Try thinking and learning without working memory (2008)

Working memory is waaaay more critical than you might think to all levels of functionality. There are many basic tasks, like walking to another room to get something and noticing something minor, like a pen on a table that should be put away, and doing both tasks, that depend on working memory. The same with mentaly reasoning through a complex system. The reason abstractions are so valuable is that they allow for compression of something into working memory.

For me, personally, this is why I often approach things by scaffolding them into relationships with existing structures (mentally) - by integrating with an existing structure, I avoid a sort of fragmentation overload in my working memory.

Anyway, I think it's one of those things you don't really notice until it goes bad somehow.

ADHD makes a mockery of working memory. The number of times I'll have to go back to see what the the fourth, fifth and sixth digit of a six digit sequence were is truly frustrating.

The article indicates that working memory can be improved though, going to have to give that a try.

Regarding unconscious thinking: I've known for many years that if I'm trying to implement something and what I'm doing just feels wrong and I'm not sure why, it's time to stop and come back first thing in the morning. Sleeping on it engages my back-brain; and invariably the next morning everything makes sense, sometimes immediately, and sometimes with just a small amount of work.

Mind you, the solution I have in mind when I wake isn't necessarily the right one; but I get to the right one pretty quickly.

I fell into this trap for a while:

> "The grow­ing trend, espe­cial­ly among young peo­ple, to mul­ti-task may seem won­der­ful. But actu­al­ly, mul­ti-task­ing is most like­ly to inter­fere with focused atten­tion and, in turn, degrade mem­o­ry for­ma­tion, recall, and think­ing quality."

Eventually I realized that parallelization is not really possible, you end up making a mess of everything, and trying to be a rapid context-switcher - similar to the illusion of simultaneous multitasking on a single CPU core - just takes too much energy and time - 15-30 min to unload, clear the slate and reload with something else seems common.

Practically, this is why people working on difficult problems that require their full attention get really irritated by interruptions, and often prefer to work in isolation or only with like-minded individuals.+

Constantly ctrl-z just to see what I was doing a second ago.

ADHD is a blessing and a curse. I can hold every line of the codebase in my head but I can't remember what I was just doing...

You figure out how to work without working memory. Just offload it all immediately.

Every time I have googled for it, the only method of working memory training that comes up is N-Back.

So I'm happy that the article mentions another method. Apart from playing "Simon" (yes that circular game with lights), those are the only two I know.

Anyone know of any other methods?

Gwern has a lot of research and meta-research about this (if memory serves, hah), and in general I seem to recall that doing brain games like dual-n-back makes you better at brain games like dual-n-back.

Which is perhaps not without merit, but...

I have found that setting to myself a limited, 30 or 40min window, where i am not allowing myself to do anything else but the task I have to do, is actually a sensible way to trick the brain to work on things. Then i swith context. Like coding for 30min,then filling a visa application

Reminds me of the "Hammock Driven Development" talk from Rich Hickey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc&t=1270s

>Imagine dialing a phone number by having to look up each digit one at a time in the phone book

This was me for the first 38 years of my life. I got a degree and worked as a software developer with memory that bad.

Being a caretaker for someone with Alzheimer’s has been a real eye opener to how critical working memory is. I think a large portion of our personal success in life is contingent on our working memory or the ability to manage it effectively.

"The training task to expand working memory capacity consisted of presenting a digit or a word item for a second, with one-second intervals between items. For example, a sequence might be 5, 8, 4, 7, with one-second intervals between each digit. Test for recall could take the form of “Where in the sequence was the 4?” or “What was the third item?” Thus students had to practice holding the item sequence in working memory. With practice, the trainers increased the number of items from 3 to 8.

After training, researchers tested the children on another working memory task. Scores on this test indicated that working memory correlated with IQ test scores. That is, children with better working memory ability also had higher IQs."

I actually think this is a danger with leaning more heavily on AI tools. What happens as you offload more of your thinking outside of your brain?

> when only four attributes were involved, subjects in the conscious-thought condition made the best choice of car.

> But when the complex condition of 12 attributes, results reversed. The best car was chosen most reliably in the unconscious-thought condition.

I failed to understand this.

The bit about training working memory to boost IQ is cool, but I wonder how long those effects actually last. Like, do you keep the gains, or does it fade if you stop training?

I must admit I was a little surprised when I first realised this to be true. It's rather unnerving to discover that the most intelligent part of your mind is operating without you knowing about it.

I wonder how these results would change if working memory was augmented, e.g. by giving participants a notepad.

> We know that the subconscious mind is processing information (i.e. “thinking”) all the time, even while we sleep. The evidence for this kind of “sleep learning” is incontrovertible and summarized in my memory improvement book...

No. Just the opposite. A quick search shows majority of the scholarly papers question "sleep learning". Maybe 16 years of new data?

e.g., https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2869....

and, as @joeyagreco noted the link is (might as well be) dead.

> see http://thankyoubrain.com

oh... oh god

Can working memory actually be improved as this article suggests? Links to apps to change my life please.