[bayesian_horse]

If the book is on surgical techniques... do I need to apply every technique to remember it?

Obviously, "applying" book knowledge is one of the least efficient or practicable way of improving retention. Also, it would be more around understanding the topics more thoroughly, especially if the author didn't do a good enough job of explaining the concepts already (it's easier to blame the reader, though).

[mpalczewski]

Yeah I could expand on this some more. If a book is on surgical techniques then yeah you need some practice. Surgeons don’t get trained from books. I certainly wouldn’t want to be operated on by someone that only reads about operations.

I think some of this is around what it means to understand a topic. Is it just about an ability to regurgitate facts or maybe you want a book to really sink in because you don’t know when you will apply it.

Taking notes or doing kindle highlights and then reviewing them can really help. Review after you read and then again after a week. This works better for remembering specific things.

One of the best ways to have a book really stick with you is to read it again. This seems to be super linear and some books really benefit from it. That is re-reading a book will more than double your understanding. Sometimes when doing this you will wonder if it’s even the same book. Though this really is more true for better books.

[bayesian_horse]

Odds are, I have studied the topic of learning techniques to a much deeper degree than you are. I also studied veterinary medicine. Therefor I can say: Yes, surgeons will know most of what they know from reading books or consuming learning materials, not from practicing. Some surgeons might disagree, but this really is the case.

And you would want to be operated on by surgeons who are trained that way. Especially in Human medicine, "practice" is just too damn expensive. And routine surgical tasks just don't teach you all the shit that go wrong. Also, surgical procedures, especially when you consider all their variations or complications, have a long tail problem. Some things are just really rare.

There is a reason why surgeries are performed by doctors, and not by nurses. Doctors have so much knowledge and information in their head - most of it not acquired through practice, contrary to romantic belief, but rather through long hours over years of studying. We often need to "debug" a living organism. But we can't say "hm, let's run this again".

[mpalczewski]

Interesting, and perhaps I'm misunderstanding something. Are they really expected to have knowledge they got from a book, that they might have read years ago?