Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)

> Aristotle, Leibniz, Einstein or whatever brilliant person you can think of didn't become who they are using cue-cards.

You aren’t Einstein, I presume. Neither am I. So first of all, you can’t say that with any certainty.

But more importantly, the vanishingly small top end of the bell curve does not hold useful lessons for the rest of us. Things that mere mortals have to expend effort on are not even a second thought for them, so they have nothing to teach someone who is working to learn things they never even tried to learn.

This is why great coaches are usually middling athletes. This is why great teachers are rarely great in the field they teach. This is why lessons from those who are great are often frustrating and filled with statements like “just…you know…do X.”

As someone actually on this end of the spectrum, I agree with you. The thing that I feel makes my brain and my methodology special is that I can make a single pass through a body of work and internalize just enough of the information.

This then ends up as something analogous to a table of weak pointers. I keep a sort of abstract digest of the information in the mental database and I use it to go look up hardcopy when it becomes necessary to actually reference.

The result is something akin to a vector database. I can look at a problem and apply many different approaches simultaneously. The mental machinery autonomously eliminates the worst paths through my knowledge graph and I'm left with a few pretty good options.

Actually memorizing all the information my mental database links to would be explicitly detrimental to the process. This pushes the signal/noise ratio way too low, and more importantly wastes time I could spend indexing a larger amount of information.

Perfect recall just isn't necessary for the way I solve problems. Reference books exist for a reason. every machinist ever has a copy of the machinist's handbook for a very good reason.

The process is all about knowing what is possible and drawing paths through the graph of possibilities. The details aren't relevant until the implementation stage when you'd be accessing reference materials anyway.

I find that spaced repetition does increase recall. I don't think that's in dispute. But better recall does not make you a better engineer. I don't think it's something even worthwhile in the general case, unless you're specifically trying to build a deep specialization.

People in general really dislike this notion. People want to believe that hard work and dedication makes an Einstein. The idea that it's just how some brains are is, I dunno, unfair?

But it's a tradeoff. There's a huge psychological burden involved. I won't get into it, but it's something Einstein spoke about. I'm also no use on my own. My abilities have led me to specialize deeply in generalism; I have no real specialization in any one field. If I had to operate on my own, it'd take me ten times longer than with a couple of specialists behind me. But with a good team, the amount of work we can put out is scary.

No, not everyone can learn to think and operate this way, sorry. My brain is wired different and you probably don't want it, it really, truly sucks. But that's a good thing. A healthy mixture of perspectives and abilities is what makes a successful team/company/project. You can't really get by with just a generalist or just a specialist. You need both perspectives.

Discussed at the time:

Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32381206 - Aug 2022 (169 comments)

I disagree also. I have lots of formulae, proofs and more as mathjax in my Anki cards.

You'd be surprised how big of a help this actually is for college exams. Not only for cramming before exams but also to retain the facts after for follow up classes (I see other students constantly struggle with having to relearn whole subjects while I don't because Anki implicitly makes me relearn them every week).

I haven't used Anki for a while now. I've had an aversion to it since I completely burnt out after my A levels.

I primarily added Anki cards from Obsidian. I'd have a heirarchal note structure for the subject (e.g. physics -> paper 3 -> astrophysics -> stars -> star type categories). Then I'd have my plainly-formatted notes, and below it I'd have some flashcards. The Obsidian4Anki extension let me create cards from the markdown.

The cards would strictly be on the topic in the note, generally be written around the same time or a few days later, and would be Q-and-A or clozes.

So as an example, "What colour is an O class star::Blue" would be in my notes and turned into a matching card, or "A {1:type 1A supernova} always has an {2:absolute magnitude} of {3:-19.3}" would create three cloze cards.

At the top of each note I'd use a note property to specify the notes' place in the Anki heirarchy, and I'd use the first three parts of the Obsidian heirarchy. So I'd save it as Physics -> Paper 3 -> Astrophysics -> [many, many cards]. I always duplicated notes to make new ones, so I rarely touched this.

Generally I'd practice all the physics cards at once, but categorising them this way let me drop the paper 1 cards once I'd done it and focus on paper 2 and 3 etc.

Honestly, though, I first started this when I was fourteen. My notes and my Anki decks were a complete mess compared to when I stopped when I left school four years later. You'll find what works for you - and clean things up - as you go along.