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Your Brain Deletes Knowledge on Purpose - Future IQ

3,137 views Wait, is this logic right? • Sep 05, 2025
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Slog Reference: Why Watch FutureIQ If I'll Forget It All

Description

Have you ever gone back to a video, a book, or even a conversation and realized you remembered almost nothing from it? It feels like your brain has failed you but what if forgetting isn’t failure at all? In this episode of FutureIQ, we explore why your mind doesn’t work like a hard drive, storing neat little files forever, but more like a compiler, constantly rewriting and updating the way you see the world.

From Paul Graham’s reflections on books to the science of memory and the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, we uncover why the details slip away but the deeper patterns stay behind, quietly shaping how you think. This is why you suddenly start seeing “incentive design” or “preference cascades” everywhere your brain has been primed, even if you can’t recall the source. Psychologists call this the Baader Meinhof effect, but you’ll simply experience it as the world looking different after exposure.

And here’s the twist: even if you forget the content of a FutureIQ episode, the Algorithm doesn’t. By watching, you teach YouTube what to feed you next, nudging your entire digital environment toward smarter ideas. Forgetting, paradoxically, may be the very reason the learning sticks—because it seeps into your intuition, into the part of you that acts without thinking.
This episode is about why forgetting isn’t the enemy of knowledge, but the engine of wisdom.

Join the Future IQ Community: https://tapthe.link/futureiqwa

More Videos:
From Instinct to Insight - How Do We Really Decide? Bayesian Thinking: https://youtu.be/9_Ffrs0YyX0
A Better Way To Learn and Remember Things - Spaced Repetition: https://youtu.be/JAPwrsm5OeA
STOP Watching NEWS Right Now! Why NEWS is Bad for You: https://youtu.be/YYr7qNnOPDg

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference : Wikipedia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZGCoVF3YvM : 3blue1brown on Bayesian Theorem
https://lesswrong.com : community for understanding priors and helping reduce your biases
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bJ2haLkcGeLtTWaD5/welcome-to-lesswrong: Intro to LessWrong
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/towards-a-bayesian-theory-of-willpower: Theory that willpower can be explained using bayesian updating
Understanding opportunity costs
Big link of opportunity cost articles/videos/podcasts
James Clear thread: https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1674055226259644420
Nir Eyal book Hooked: https://www.amazon.in/HOOKED-Nir-Eyal/dp/0241184835
Nir Eyal book Indistractible: https://www.amazon.in/Indistractable-Control-Your-Attention-Choose/dp/1526625334
Social media detox has no effect: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-90984-3
@vgr thread on boundary intelligence: https://twitter.com/vgr/status/915303346570911744
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/echo-chambers-filter-bubbles-and-polarisation-literature-review
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/13/1122786134/does-social-media-leave-you-feeling-angry-that-might-be-intentional
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8604707/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/05/13/is-social-media-curating-hate-and-scouring-the-web-for-our-greatest-fears/
https://thedailytexan.com/2025/04/01/the-outrage-algorithm-social-media-benefits-from-division/

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

#futureiq #memory #subconscious

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Why Watch FutureIQ If I'll Forget It All

