Most of the time, memorizing things verbatim is not ideal.
As someone who memorizes things verbatim on regular occasion, I thought I’d share some rules on those occasions when verbatim memorization can be particularly useful.
In no particular order:
When needing to recite/remember verbatim (an actor with lines, quoting scripture, your password/passphrase, quoting Shakespeare)
When you really don’t understand the material
-The other side of that coin is:
When you want to dissect the material thoroughly (or allow it to marinate in your brain)
You’re just super excited about memorizing verbatim and are undaunted by the prospect.
Are there any other reasons?
There aren’t many, I’ll say that.
I suspect a lot of folks want to memorize verbatim because recalling something word for word would be “super cool”.
But verbatim memorization usually isn’t that helpful (outside of a few situations where it truly is).
I think it comes from The Good Will Hunting, where Will was cursed with photographic memory and could recite books verbatim including page numbers. Possibly the writers drew inspiration from Rainman.
I think that’s why it’s popular. Subsequent tv geniuses have been doing the same thing. No one seems to take to heart that Will’s life sucks and he can’t process his childhood trauma the same way he can’t give you the gist of a book but has to quote a page and give you the page number.
A minor quibble. I don’t think that was the intended message. It wasn’t that Will could quote everything exactly but didn’t understand the overall meaning. In fact, by giving the page number he quoted he was making the opposite point. He was saying that the student he was arguing with probably never had an original thought in his life. The example was that the argument the student was using could be found in the book and page number he quoted. Also, his ability to solve complex math problems showed original thinking.
Maybe you are right, that he could have summarized a book if he wanted. And yes, he obviously can process information to build abstract thinking skills, at least in the math field. I still think the point of the movie was that having a perfect, unchanging memory would mean never getting over anything. Unless you can find an unbelievably patient take-no-sh*t psychologist to eke a happy ending out of it, but that’s neither here nor there.
I’m not sure how deep they got when writing the script. We got a super genius who can outsmart everybody but he never was able to get over the emotional scarring and needed an underdog psychologist to get to the bottom if it. What’s not to like? :o)
