[daenz]

This might sound kind of bizarre, but I don't really try to learn. I think I have a minor learning disability where I have a very hard time remembering things that I deem (consciously or not) as unimportant in the long term. Instead, I try to focus on extracting the nature and patterns of relationships, instead of the specific details. An example might be: learning the purpose of a wristwatch and its power source, versus understanding how all of the gears work together. Unless I'm working on a specific problem involving how the gears work together, I won't remember it. Even then, I'll put it in my working memory just long enough to solve the problem and then forget it. But the patterns of relationships stay forever, and it's easy to associate with other patterns of relationships, once you forget the specifics.

In tech this can be an obstacle when communicating because many engineers have an extremely fine-grained memory, seemingly all the time. I will hand wave different concepts as a black box that we don't need to know right now, where they are happy to explain them at length, in detail. But if it's not relevant, I just don't care. They will also expect me to explain concepts that (to me) aren't relevant to the problem, and I have to say "I don't remember."

[mikewarot]

>I try to focus on extracting the nature and patterns of relationships, instead of the specific details.

You're a mapper, like me. The only reason I ever want to learn details is if they are important corner cases.

>In tech this can be an obstacle when communicating because many engineers have an extremely fine-grained memory, seemingly all the time.

Those folks are packers, they know all the corner cases, and worry incessantly about them.

Google "mappers vs packers" to learn more, far more.

[peakaboo]

Interesting but there are never just two kinds of thinking. I bet many people fall into other categories that may not even have a name or a description at this point.

[mikewarot]

Perhaps it's best to think of this as one of many axis of trade-off that the brain makes to simplify the task of cognition? Later we may learn that there are several traits that tend to correlate and make this up, but it is a useful tool to reason about it, despite the details.

[d82nsjk9]

Agreed, hypothetical dualities like this are extremely unlikely when it comes to something as complex as the brain

[tra3]

I'm curious about this concept. Some quick googling yielded "The Programmer's Stone" [0], seemingly about how mapping related to programming. Any other sources?

[0]: http://programmersstone.com

[sandman008]

Thanks for terminology. Will check it out

[badwriter32]

Very interesting

[warrenm]

Knowing where to find the details that "aren't relevant to the problem" is the biggest key: https://antipaucity.com/2006/11/30/the-vagaries-of-memory/#....

[rkagerer]

I find when I have a need for certain knowledge to solve an interesting real-world problem I'm working on, that drastically improves my ability to learn said knowledge.

[jasonladuke0311]

I feel similarly. I need a conceptual understanding of something to properly contextualize details. Like mental scaffolding to build my understanding.