[lqet]

> Because when you’re finally in a situation where you could use its insights, you’ve completely forgotten them.

I once read a short essay by Patrick Süskind (author of "Perfume - The Story of a Murderer"). I am paraphrasing, but in it, he discusses his embarrassment that he cannot remember even major plot details or character names of great works of world literature, although he has read them multiple times and they deeply inspired his own work. He then makes an interesting speculation: if a book really and deeply influences you, then maybe actively remembering facts and insights of the book becomes harder and harder, because the book's ideas have been so deeply ingrained into your brain and thinking that you cannot remember them as facts independent of your thinking. But this doesn't mean that you have "forgotten" them.

[yottalove]

Absolutely agree. My wife can read and remember everything, but is hard pressed to say how the elements fit into her life.

When I read I recall little but compile the experience as if holographically, enlarging my store of metaphors that surface unbidden as needed.

[chubot]

Paul Graham wrote a 2014 essay saying basically this:

http://www.paulgraham.com/know.html

Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.

The fact that I dug up this quote proves I remember some things I've read :)

FWIW I take 1-3 sentences of notes on articles I read, and few paragraphs of notes on books I read, and put them in my personal wiki. I find this not only helps retention but it helps understanding, by forcing hyperlinks to related work. Hyperlinks model the way your mind works.

I elaborate on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24536687

Funnily enough it cites the same PG essay. It also echoes the article here, which I strongly agree with:

Finishing the book is optional. You should start a lot of books and only finish a few of them

[joshuaissac]

I think it might work the other way. Remembering more details prevents the reader from likening their own life to what they read because they can more easily recall the incompatible differences between the two.

[nathanyukai]

This reminds me a plot in "The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber", where the Taichi master asks the student how much he remembered what was shown to him, and keeps doing it until he "remembers nothing", that's when he has fully learned Taichi.