I know this is just a joke, but there was an interesting Radiolab on memory and forgetting. It posited that forgetting is an active process, and analysis a person who was disabled in such a way that their forgetting process didn't work led to some very undesirable outcomes:
Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
51–60 of 173 posts
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#52I was anti-memorization until I went back to graduate school for mathematics. I had forgotten (or never learned) a lot of things needed to pass qualifying exams. At some point I ran across the spaced repetition idea (maybe from the Wired SuperMemo article [0]) and I gave it a try. I ended up using it to memorize large portions of baby Rudin and Munkres' Topology, as well as some algebra and a bunch of qualifying exam…
Don't you think you actually did well in your exams because you really understood it and not because you blindly memorized it ?
I've picked up a lot of (human) languages over my life, and I've used SRS to great effect (I started on JMemorize, a now defunct Java app.) I have a simple strategy:
1. Read a text
2. Lookup unknown word/grammatical pattern
3. Create a flashcard for it
4. Apply SRS
and it works great. I've also tried to use other people's Anki decks and they've never worked particularly well. Personally engaging with the material is still the prerequisite for memorizing it, but memorizing means you don't need to struggle to figure out basic concepts constantly and can instead move onto the higher level of meaning.
I've used SRS over the years for many, many things. I've used it for memorizing divisibility rules, used it for annoying math lemmas, used it for data structures, and more. Each of the time I've attempted the material by myself and then turned my knowledge/engagement into a flashcard. I've even considered using it to learn tools like Blender so I can dial in workflows.
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#53I'm a fan of spaced repetition too and have incorporated Anki in my life in more ways than simple memorization. But calling it "infinite recall" is a bit misleading. Improved long-term retention at the cost of minimal unintrusive prompting is probably closer.
The article is a joke proving how an immortal person could get infinite recall with spaced repetition.
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#54I was anti-memorization until I went back to graduate school for mathematics. I had forgotten (or never learned) a lot of things needed to pass qualifying exams. At some point I ran across the spaced repetition idea (maybe from the Wired SuperMemo article [0]) and I gave it a try. I ended up using it to memorize large portions of baby Rudin and Munkres' Topology, as well as some algebra and a bunch of qualifying exam…
That Supermemo article in Wired hooked me. I still remember where I was when I read it and the feeling of reading it. I still use Supermemo daily, and it's one of the programs keeping on Windows. Anki (and every other SRS program I've tried) just doesn't compare as soon as you move beyond a list of flashcards. That said, having used Supermemo for over a decade at this point, the hardest thing about SRS is deciding wh…
Yeah I agree. Anki has a failure mode for me that I eventually accumulate > 5000 flash cards and a review session can take an hour or more. Knowing what to review is really difficult. I'll give Supermemo a shot, I've always heard of it as the gold standard but never tried it.
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't you think you actually did well in your exams because you really understood it and not because you blindly memorized it ?
That is false dichotomy that is running around. To really understand something first you blindly memorize - but that is not enough, once you do examples and exercises using what you blindly memorized you get to understand things quicker, a lot quicker. Not memorizing stuff and figuring things as you go is mostly recipe for disappointment. Like in chess - people think that chess players are somehow super intelligent -…
It similar to the question, "if you could do just one exercise, what would you do?" And you have all these answers, it is the squat, no, it is the deadlift, please guys it is the power clean.
It is not a useful question because you will never be in the position of choosing just one exercise to be done for the next month, year or decade.
Memorization is important and understanding is important, and the two are not in any conflict whatsoever.
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#56I've been using Anki for language learning and it's a superpower. After just over two years I passed an exam that requires a passive vocabulary of about 10,000 words. Other people who grinded harder than me have managed it even faster, some in under a year. However one big mistake people make is to think an SRS helps you learn. That's not true. It helps you not forget things you've already learned. You still need som…
>> It helps you not forget things you've already learned.
The argument is quite weak when we discuss learning words in a foreign language. You learn that lunch is "almuerzo" in Spanish, but is it learning or just memorization/association? To me the lines are blurred, even at first sight of the word.
I used Anki myself to learn foreign languages and it is tremendously effective for words and short sentences too. I use it also for words in my mother tongue, and it made be much more articulate than I used to be.
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
More than semi-fallacious - the math doesn't add up, because you run into the Bekenstein bound, which limits how much information you can pack into a volume.
This is why I don't use spaced repetition. The danger of becoming a black hole is just too high. Forgetting things is well known to be highly evolutionary advantageous, because all the critters that remember everything and turned into black holes stopped reproducing. Very dangerous stuff to play with.
Tragic really how smart people know perfectly well that you shouldn’t exercise if you don’t want to accidentally turn into a grotesque muscle freak, but rarely use the same caution in brain exercise.
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#58I mean sure. The trouble is in order to keep the review time per day fixed you need to vary the rate at which you introduce new facts, and as time goes on the interval between when you can afford to introduce new facts will grow to be infinite. The model also doesn't account for how you feel about doing this activity. This includes the pain of not doing reviews for several days and then having to catch up. The probab…
Not quite. The review intervals increase exponentially, so if you stop adding new cards the workload quickly goes to single digits per day in a few months.
35 a day is excessive for sure. Even with foreign language stuff which is the lowest time to solve per card, I limit myself to 10 new cards/day. Math problems 2 new/day. Daily workload ends up around 50-100 cards, which is very manageable. You do need to be consistent though.
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is Supermemo only available as a SaaS?
No it's primarily an awful Delphi for Windows desktop application that is extremely fragile. But once you know how to "hold it correctly" it will be your companion for life. I run it in a virtual machine with all its legacy dependencies like IE. Forget about running it on Wine, it barely works on any version of Windows (lol)
If actually using it has this huge friction, how do you manage to use it every day? I always have a hard time creating habits out things that are hard to "start" doing every time.
Re: Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's primarily an awful Delphi for Windows desktop application that is extremely fragile. But once you know how to "hold it correctly" it will be your companion for life. I run it in a virtual machine with all its legacy dependencies like IE. Forget about running it on Wine, it barely works on any version of Windows (lol)
If actually using it has this huge friction, how do you manage to use it every day? I always have a hard time creating habits out things that are hard to "start" doing every time.
I don't. I developed my own spaced repetition software from first principles based on the latest research :D