Hacker News Reader

Comment by rkaplan | Hacker News Reader

What is most interesting to me is how the test shows the value we enjoy of living in the information age.

Without instant access to rote information, knowing some of these facts was probably rather important a hundred years ago. Schools today can avoid burdening the student with memorizing so many facts and focus more on developing conceptual understanding, which – coupled with free, rapid access to factual information – is much more valuable.

View on HN

It is still important. If you have to go and look up even the most basic information about the world then many trains of thought are simply not going to occur to you because you don't have sufficient information in your head to think with. I'm not aware of any evidence that says we only have a limited number of facts that our brains can absorb and it's vital to omit older stuff so we can absorb the newer.

This observation strikes me a bit funny - regarding information access, 8th grade me (circa '88-89) probably had more in common with those from 100 years ago than those today.

Has education really changed that much in 25 years? Heck, 10 years? I don't think most people had heard of Wikipedia 10 years ago, and Google hadn't even IPO'ed yet.

Knowledge is essential to reasoning and abstract thinking. I don't see how it can be dissociated from conceptual understanding.

So what happens when the lights go out? How do we get all the facts?

I've heard of these building that store nothing but paper books that you can borrow for a certain period of time and return at a later point.

when the "lights go out", the society would collapse anyway.

There's a plethora of ways to get Wikipedia offline.

Use the battery.

Agreed - the same way mobile phones freed us from memorizing dozens of phone numbers.

They help to solve problems we wouldn't have without them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com