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Transcript

Why should I watch Future IQ if I'm not going to remember any of it? I mean, what are you saying? A listener recently asked this interesting question. Okay. I recently watched an old Future IQ episode after an year and I realized that I didn't remember most of it and I wonder what is the point of watching if I can't remember channel. But this listener had a very interesting point. I do concede. If people don't remember what they have watched in our episodes, then that is a problem for us also. Oh, absolutely. I mean that's a very interesting question and the answer is even more interesting. So that's why we are doing an entire episode on this.
Okay. Okay. This is why you should be subscribing to Future IQ and commenting because sometimes your comments become the source for a new episode. Yeah. So let me start with Paul Graham who ran into exactly the same problem. Right. Okay. Okay, Paul Graham is the founder of Y Combinator, one of the top startup accelerators in the world. Okay, he realized once that when he was looking at some book that he had read in the past that he didn't remember any of that book, what use is it to read all these books if I remember so little from them?
H valid question. Yeah. And here is his answer. Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you have lost the source code of. It works, but you don't know why. That's a very interesting analogy that he's applied using computers and software terminology. And I think I kind of get where he's coming from. There is more. Okay. When this question was asked to me, I instinctively knew the answer, right? I knew that the answer was that even if you don't remember the episode, it has still changed your brain in ways that are
beneficial, right? But I had no idea where that answer had popped into my mind from. Okay? I didn't remember where I I sort of vaguely knew that I had probably read something like this before, but I didn't remember it. And I was I mean thinking about it for a while and suddenly someone somewhere mentioned that Paul Graham has said this. Ah and I then remembered that I had actually read this Paul Graham article and that's why I knew this is the answer. And for this episode I went back and I read that entire article and I didn't remember any of the details or any of the examples he had given in this article. M but the important point had stayed with
me right. Ah so what you are saying here is watching our episodes watching future IQ episodes also does something similar to the brains of the people watching it. Yes. Uh and you that's why you have to watch it. Yes. In fact it does two things specifically to your brain. Okay. The first one is Beijian updating. Okay. We have done an episode on Beijian inferencing before but basic idea is the following right that you have opinions about the world. Yes. Any new data that comes in does not come to you raw. You always have some prior thoughts about it.
Some prior beliefs about it, some prior understanding of that. That prior understanding of anything pretty much colors how you see the world, how you understand the world, how you interpret data coming in, how you choose which things are worth paying attention to, all of that depends on your existing set of beliefs which are called the priors, right? More importantly, any new data that comes in which you choose to pay attention to is going to adjust your priors a little bit. True. So that afterwards from that point on you might change how you view the world. Right? So this is what Paul was talking about when he said that you read something you don't remember the details
but the updates to your priors are on a very subconscious level subliminal level. Exactly right. All right. So this is what is happening to you. You watch an episode it adjusts your prior. It adjusts the way you view the world but you forget the details. The second important thing to keep in mind is that our brains can't remember things on just one watch or one read. Right? Anything you watch or read, you're going to forget unless it gets repeated a little while later or at regular spaced intervals. Right? We have done an episode on space repetition memory.
Yeah. And what is happening when you watch future IQ the channel not one episode is that some themes some concepts keep getting repeated right system one versus system two Beijian updating deliberate practice supply versus demand so over time these concepts they go into your brain so you might not remember the exact details you might not remember the exact examples we use but the concept gets strengthened Yeah, it might look like we are actually trying to push more of our episodes to people but yeah, you should watch future IQ episodes again and again over and over but and also you should subscribe, like and comment. So it's not just about future IQ, right? Uh you learn about a
concept here and then you go watch something else like you watch Veritasium and he says something very similar. You read a book and you find some concepts there. All of this a WhatsApp forward might give you things that we have talked about right so or Naven's newsletter which is also called future IQ you should subscribe to that also definitely there are multiple sources where you can get similar kind of information and we we keep referring to those channels also in our episodes right exactly as Paul said you form opinions but you don't know the source because the source was a collection of distributed spaced repetition happening in your brain right through various channels and books and WhatsApp
forwards. Yeah. And I just realized that I have been seeing incentive design and preference cascades in a lot of places because those were the two most recent episodes or those were the themes topics mental models we spoke about in the two most recent episodes. You know why that happens right? This is the Bader Minhoff effect which is that once you see something and you hear the name for it then you start seeing it everywhere. Okay. Yeah. Why is this magic? No. What is happening is that these things were all always there. But because you saw them or discussed them on a future IQ episode, now you have a name for that concept. And so when you
run into that concept again, this time you remember it because earlier you would just, you know, skim over it because you didn't recognize it. Now you know the name, you know the importance and so you pay attention to it right ah so the frequency illusion is also what it is called if I'm not mistaken right so this is what future IQ is doing for you right you are being given a whole bunch of patterns where the details you are going to forget but the patterns are important they are suddenly now everywhere and you start spotting those patterns is making them visible to you.
Yeah. Much more important in the modern era is the algorithm. Yes. The algorithm is all the social media websites and the ads on various websites and pretty much everything on the internet is controlled by algorithms which are watching your behavior trying to figure out what you're interested in and then showing you more of it because they want you to stay on their website and on click on their ads so that they can make money. Right. Yes. Usually we talk about the algorithm all of this as a bad thing, right?
