Read to Forget
23 comments
·September 14, 2025otras
cantor_S_drug
Such statements are profound and vacuous, vapid because it holds for many other areas.
I cannot remember all the naughty movies I have seen even though they made me ......
yesfitz
Why would wide applicability be a mark against an idea? Do you feel the same way about gravity and normal distributions?
Your example is an excellent one though because it shows a corollary to the way that quote was intended in this conversation.
How it was meant: "It's OK to not remember everything you've read verbatim, because the important parts mixed into who you are/were."
Your corollary: "We must be careful about what we consume because it will be mixed into who you are."
bluechair
I disagree with the author at a surface level; we can retain much more than 90% of what we read. The curious can look up deep reading strategies, e.g., those summarized by Benjamin Keep.
At a deeper level, though, there’s truth that we have limited time here; we can’t read everything.
SirensOfTitan
I do this but annotate books heavily by writing in the margins (digitally through my remarkable) and only very rarely ever revisit them.
Writing while reading is a way of focusing on what either resonates with me or confounds me.
nilamo
I look out for books that have been annotated by one of your kin whenever I'm in a used book store. It's fun to see what other people think is interesting or memorable (or unhinged... Why are you highlighting every occurance of the word "earth"?)
Little notes in the margin can also be a fun plot device, used to great effect in one of the Harry Potter books, (I think?) The Chamber of Secrets.
admiralrohan
I found it more useful to read more books than read one book again and again. This helps me to reinforce the same concept from different angles. Our brain is a pattern matching machine, and it automatically picks up related concepts.
cindyllm
[dead]
wpollock
If you read many sources without taking notes, it becomes difficult to later cite your sources.
Your attitude makes sense when reading for pleasure, such as HN posts unrelated to your work.
JSR_FDED
Great article, I can’t remember anything from it.
lblume
Same. I feel a strong urge to highlight a paper's section on Methodology now, but no idea why.
m-hodges
It’s a fine perspective, but:
> We can only read a text once
Is clearly false. OP is expressing a choice, not a truth.
turtletontine
I think their point is clear if you read the rest of the sentence: “… given the number of compelling works and the limited time available to us”.
Yes, it’s the OP’s choice, it’s their information diet. You COULD read the good stuff over and over, but you risk falling behind the flood. This is their approach to keeping up. It makes me a little sad, sure, but as a practical solution I get it.
I certainly don’t use this approach to literature. I’ve reread my favorite books a few times over the years (Cat’s Cradle, White Noise), but I’m sure that’s not the kind of thing OP is talking about.
chaps
I recoiled at that a bit too, but I think what they mean is similar to how some games can "only be played once". Best example of that is Outer Wilds, where attaining information is the goal of each gameplay loop. Once you've acquired that knowledge already, the fun of acquiring it can no longer be experienced since you already know what the "next step" is.
m-hodges
Quite often, the meaning of a text relies on the contexts you bring to it. I’ve had many experiences where I’ve returned to a text after reading others, and gleaned entirely new or different insights from it. I disagree with the idea that first exposure exhausts the knowledge (or in OP’s perspective, “Bayesian system”) that can be acquired.
chaps
I didn't say it exhausts the knowledge.. what I'm saying is very much the opposite of that -- knowledge is front and center. I'm more referring to the experience and new lenses on past similar experiences, which I think we're in agreement on.
Go play Outer Wilds if you want to experience what I mean. It's the only game I've played that's affected me so strongly in this way.
"No man ever steps in the same river twice"
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treetalker
The corollary is to write to forget (or at least to get thoughts off your mind).
jlundberg
This is actually good advice.
Writing down things makes it much easier to move forward to the next project of the day.
Probably various a bit from person to person.
HPsquared
That's the idea behind "Getting Things Done" (GTD)
qwertytyyuu
Writing seems to more of a tool to refine/coalesce thoughts
treetalker
I don't disagree that it performs that function. In my experience, thoughts will persist and remain on my mind until I consciously refine them enough. Writing is one of the best ways (if not the best) for doing so.
Reminds me of the purported Ralph Waldo Emerson quote which rings true for myself as well: “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”