[bengotow]

I realize this may not be the place for this comment, but a few of these comments got me thinking.

Human memory is squishy, and that's great. You retain facts + feelings that help you make future decisions and everything else is integrated into smaller and smaller summaries until it fades away entirely. I spent years clinging to every experience wanting not to forget anything, and being horrified when I couldn't remember. I documented everything. I wanted my memory to work more like infinite dropbox storage and less like a tool, evolved over millions of years, to keep me safe and making good choices.

These days, my personal knowledge base is whatever I've bothered to remember. Usually I don't know I've kept something tucked away until I'm in the middle of a conversation and realize it's still there. My memory of events shifts and degrades over time, and I'm fine with that.

If you don't use a tool to document every page you visit and every thing you read or learn, that's completely fine too. It all fades away eventually, and if it remains relevant enough you'll hold on to the important bits.

The real power-up isn't keeping it all, it's being able to change and grow, with just enough focus on the past to make good choices.

[marttt]

+1, I think this links well with Alan Kay's thoughts on book reading. Some of his insights from a (maybe famous) HN thread:

"Mind palace", forgetting, "relax!": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11809676

"Oxbridge method": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11805264

Not taking notes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11853258

[Nebasuke]

Thank you for posting this, as I had similar thoughts also when reading the last knowledge bank post.

I love learning and will regularly do courses to pick up something completely different, or something applicable to my career.

However, I do think it's okay to allow some of the things I've learnt to fade away. Technology or previous interests become less relevant, and trying to retain everything keeps me too focused on the past, making me feel like I get worse over time, rather than keep a positive learning attitude towards the future.

Also, relearning things I've used a long time ago, because it has now become relevant again, is a lot of fun. The second time I've looked at trigonometry, I actually really enjoyed it.

[natalyarostova]

Some things remain as well. Such as references to where you learned the thing, the ability to pattern match (Oh this is a problem of form X, which is listed in textbooks A,B and C. I don't remember how to solve it, but I used to. Therefore given that I know I'm capable of solving it, as I've done it before, I know the problem type, and I know where to study it, I'm confident to tell you I can solve it in two weeks."

[noobiemcfoob]

I can't echo this sentiment enough. Forgetting is just as important as remembering. Past experience has only marginal value to the present and future and can just as often lead you into stray directions. The number of times having a pinpoint memory of some obscure fact has helped is a handful across decades? A bit of obvious bias: I can't really know all the times knowing something I didn't would have been helpful. But I can recall a substantially large number of times I -- in effect -- remembered too much and it was a hindrance.

[riazrizvi]

Yes I think the Knowledge Is Power aphorism leads mistakenly to a Knowledge-Value-Function K(x) > 0 for any item of knowledge x.

But knowledge value is only positive if it helps you achieve your goal, when recalled. Otherwise the time taken to recall and discard knowledge is a negative. So really optimal knowledge is where you only know what you need to achieve your goals.

[fchu]

> The real power-up isn't keeping it all, it's being able to change and grow, with just enough focus on the past to make good choices.

Love how you framed it!