Comment by grahamburger
1 day ago
People have told me I was smart since I was a kid, but I can't remember for shit. I had a thought when I was fairly young that the only reason I was (maybe, sometimes) outperforming others intellectually is that I was habitually compensating for my poor memory by working things out on the fly, while others could rely more on rote memorization. Anyway, takes all kinds I guess!
Somewhat tangential, but this reminds me of when I took a certain Microbiology midterm in college. I hadn't put much effort into that class leading up to it, as I had some tough CS classes that consumed my focus that semester (also was admittedly not a great student in general). So when I finally went to take the midterm, after cramming like mad before the exam, I quickly realized I basically didn't know the answer to most of the questions, even what I crammed was only a small portion of the material.
The exam was huge, at least over 10 pages, and even when we technically ran out of time, the professor was kind enough to move the remaining exam takers to the neighboring lecture hall to continue taking it. I recall I spent a total of 2 hours on that exam.
Now mind you it was mostly short answer or multiple choice questions. The multiple choice questions were pretty sharp too, lots of traps and false but sounds right answers mixed in. But if it had been purely essay questions, I would have been screwed.
However with such a huge corpus of information in front of me, I ended up basically learning all the material on the spot. I just kept doing multiple passes through it, each time I noticed one of my answers contradicted one of the others, I would make adjustments to harmonize, which indirectly refined my understanding.
In the end I got B+ in the exam (which was curved to an A), and walked out understanding the material better than I did walking in.
Reflecting in the experience years later, I've wondered if a hypothetical LLM which was ignorant of microbiology could do the same thing if fed that exam. In some respects the traps they placed in the multiple choice questions actually were what helped me refine my understanding the most. Made me appreciate information theory more.
> I just kept doing multiple passes through it, each time I noticed one of my answers contradicted one of the others, I would make adjustments to harmonize, which indirectly refined my understanding.
This strategy saved my ass on so many tests from high school through college that I did not study properly for.
I think it would certainly be possible to write a test such that this strategy doesn’t work at all, but lucky for me no one did in any meaningful way.
There was a couple famous papers from a few years ago asking why computer science students, sorted by ability, seemed to form two clusters.
In one of the studies they got incoming CS students to fill out a multiple choice exam on programming, before the class had even started. Then they looked for hints in their exam results to see if they predicted the end of semester grade.
Turned out following this strategy was an incredibly strong predictor of success in computer science. Some students somehow got 0 (or close to it) in the multiple choice test. But the researchers looked at their answers, and could see that the student was forming hypotheses about the questions. Even if they got all the answers wrong, they answered all of them with a consistent idea of what the computer programs might have meant.
Weak students just answered each question individually based on vibe, without using what they learned (or figured out) from other questions.
> I just kept doing multiple passes through it, each time I noticed one of my answers contradicted one of the others, I would make adjustments to harmonize, which indirectly refined my understanding.
I used to do something somewhat related during exams: I could never find contradictions/mistakes while working forwards, because somehow my brain would make the same mistakes consistently every time I go through something in the same direction, no matter how slowly and methodically I would do it.
So I worked as fast as possible in the forward pass and then reversed the problem in my head and worked backwards just as fast. Except this time I would often find the expected inputs would no longer match the actual inputs, so it helped me identify a lot of mistakes.
that's called forward and backward reaching inverse kinematics. FABRIK. Very cool algorithm by the way if you're into robotics/video games.
https://andreasaristidou.com/FABRIK
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Same. I have bad "factual" memory, but very good "conceptual" memory. I might not remember exactly what someone told me, but I probably gathered a keyword, and a feeling and idea of what they told me. Almost like it takes what they said then compresses it into my mind in a nice little multi-key lookup table.
Oh man, I have that too. I am always told by my best friend "well, you go it right, but entirely wrong words" -- or something to the effect I got the feeling, notion, or concept right, but the wrong words.
This has affected me a lot though, I know what is going on in songs, but can't ever remember the right words, but still some how end up sining stuff that means the same thing :/
Yes. "Weak detail recall but strong fluid reasoning, conceptual/gist memory, and adaptive problem-solving" is how GPT sums up what I feel. And "high fluid intelligence" is a label it gave that I won't be using anytime soon... But I like the sound of it.
