Comment by necovek
3 hours ago
I see this as a memorize-vs-understand fallacy many repeat.
It is really a combination: you need to memorize a large corpus of information to operationalize knowledge — understanding a bunch of theorems in mathematics does not help much (even if you are able to prove them when you see them) if you can't remember the boundary conditions they hold under.
Or having good understanding of foreign language grammar won't help you if you do not memorize words that you need to express your thoughts.
Good literature will show you some of life's challenges and potentially let you think through them in a non-stressful situation (other than "I've got to finish the last 200 pages by Monday" ;)).
> if you can't remember the boundary conditions they hold under.
At the outskirts of one's knowledge this is inevitably the case. My impression it is still useful to know that a certain implication is possible - and one can look up the exact conditions.