we overestimate how much we remember, bc
➀ metamemories produce strong feelings of recognition (eg, I recall *that* I've read abt X ~indep of *what*), and
➁ survivorship bias wrt what we can even check (ie, we can't spot-check the uniform dist of what-we-used-to-remember)
new things are ~always shiny in excess of their value. the Nth time we review a memory is worth expontentially more than the (N-1)th time, bc ➀ the Forgetting Curve, and ➁ total epistemic profit (the "rent paid" by the memory) depends on its longevity
Follow
the top shelf in any of my libraries (eg 'to-read', 'to-watch', 'to-listen') is always labelled "review". …I wish it were as shiny as the rest.
