learning is about connecting the dots, not just gathering dots. e.g. based on what i know, what should i learn next?
Learning Is Remembering
51–60 of 241 posts
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#52Related, the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve
See plot with spaced repetition halfway down.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#53Per the author, they’re launching a service called “Save All” — which is simplified version of spaced repetition; might be worth explicitly stating this in the intro or footer of the linked blog post.
Are you saying we should mention it for our own business benefit? Or that it's bad to not state it in article for some other reason?
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Re: Learning Is Remembering
#54I have a couple of questions... How do you trust your memory when (as I understand it), every time you recall something your brain changes in ways that can affect recall later? Is there a distinction between learning and knowing? For example, in my undergrad days I learned about Simpson's rule for numerical integration. I jammed enough of it into my memory to pass the test and quickly forgot all the details. Now, 30+…
Firstly, in terms of the distinction between learning and knowing -- the thing that matters most is the strength of the encoding in the brain. If you just memorise something with 0 understanding, the connections in the brain aren't as strong -- so they disappear. Whereas if you know something thoroughly, the connections are much, much stronger.
These strong connections are why when you go back and look at it, you recognise it and you know how to apply it - because you still have some of the residual memories from this strong encoding. But in the meantime, you probably haven't been able to apply it in an analogy for example.
Secondly - there's a classic on the topic of Spaced Repetition written by Gwern.[0] Gwern calculated that, given the average amount of time you spend testing yourself on something, and the exponential increase in how long you remember it, if you would spend more than 5 minutes per 10 years looking something up, you should use spaced repetition to remember it.
For transparency I work with OP on Save All.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#55I have a couple of questions... How do you trust your memory when (as I understand it), every time you recall something your brain changes in ways that can affect recall later? Is there a distinction between learning and knowing? For example, in my undergrad days I learned about Simpson's rule for numerical integration. I jammed enough of it into my memory to pass the test and quickly forgot all the details. Now, 30+…
> every time you recall something your brain changes in ways that can affect recall later?
Yeah that phenomenon is called "proactive & retroactive interference".
> For me, it seems like there's a sweet spot to remembering enough to know the concept and then relying on the internet to fill in the details as needed.
I think i agree with you to an extent. For example, there is no point memorising all the digits of pie so that you can use it when programming, it's much more efficient to just remember what pie is at a vaguer higher level than to put the energy into memorising all its digits.
But i would say that most people go too far the other way and only remember less than the efficient amount.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#56Andy Matuschak's thinking / independent research work here is very relevant:
- https://www.patreon.com/posts/71081197
- Literally a related quantum computing / physics example (with Michael Nielsen): https://quantum.country/
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#57Related, the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve See plot with spaced repetition halfway down.
yep that's the one! good old ebbinghaus
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#58Per the author, they’re launching a service called “Save All” — which is simplified version of spaced repetition; might be worth explicitly stating this in the intro or footer of the linked blog post.
Confused. Did the domain change? It’s currently hosted on the product website. Seems like pretty clear, standard content marketing.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#59You can remember something without fully understanding it. There is more to learning than just remembering.
If you don't understand it then you don't remember the information that compromises an "understanding" of the thing
The words used make the whole thing very confusing. Understanding and remembering are two very different thing in cognitive literature. Understanding is deeper about connections, and remembering is more recollection of facts or knowledge. It is fair to say that you cannot understand something without having some knowledge, but you can certainly know a lot of facts without having the slightest understanding.
It also poses wildly different challenges, where the metrics by which one is to judge the "degree of having attained knowledge" in the broader sense of the word, depends entirely on which of those aspects one value.
Some literature refers to this dichotomy as "instrumental" or "relational" understanding. You see this very clearly in math, where students can recall the facts of equations, but they don't understand it.
It can very well be that the author of this article is aware and appreciates this distinction. But, the phrase and title of "learning is remembering" will certainly evoke suspicion. Just because it is much easier to remember something one understand, does not mean that by remembering, one understands.
Re: Learning Is Remembering
#60Calling learning remembering, is like calling a computer a hard drive. Sorry, but, remembering is just one part, although important part of learning. There is loads of difference between remembering the words of a foreign language and fluently speaking it. The process of learning is complicated, eg. good teaching is not giving the final answers to learner, which should seem faster, but letting the learner arrive at their answers, even sometimes arriving at a wrong answer at first.
And the point about reducing forgetting, that's also a terrible way of learning. If you want to minimize forgetting, that means you have to learn in baby steps, repeat everything using some kind of spaced repetition algorithm, and endure the pain of doing all this for a considerate amount of time. Instead, learning the content rapidly (meanwhile forgetting a lot of the content), getting a whole picture, and gradually gain more understanding repeating the process using different textbooks/courses, is a much more faster way of learning. The brain is more used to BFS (breadth-first-search) than DFS (depth-first-search), and the whole process is much more stimulating. This is because new knowledge needs to be encoded with connections to pre-existing knowledge, and most knowledge is intertwined together, for example in calculus, limits, derivatives, integrals, infinite series, etc. Learning limits in isolation of the whole picture, optimizing for less percentage of forgetting, often leaves learners confused, why am I even learning this, and what use is this for. Even though the percentage of forgetting is much higher in the latter holistic BFS process, the overall content mastered in the same month or week duration is higher. So forgetting is actually normal and you shouldn't panic when you forget things- since you will gain more understanding each time you learn and re-learn the content.
For the last ten years, I've been making products for learning, and every day now and then, I'm still learning something new about learning.