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Spaced repetition

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Re: Spaced repetition

#81

Post by RandomInteger4 »

mikekchar wrote: post #75
Afforess wrote: post #2

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not rec…

I live and work in the country, by a stream. I spend endless hours watching the stream. It is absolutely filled with wildlife; from birds, to turtles, to fish. An interesting thing about watching a stream is that, at first you may be unaware that there are any fish in it at all. I find that it takes me about 2-3 minutes before I spot the first one. Then after time I see another, and another and another. Eventually I…

Well, some ideas make people rich, so I don't know about that last part, but I like your analogy.

Re: Spaced repetition

#82

Post by Afforess »

mikekchar wrote: post #75
Afforess wrote: post #2

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not rec…

I live and work in the country, by a stream. I spend endless hours watching the stream. It is absolutely filled with wildlife; from birds, to turtles, to fish. An interesting thing about watching a stream is that, at first you may be unaware that there are any fish in it at all. I find that it takes me about 2-3 minutes before I spot the first one. Then after time I see another, and another and another. Eventually I…

Your analogy is pretty and while I agree with the sentiment I disagree with the scenario presented. I am glad I don't remember everything, yes, clearly perfect memory would be a burden. Rather I am frustrated by my lack of violation, I am not making a conscious choice to remember or forget; the decision is made for me by my flawed existence. The inability to exercise my will and make a meaningful decision over what I remember frustrates me.

That you think life is short is merely because you've forgotten most of it. When you stare at an analog clock, the seconds feel like long eternity.

Re: Spaced repetition

#83

Post by jodrellblank »

Qwertious wrote: post #72
jodrellblank wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I meant more "why do you (parent poster) want to remember everything?". OK so hypothetical world where you remember everything ... then what? What's different, why do you want that? Humans don't have the brainpower to make use of memories of everything. 'Having loads of memories' is not exactly the same thing as 'learning more' or 'having clear focus on a goal', or 'intuition', or 'improved decision making', or '…

How many minor things do you think you've made a mistake over, repeatedly, but never learned a lesson from because each individual time was separated by months so you'd forgotten by the time you do it next? The answer is, you don't know , because you can't remember any of them.

If they weren't bad enough mistakes to remember, how much can they really matter?

Re: Spaced repetition

#84

Post by executesorder66 »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #78
Afforess wrote: post #2

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not rec…

> I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. It's not. At least, not at the expense of other things. Memorization is but one piece. The book "Make it Stick" goes into this and a lot of other techniques that blend together, but SRS is not the whole of it by a long ways.

Would you mind telling me what those other techniques are?

Have you used them, and how well have they worked for you?

Re: Spaced repetition

#85

Post by kahrkunne »

Retric wrote: post #57
ktRolster wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I've worked on this for a while. I've written several different memory programs, for helping to review and memorize things. I have some thoughts that may help you feel better: In the end, spaced repetition is not what causes people to memorize things. You can review an object over and over and over......50…

Having a Memory is only half the equation recall is the other. Take a movie you have not watched in a decade and write down what you recall about it and how it ends. Then watch the first half and write down what you remember about the second half. Chances are good you will be able to add a lot more details the second time. Spaced repition aids both parts of this so not only is the information stored it's also easy to…

I think this is a big part of the trick. To remember something you need to practice recalling it.

Re: Spaced repetition

#86

Post by sitkack »

Afforess wrote: post #2

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not rec…

I used to get upset when I would forget an idea. Thing was, I could remember having the good idea but not the idea itself. Now, I simply get back into the same state, it will come back to the surface in its own time.

Re: Spaced repetition

#87

Post by morokhovets »

Afforess wrote: post #82
mikekchar wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live and work in the country, by a stream. I spend endless hours watching the stream. It is absolutely filled with wildlife; from birds, to turtles, to fish. An interesting thing about watching a stream is that, at first you may be unaware that there are any fish in it at all. I find that it takes me about 2-3 minutes before I spot the first one. Then after time I see another, and another and another. Eventually I…

Your analogy is pretty and while I agree with the sentiment I disagree with the scenario presented. I am glad I don't remember everything, yes, clearly perfect memory would be a burden. Rather I am frustrated by my lack of violation, I am not making a conscious choice to remember or forget; the decision is made for me by my flawed existence. The inability to exercise my will and make a meaningful decision over what I…

> Rather I am frustrated by my lack of violation, I am not making a conscious choice to remember or forget; the decision is made for me by my flawed existence. The inability to exercise my will and make a meaningful decision over what I remember frustrates me.

You think your existence is flawed. Have you concsiously choosen this? You just happened to like the idea that you can be better than you are when you first heard of this. And after multiple tries and fails it feels/looks like something is flawed. But I think it's just a downside of that idea. Your observations clearly show that you cannot control your mind. It's just that sometimes visions of better me are in line with what's happening and sometime's are not.

Re: Spaced repetition

#88

Post by jyriand »

Afforess wrote: post #2

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not rec…

Not sure if spaced repetition is the best resource we have. I haven't researched it, but the question I have is: how much of everyday's information is stored in the unconscious. Using hypnosis people can remember long forgotten things(assuming these are actual memories and not produced by imagination).

I have actively tried to use unconscious processes to remember some trivial stuff. Easiest way to experiment this is when you can't remember someone's name. You know the feeling when you almost got the name, but it still manages to escape your mind. What I have done is just say to myself: This name will pop into my mind once I stop trying to remember it. And more often than not, once I have concentrated on something else(it usually takes few minutes), this name will pop suddenly into my mind. Same technique can be used with lost keys etc.

I find it interesting that we can schedule some tasks in our minds. A la "Start searching my lost keys, please". And upon completion it will trigger a notification.

Re: Spaced repetition

#89

Post by laichzeit0 »

yermierc wrote: post #24
Afforess wrote: post #2

I find it very frustrating that spaced repetition is the best recourse we (humans) have to remember information. I am regularly concerned with the number of thoughts and interesting ideas I have each day, and don't manage to write down or otherwise preserve. I have begun recording some minor annotations and idle thoughts on paper a month ago and after reviewing them today, I am shocked at how many I simply do not rec…

I can completely relate to that frustration. I came from an engineering background before I went to medical school and I struggled a lot with the different styles of learning (applied principles at MIT vs. knowledge acquisition in med school). The biggest mistake you can make is think that your ability to remember is just an innate ability instead of a skill that can be cultivated. The problem with spaced repetition…

Wish it could import Supermemo knowledge (with history). Simply can't afford switching to a new tool at this point (7 year Supermemo user with thousands of knowledge items).

Re: Spaced repetition

#90

Post by laichzeit0 »

kendallpark wrote: post #37

Med student + developer here. As one that has to memorize insane quantities of information in a limited amount of time, I'll offer some thoughts on my experiences with various memorization strategies mentioned (or not mentioned) in the article. 1. Understanding the "big picture." The idea is, if you understand the mechanism underlying X, you can reason out Y. This works great for physiology-type where things work in…

>The second issue is that flash card creation is the absolute rate limiting step.

Supermemo has a very simple Q&A text format that you can import. I typically write everything I want in Vim (in a format that makes sense to me) and then run a script over it to write it into "Supermemo format" that you can just import from the GUI. There is a more advanced XML format but the simple Q&A text format has always worked fine for me.

I really wish Supermemo had a Web interface though. I'd love to use it from my mobile while I'm having lunch.

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