Ask HN: I am stateless – trouble learning from feedback
TLDR: I am stateless in the sense that indirect and direct feedback of any kind is not incorporated into my behavior tomorrow. I feel like I am constantly being reset. I do not learn from what happened yesterday. I can learn a little bit over time, and change my opinion, but tomorrow I will most likely forget. I seem to be entirely dependent on my 'active memory' and situational cues as to what is going on. I define 'active memory' as being what has happened since I have woken up. It seems that 'recent memory' is defined officially as having a 30-second cutoff, and that is is not an issue with me, so be aware I am using a new term.

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For a long time I have thought I suffered solely from the Dunning-Kruger effect. I would think I know how to do something, and then find out it took a lot more effort than usual, and thus I proved to myself that I was not that competent. Thus, I diagnosed myself as feeling superficially competent in areas where I have no expertise. Dunning-Kruger, right? I assumed a lot of people suffer from it, and I must be another moron. But despite this awareness of this self-diagnosis, and thinking about how I might be acting on it, I still feel competent in new areas when I should not. I wake the next day, and behold, I still see myself as competent.

But what I am suffering from is not limited to my beliefs about myself, which is unlike Dunning-Kruger. I have trouble changing any belief. For example, let's say that I ask a group of people about who knows git well - and someone starts to talk who I had previously never thought of as being competent in that area. The next day I will see that person the same way as I did before they helped me with the git issue. It is easy for me to think "Wow, she really knows git well!" and to change my opinion in that moment, but it is almost impossible for me to remember that the next day. On the next day I can partially remember that person being an expert in git, but somehow my opinion is separate and unchanging and I will still see them as not knowing git well. So lo and behold, in the same way, on waking the next way I see that person the same way as before.

I believe I have trouble learning from direct or indirect feedback (I am ignoring 'feedback' as business jargon for when a person talks to you about your performance, and that most google searches result for me). I keep 'touching the hot stove' and making the same judgement, having the same behavior, etc. The number one sign of stupidity is making the same mistake again and again, and I definitely fall into that category.

I also feel like I have to recreate my knowledge-base in my active memory each day. It is normal for me to be very confused, and to make inferences based on what I can deduce based on first-principles and almost no knowledge. I will take every situational cue I can to my advantage, as I cannot trust my memory. When it comes to learning something, I am heavily dependent on notes I have taken to teach myself how something works the next day. I am awful in the sense that I constantly try to appear smart to others, as I want to blend in as another competent individual.

Some questions:

Do you know what the technical term is of what I am going through, so I could learn more about it?

What does it mean when my mind seems to reset its opinions to the previous 24 hours?

What does it mean when your beliefs do not change, and despite being aware of it, you do not know how to stop it?

Do you have trouble remembering feedback? What is your hypothesis as to why?

How do you incorporate feedback into changing your opinion about yourself or someone or something into your long-term memory?

Are others stuck acting off of active memory only? Do people on HN suffer from memory deficits?

What happens when you get feedback from a mistake or learn something? What efforts do you take, either in your head or with tools to stay aware of it tomorrow?