When I was a toddler, there was a radiator heater in our house (this is Turkey in the 80s). My mom kept warning me to not touch it -- she'd point to the radiator and say "owie", but I kept going for it. One time when she didn't notice, I went ahead and touched the radiator. She (now laughingly) recalls me pointing to it and saying "owie" from that point onwards. Some things are like this - they cannot be learned in the abstract. My guess is that this roughly maps to [semantic vs episodic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicit_memory#Types) memory. I suspect this is also the power of stories. "If you touch the radiator, it will burn your hand" is a very semantic fact, like "the capital of Brasil is Brasilia". It won't stick well. But if you tell a vivid story about how poor Jimmy touched the radiator and burned his hand, by some magic ([mirror neurons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron)?) it sticks better. #halfbaked #published 2025-05-30