Category Archives: Science And Society

Having A Good Working Memory

How important is it?

It’s never been one of my strengths. I always liked math and physics because they didn’t require much memorization — I could just rederive formulas on the fly. One of the reasons that I never seriously considered being a doctor was the amount of memorization required. And I think that for that profession in particular, memory is important, and apparently more so than intelligence or processing capability, because I’ve met doctors who I didn’t think were all that smart, and I don’t intrinsically respect them just because they’re doctors. At least not as much as they and society thinks I’m supposed to.