Yeah. But it can be a good thing, right? Because you watch a future IQ episode, the algorithm says, "Ooh, this person is interested in mental models and first principles and uh you know the kind of concepts we talk about." Yeah. And then the algorithm starts showing you more of that, right? So now suddenly YouTube will start showing you more things that are like future IQ. Which is why even if you forget what you saw in a future IQ episode, it is still important because now the algorithm is going to show you those kinds of things again. In fact, you turn on a future IQ episode, you close your eyes and your ears and you just keep it running. It will still
go in your brain because what happens is that from that day forward the algorithm is going to show you related similar things and you are going to watch at least one or two of those related similar things and that information is still going to go into your brain eventually because you watched a future or you didn't watch and you forgot a future IQ episode. I'm honestly okay with this because it's a win-win situation. If you start a future IQ video and leave it unattended, it kind of helps us rank better in the algorithm also. So, chill. Okay, we are not telling people to leave Future IQ episodes unattended.
Okay, there are interesting episodes. They're good episodes. Future IQ is good in and of itself, but an added benefit is that it improves all of your social media for you. We always think about the betterment of uh society and specifically the betterment of you as a person. Yeah. One more thing. Okay. Every minute you spend watching future IQ is a minute you don't spend watching terrible things and toxic stuff like TV news. Okay. Yeah. We have done an episode on the fact that you shouldn't be watching the news. The news is actually toxic for you. Watch future IQ episodes instead.
And while you're at it, comment, turn on the notifications. That makes me sound like a shill, but I'm honestly okay with it. But what I'm getting from all of this is that if I want to remember these concepts, these mental models, these first principles that we talk about, I should switch to active learning rather than passive reinforcement. Correct? I mean, as I said earlier, we forget very quickly. Okay. Uh in the past we have talked about the ebbing house forgetting curve which points out that if you see something or you hear something or you learn something within 30 seconds or a few minutes you are going to forget it unless it gets reinforced. If it gets reinforced then
it is going to stick around for say around 10 minutes but in that 10 minutes it has to be reinforced again then it'll stick around for a day and so on. Right? I mean look at this curve on the screen. Yeah. So if you were trying to ask the question that I really really want to remember all the future IQ episodes, what should I do? Yeah. What you have to do is space repetition, right? So either I mean basically you should watch every episode every day.
No, you can't because you know watching all episode takes two days. I did the calculation. Okay. No. So what you have to do is take a create a note takingaking system. M okay that there are a lot of people who do this okay whenever they read something or they watch something which is important enough they pause every once in a while and they take notes they have their own favorite note-taking system some people do it on an actual book with a pen and paper some people do it in just a notepad and notes or something like that other people use software there are software like notion and obsidian and Rome and so on okay so if
you are the kind of person who does this you should go for it right uh it takes a lot of discipline so not everyone will be able to do it but if you can do it it's a superpower right a lot of people ask me that all these concepts for future IQ episodes where do they come from I have a note takingaking system and I just 15 years of notes he has taken and 15 years of notes has led to these 150 episodes that we've done so far but I'm not trying to say that everyone should do this right if you can do this this is great but if you can't do this don't feel bad it is okay I mean just
keep watching and it is okay you will forget or at least you'll forget the surface level things but the concepts especially at a lower level in your brain they will stick around right yeah in fact one of my attempts uh with all of the things that we do on future IQ with the series that we do here is to uh learn by osmosis from you as much as I can to the extent that it seeps down into my system one. So I don't have to worry about system two actually getting activated in time.
Exactly right. I mean when you say that oh I didn't remember any of this that is really your system two saying that I don't remember. Right. System one is keeping track. So even without explicit memory of those things, it is there just below the surface and it'll pop out when necessary. The way it popped out for me when this question was asked to me. Correct. And in fact uh this technique uh called priming is also used by a lot of conmen and magicians to make you pick a certain card when they open out the deck in front of you.
Yeah. What you don't realize is the card that you have picked because that card looked interesting to you looked interesting because you've been primed for that card in various ways. I think there's a movie uh Now You See Me which uses this in a very interesting way to conduct a heist. Go watch it whenever you can to understand the concept of priming. The movie is also quite good. But to summarize, right, it doesn't have to be just future IQ episodes, right? pretty much everything you do in your life, the good things, the reading and the watching and all of that, right?
Keep consuming them. Even if you think you're not going to remember any of it, right? It is fine if you forget them. Just still continuing to watch them is a good thing. This is especially true in the age of the algorithm, right? And that's why you should not only watch and read and consume, but you should also like and comment. Okay? But I love it. And if you really really want to remember which is not necessary but if you want to remember there are systems which will give you superpowers right absolutely and in fact I would like to know what other channels uh you've started watching after starting to watch future IQ because there are some
channels that we regularly watch for example I'm a huge fan of Veritasium I'm a huge fan of number file huge fan of three blue one brown and also start talk by Neil Degrass Tyson so these are channels that I watch and uh the algorithm has now started recommending more of these things to me. So if there are any other channels that I'm missing out on, please let us know in the comments and uh yeah, it'll also help others follow those channels as well. This is not just about future IQ. This is about making you a better person.
This is about ensuring that you get to learn some of these concepts in whatever way possible, even if it is by osmosis. And in fact you should go and check out the episode we did on learning by osmosis which we line up right after this. Shriant Naven Future IQ.