Web of Thoughts
I was reading the latest Scientific American issue and read an article about experts. It basically stated that experts in a field, whatever field it is, owe their success to effortful study. It makes sense: the more you study, the more passion you put into your studying, the better you get. It focused a lot on chess grandmasters and their thinking processes. A major finding it brought forth was that their success was due not so much to an innate talent but by accessing a vast network of knowledge in their minds, acquired by playing and studying many games; effortful study.
That part intrigued me though, that they play well by accessing a web of knowledge in their minds. They don't necessarily have photographic memories but they do store enough about the game of chess that they can reconstruct basically whatever they need. So if they see a chess position they may not have that setup stored in their memory, but what they do seem to have are points of the setup stored, e.g. two bishops in such and such a configuration often leads to so and so outcome, etc. These points are connected such that mentally accessing a single point immediately makes available all the points connected to it, and all those connected to it, and so forth, leading to a virtual tree, sort of, of thought.
When I worked in a computer lab during college a lot of times the people I helped would ask me how I knew so much, and at the time I would just reply that after working with them for so long you just remember things. I realized a while ago that my thoughts, related to anything computer related, are arranged in a web. Thinking about anything related to computers immediately highlights other things in my mind, things that may not be apparent to less computer literate people. So I'm not smarter with computers so much, I just have a larger knowledge base in my mind.
And I don't remember every single thing all at once, but by using that mental web of data I can reconstruct whatever I need. I know that's how I learn new things: I learn the basic idea of something and only keep that in my mind, I don't retain any detail, it's like clutter in my mind. It's only when I need to know something more in-depth that I fill in the gaps in my understanding, fill in the detail. But since I did retain the basic idea I know where to start my research whenever I encounter a novel problem that eventually leads back to the new thing I've learned.
It's a pretty neat concept to think about. :) Oh, the article also said that it takes 10 years for anyone to become a master in a field, all it takes is effortful study.