You might benefit from (proper, not the multiple choice kind) aptitude testing.
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You asked an LLM to reason about you, for you, and it said you’re an adroit reasoner? It must have context we lack!
For me it's one step removed from that: I'll remember exactly what I was told or what I read, but not at all who told me or where I read it. My brain does not care about sources.
Thanks, I feel seen.
In my, admittedly extremely small sample set, concept-focused memory is common for people with any degree or kind of dyslexia. I used to struggle with understanding how people couldn't understand things, now that I'm more mature it makes sense how people struggled with me not being able to spell things :).
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We sort kids into the smart and non-smart labels when they are young, and those labels tend to stick, even when what we're measuring isn't raw intelligence but just variance in childhood development that wash out in the long term. I don't think either group is well served by this.
A smart kid can be anything from not eating rocks anymore to multiplying numbers at an early age.
Most of us turn out like the rescued exotic bird which turns out to be a seagull covered in curry.
Sometimes I wish there was a Hacker News comment hall of fame.
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No we don't. Public schools are incentivized not to help high performers. It actually hurts their metrics and budget. The widespread gifted/talented experience in public school ended in the late 90s.
The actual intelligence segregation is self-selected. PMC parents live together in the same neighborhoods. Whether you believe in genetic or social factors, the smart kids come from here.
In the 80s and 90s there was an educational culture that believed in finding overlooked geniuses regardless of where they are from. That narrative is completely dead. All institutions expect kids to come prepared with a resume from their youth, and have few avenues for identifying talent that doesn't meet their mold.
> No we don't. Public schools are incentivized not to help high performers
This is actually true.. in my country we used to have 3 different tiers for Mathematics like 416, 426, 436, etc for high school students. You would get the right class for how good you were.
They dropped this and made a simple "sciences" vs "humanity" path. Then they also removed percentage grades and replaced with alphabets A, B, C, etc. There used to special awards for high performers with medals and gifts and the end of year, those events also got the shaft.
The idea was to reduce stress on students..
I have a 1st grader. The public school did tag testing in kindergarten and then the children in the program have a special class on Mondays for the more challenging work. Is this not talented and gifted? They call it TAG.
Check out NYC school district. Has high schools where entrance is 100% based on a single entrance exam score.
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Seattle Public Schools currently still has a “Highly Capable Cohort” program, though it is phasing it out.
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I don't know where you're getting that from. The sorting of students into "gifted" and "non-gifted" categories is very common. You don't need to look further than your local school district for proof.
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Same. I don't remember most things including my childhood. I have to relearn everything all the time just in a few months time. Maths, code, etc if I don't use it in 1 or more month, I have to relearn it though its always easier to relearn it. Comparing myself to others its extreme. What I find is the process of constantly relearning instead of relying on memories (which are in a way similar to assumptions) can lead to different ideas (often unique) than other people because everything even basic concepts is a open question. This however is tortuous in job interviews when people ask about problems solved in previous work or about a concept so there are trade offs.
That brings up an interesting quesiton - do you need a good memory to be "smart"? DO you need a good memory to do well in an IQ test (as far as they prove anything)? I'd say no.
I'm interested in AI though no expert, though would find it interesting to see an llm (until a "real" AI architecture can be created, ie that can learn on the fly and have more "real" intelligence) that:
Rather than being trained on billions on words, it instead has a grasp of logic, physics and spatial reasoning beyond any human, with little common knowledge, that could be fitted in a few billion parameters, that could then be run by a mobile phone.
Perhaps, for questions needing "knowledge" ie most of them, it would have well structured depots of knowledge it could quickly access to gain a quick understanding on a topic for a question (eg biology --> DNA structure for a highschool project), or C++ coding, then it can search the internet (with a list of "better" sources to try first).
SO, it would be like having an alien that has come to earth that is super intelligent, however know nothing/little of humans and the earth, and you ask it questions.
And it fits on your phone.
No idea if this would work.
Same experience here, but it only works in some fields like physics and maths. it totally fails in fields that are "made up" with no rhyme or reason.
I can relate to this, but always explained it away in the opposite direction: I never trained my memory very much because I was able to work things out on the fly. Who knows, maybe there isn't much of a link between the two at all.
