. It feels like an attack, and the same qualities that make it so divisive also make it a fairly good method of deterrence, if nothing else.

I would also like to believe that debate actually does something and that people do update their beliefs, though the more I do it the less fruitful that endeavour seems. But I am ever the idealist.

My condolences on the family member's stroke. Unfortunately, I experienced a similar situation only a year or so ago, and it's a grueling experienceI wouldn't wish on anyone. I hope that in your case he/she can recover.

Thank you, and sorry about your family member as well.

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