Not really. There are different learning styles. I find memorization very difficult (poor passive recall), yet my comprehension is superior (aiding deduction.) I find many with “photographic memory” to be sadly inadequate at comprehending and exploiting interrelationships. There is something like dexterity which develops in the mind, an impression left which is not exactly remembering, yet definitely stored in the br…
There is a difference between remembering something (like a fact) and a deep understanding of a concept. Let me give you an example in programming: I sometimes have to google for the names of functions I've already used a hundred times. Sometimes extremely simple functions (just a while ago it was list.size() in Java), only because I can't remember the name of the function, but of course I understand the concept - th…
I think it feels different because that knowledge is more deeply ingrained with what you already know. That knowledge has many connections and relationships with other knowledge you have. Whereas the name of a function is more like a leaf node, it isn't connected to very much and i think this is the source of the different feelings you describe. To expand on this a bit - our memories maintain "schemas" of knowledge a…
I'm not sure I agree. I think what I tried to describe above couldn't be classified as "knowledge" at all.
To be honest, I think we (humans) don't understand this type of understanding very well. Which is somewhat ironic :-)
Edit: But thanks for the suggestion about searching for schema, will definitely take a look!
As someone who has been using Anki for the past 4 years to learn Japanese and now Chinese, I've recently found that the initial "learning" step is not that hard. (i.e., given 辞書, I remember "dictionary") What is hard is keeping the content I've learned, _learned_, for more than a day. So now I'm wondering, is my initial "learning" process wrong? Since definitions are fairly simple and I find them easy to remember at…
Anki is great for higher level learning as well. Instead of having just individual words, have full sentences or even paragraphs. If you can read it aloud and understand it, then you can mark it as learned, but if you need to use the definition or explanation for any of it, mark it as unlearned. Once you have a decent initial vocabulary and grammar, this is far more effective at pushing things into long-term memory. Most of language is contextual, so anything to increase the amount of context on an individual card will help with getting better holistic knowledge of the language.
There is a difference between remembering something (like a fact) and a deep understanding of a concept. Let me give you an example in programming: I sometimes have to google for the names of functions I've already used a hundred times. Sometimes extremely simple functions (just a while ago it was list.size() in Java), only because I can't remember the name of the function, but of course I understand the concept - th…
I have the same feeling, "knowledge" is more about knowing what is available, what options are there and broadly what each option does. You don't have to remember exactly how each option works, just know that it exists. When you need it, you can just search how it works, but knowing what to search for is crucial.
Remembering is required for initial stage of learning. The whole point of learning is to understand things to remove remembering from the scene and be able to pull the knowledge from thin air. Therefore the title of the entry is misleading, very much so :-).
Please explain how you can understand something without remembering the information that the understanding is made up out of?
Spaced repetition is already a well-understood and well-accepted idea. Why feel need to debate about it?
The more important thing is the product which is SaveAI which is using AI to make the spaced repetition process much more efficient and effective. I never got into Anki because it seemed to me to be a tedious process to create decks but this new approach with using AI is much more attractive.
But I guess people like to argue/exchange ideas and this post is getting much more traction compared to the Show HN.
Not really. There are different learning styles. I find memorization very difficult (poor passive recall), yet my comprehension is superior (aiding deduction.) I find many with “photographic memory” to be sadly inadequate at comprehending and exploiting interrelationships. There is something like dexterity which develops in the mind, an impression left which is not exactly remembering, yet definitely stored in the br…
Learning styles are a myth https://www.techlearning.com/news/busting-the-myth-of-learni...
Myths are a myth
I’m not speaking of trends, I’m speaking of the architecture of our minds.
There are definitely differences in how various minds work, and these inconclusive pseudoscience studies making wild assertions are as junk science as the junk science they feed upon.
I think it feels different because that knowledge is more deeply ingrained with what you already know. That knowledge has many connections and relationships with other knowledge you have. Whereas the name of a function is more like a leaf node, it isn't connected to very much and i think this is the source of the different feelings you describe. To expand on this a bit - our memories maintain "schemas" of knowledge a…
I'm not sure I agree. I think what I tried to describe above couldn't be classified as "knowledge" at all. To be honest, I think we (humans) don't understand this type of understanding very well. Which is somewhat ironic :-) Edit: But thanks for the suggestion about searching for schema, will definitely take a look!
Understanding is just knowledge of how or why something works
Learning is memory, in a sense. More broadly learning the the physical structure that process leaves on your brain. When you truly learn, you do less remembering and more simulating. The process of simulating actions (multi-step addition algorithms in elementary school or wrote memorization of math-facts) is the process that changes the structure of your mind that isn't dependent on "memorization".
that's really interesting, can you explain this bit a bit more? Or let me know what to google to learn more about this? "The process of simulating actions is the process that changes the structure of your mind"
The mind, in this sense, is composed of mental models that we use to predict how our various actions might change the state of the world. A good example is driving a car [0] - when first learning, we lack an intuitive grasp on how turning the wheel might effect the car, but as we gain more experience we can simulate just how the car will respond right before we take the action, jarring us if we're wrong. This process can be applied to robots as well [1].
no it isnt, come on. if learning were just remembering then the existence of wikipedia would mean that you already know quantum mechanics, but of course that contradicts the premise. There is something more you have to do other than literally be able access the information. at the very least an installation step is required.