> I never trained my memory very much because I was able to work things out on the fly
I actually always thought it was the opposite for me – I had to figure out how to work things out from scratch because I could never remember anything.
Same. I often feel like my brain is a Ferrari which has a 1 L fuel tank and all the windows are blacked out except for a thumb-sized bit in the passenger side rear window.
My digit span is roughly 4 - terrible working memory. And I have trouble remembering even important things like where and how my wife and I met - terrible long term memory.
I have compensated over the years with complex systems of note taking and journals and in spite of all the above I managed a PhD, but I every day of my life feel hampered.
I’m very similar. Poor memory, good on-the-fly pattern recognition. I would say reasoning but it’s not really reasoning, it’s just identifying patterns plus some quick hacky heuristics reasoning. I’ve always performed well on tests as a result, but in the real world I need to use A LOT of tools to do my job. I write everything down, notes for everything.
Yeah same! This is why foreign languages are simultaneously easy and hard for me. I can memorize patterns and concepts easily but when it comes to arbitrary rules and vocabulary, I need flash cards for that. I end up needing to make up my own "rules" to remember things.
I remember for math tests in high school/college it was easier for me to derive formulas than to remember it.
I used to think I wasn’t very good at math, because I struggled to route memorize formulas and the like. Then I had a calculus professor in class that took a bunch of time explaining how to derive the formulas we were using and it unlocked everything for me. I’m much better at deriving from core principles than trying to remember a bunch of formulas and algorithms for solving problems.
I'm in a similar boat. I end up re-learning the same things over and over again.
I found a solution recently. "Critical mass." If I just don't see something frequently enough, my brain keeps deleting it.
So, if there's a fact you have trouble remembering, try memorizing it 100 times in one day. That's "inefficient", as far as memory goes, but it'll do the trick! And I like solving problems once and then moving on.
(Anki, conversely, is designed for efficiency, which means it's designed to be as painful and unrewarding as possible, but that's a rant for another time... suffice it to say if you design your software so that I constantly want to stop using it, your efficiency drops to zero!)
I find my memory is very selective. I wanted to get in touch with a coworker from five years ago: I had to look up his name on linkedin. My wife texted me "Hotlips died" and with no effort I texted back, "Oh no, Loretta Swit or Sally Kellerman?" Mind you, I haven't watched MASH the TV show in forever, and I haven't seen MASH the movie since my parents took me when it first came out. I have zero reason to remember Loretta Swit, let alone Sally Kellerman, but my brain hangs onto that like it matters; but a guy I worked with for two years five years ago, that my brain will drop like it's radioactive.
Isnt that kind of like older memories get a strong imprint -- as you get older there are so many memories in the database that the imprint isn't as powerful as earlier ones. I think it works kind of as a function of kind of sensory component of memory implying that new memories aren't new to you therefore less powerful (obviously high variance and person dependent).
Yeah this matches my experience too. I noticed this in Anki. Some cards are effortless, some take a bit of practice, and some I fail over and over again no matter how many times I practice them.
Anki kept flagging my relatives birthdays as "leeches!"
I found it kind of hilarious and infuriating that the software I used to remember things tells me "this thing is hard for you to remember so you should just give up."
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Yes I was (and am) precisely the same way. This is why I think I'm so awful at foreign languages.
I relate to this; there are some things I remember very well, but in many areas I think my talent for improvisation stems from a ~mid long-term memory.
I think the fact that ‘just work it out on the fly’ is a viable response to ‘I cannot remember things’ is what makes the intelligence right?
You maybe work things out on the fly by matching against abstract patterns. Could this be an indication not of lack of memory but of specialisation in abstract memory?
Memory isn’t only being able to recall things on demand.
Agree. Plus the dimension of synthesizing new ideas from existing knowledge. Different skill set from rote memorization.
"Working out on the fly" - I do the same thing, I try to find the minimum I can get away with memory-wise, and try to connect everything else to that in a way I can retrace my steps easily. When I was in school/uni, my notes started out as say 10 pages per lecture, and got thinned down over the months until I only had one page or half a page to memorize on exam day, and everything else could be decompressed from that nugget.