Fallacies and Cognitive Biases: Digital Amnesia ~ by Ransom

 

This article is part of an ongoing series that began with Fallacies and Cognitive Biases.

The above picture is a detail from "50 Cognitive Biases to be aware of so you can be the very best version of you"

"We tend to forget information that's easily looked up in search engines."

The blurb needs no elaboration.

This cognitive bias conserves energy.  Putting information into medium-term or long-term memory requires work.  It requires modifying the wiring of our brains.  If an alternative exists most of us will happily take it and use the freed-up time & energy to do something else.

Being a New-York cab driver used to require enormous amounts of memorization and visualization.  The advent of GPS guidance has opened access to many.

I would be interested in knowing if there is a brain wiring difference between computer users who grew up before the internet and those who grew up after.