“The Memory Paradox”: A Brainy Love Letter to Good Old-Fashioned Memorization (Now With 200% More Dopamine)

A Review of Oakley et al.’s Chapter in The Future of Artificial Intelligence

Imagine this: you're in a high school algebra class, trying to factor polynomials, and your teacher says, "Don’t bother memorizing anything—you can always Google it." Fast forward 20 years, and you're a nurse calculating a drug dose for a toddler. You type “5 x 10” into your phone but accidentally hit an extra zero. Now you’re sweating bullets and praying that the calculator made the mistake—not you.

That, dear reader, is The Memory Paradox in a nutshell. Oakley, Johnston, Chen, Jung, and Terrence Sejnowski are here to tell us that our brains—bless their 86 billion neurons—still need to know things. Not just know where to find them, but actually know them. As in, “I remember this because I studied it,” not “Wait, let me ask my phone.”

So, What’s the Big Idea?

The authors pull no punches: we are offloading our cognition like it’s a Black Friday sale on mental shortcuts. Calculators, Google, ChatGPT (ahem), and a thousand productivity apps have turned us into sleek, highly distracted vessels of almost-knowledge. The irony? The more we outsource our brainpower, the worse our brains perform. And no, it’s not just because we’ve been binge-watching 17 hours of Netflix and TikTok in one sitting (though that probably doesn’t help).

They even suggest that this habit may be tied to the reversal of the Flynn Effect—you know, the decades-long rise in IQ scores that suddenly went into reverse, like your Uber driver missing a turn. Their theory? We stopped exercising our brains and started outsourcing. The result: weak engrams, shallow schemata, and the creeping suspicion that we used to be smarter.

The Neuroscience: A Tale of Two Memory Systems

The chapter gets delightfully nerdy—and I say this with love. You’ll learn about declarative memory (facts, trivia, and the stuff you proudly scream during Jeopardy!) and procedural memory (skills you can do on autopilot, like riding a bike or zoning out in meetings). The magic of learning happens when knowledge migrates from the slow, effortful declarative system into the lightning-fast procedural one. That’s why memorizing multiplication tables as a kid makes you a wizard at mental math later—assuming you didn’t just fake it with a calculator.

They even dive into engrams—those physical traces in your brain where memories are encoded—and neural manifolds, which sound like brain yoga poses but are actually elegant, efficient ways your neurons represent complex ideas. It’s like your brain’s version of an IKEA storage hack: small, organized, and deeply Scandinavian.

Teaching: Sages on Stages and Other Myths Debunked

Oakley et al. go after one of education’s most sacred cows: the belief that students should discover everything themselves. “Guide on the side” is a nice slogan—until the kid ends up discovering absolutely nothing except how to click ‘next’ on a YouTube tutorial. The authors argue that for biologically secondary knowledge—i.e., everything we invented after fire—we need explicit instruction, deliberate practice, and yes, memorization.

In their version of reality, the “sage on the stage” is back, mic’d up, and delivering crystal-clear explanations. And they’ve got the neuroscience to back it up: explicit teaching lights up brain circuits that build schemata, reinforce engrams, and get those sweet, sweet dopamine bursts that say “you just learned something real.”

Offloading vs. Internalizing: The Great Cognitive Catastrophe

If this chapter had a villain, it wouldn’t be AI—it would be cognitive offloading. The authors liken it to leaning on a GPS so much that you can’t find your own kitchen without voice prompts. You remember that something exists but not what it is, how it works, or whether it’s going to explode if you misuse it.

They even use a haunting example: the student who relies on a calculator so heavily that when it spits out the wrong answer (due to user error), they nod and move on. And that, my friends, is how you accidentally give someone 10x the morphine dose.

Rote Memorization: It’s Not a Dirty Word (Anymore)

If you thought memorization was out of style, Oakley and crew are here to say: surprise! It’s back, baby. Like vinyl records, chess, and ironic mustaches, rote memorization is having a moment. But with a twist—now it’s backed by decades of neuroscience, complete with brain scans and dopamine pathways.

The chapter dismantles the idea that memorization is the enemy of understanding. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: without a base of facts, critical thinking has nothing to work with. You can’t analyze what you can’t recall. You can’t innovate if every problem feels brand new. It’s like trying to build a house with zero materials—just vibes.

A Few Quibbles (Because Even Brilliant Brains Have Biases)

The authors do get a little carried away in connecting offloading with IQ decline. Is that the only cause? Probably not. Also, their disdain for certain progressive educational models occasionally feels like a mic drop before checking if the mic was even on. A little more nuance would help—especially when many educators are already walking the tightrope between content and skills, technology and tradition.

Also, a bit more attention to equity wouldn’t hurt. Not every student has a fair shot at strong instruction and practice. How do we protect vulnerable learners from the risks of cognitive outsourcing while still offering support? That’s a worthy follow-up chapter.

Final Thoughts: Know Thy Stuff

At its core, The Memory Paradox is a loving ode to the human brain—its quirky strengths, its vulnerability to TikTok, and its immense potential when given the right kind of training. The authors don’t want to kill curiosity or creativity. They just want us to remember that creativity without knowledge is like jazz without scales: mostly noise.

So next time someone tells you, “Don’t memorize that—you can always look it up,” smile politely… then go memorize it anyway. Your basal ganglia will thank you.

Rating: A perfectly procedural 9 out of 10.

Would recommend to teachers, parents, policymakers, and anyone who’s ever yelled, “Wait, how do I reset my password again?”