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Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

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Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#141

Post by mmcnickle »

ethanbond wrote: post #138
mmcnickle wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was intrigued by this idea and decided to give it a go on a subject I have only cursory knowledge of. The conversation is here ( https://chat.openai.com/share/50fe7120-a4eb-4c01-80bc-43d8f7... ) You're correct that it's an exercise in introspection, rather than relying on the AI's own knowledge. It was clear to me when trying to write explanations to its questions where my understanding was starting to get fuzzy an…

Wow, that is awesome. Kudos to you and @zoogeny's approach. This seems like a much better way to use this educationally than what I was attempting! Thank you for sharing. It helps that refrigeration has always sort of blown my mind, so this was an interesting topic as well.

> It helps that refrigeration has always sort of blown my mind, so this was an interesting topic as well.

Same! It's been in the front of mind because I've recently been watching Hyperspace Pirate's videos on building a DIY cryocooler (and have been struggling to follow it at a technical level). You might enjoy them too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QZrHzd3RA8

Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#143

Post by Llamamoe »

mbrameld wrote: post #22

From the surprisingly good Aviation Instructor's Handbook [0]: Learning Is an Active Process Learners do not soak up knowledge like a sponge absorbs water. The instructor cannot assume that learners remember something just because they were in the classroom, shop, or aircraft when the instructor presented the material. Neither can the instructor assume the learners can apply what they know because they can quote the…

This comes up often, and every time I have to disagree- there are things you can only learn actively, sure, but past that your brain is constantly analyzing and extracting the relevant features from all information you process. Personal anecdote: I've learned a good chunk of a language just by consuming a lot of subtitled media in it.

Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#144

Post by nickd2001 »

seventhtiger wrote: post #135
hiisukun wrote: post #29

There is a field of education, that studies teaching and learning! In fact many of you who attended university and studied at a "school of computer science" would have been in a building next to a "school of education". This post is interesting, but it reads like a layperson (from a teaching point of view) coming up with some fairly good theories of learning (of which there are quite a few) and discussing how applyin…

I'm skeptical of how the results of the educational field apply to the individual. They deal with very specific constraints because of classroom economy. If your stated goal is to get every child in this room to read, then you're wildly out of alignment with the needs of the child who could be reading the classics by the end of the year. Gifted and accelerated programs only alleviate the problem by a fixed amount by…

When it comes to reading I believe the best way to help a child learn is simply for parents (or as you also suggest, teachers, if its smaller group / 1 to 1) to (1) take the time and effort to read to kids, and (2) find high quality children's fiction that's interesting and motivating for the child to read themselves. Usually can be found at the library. or second-hand children's classics. So free or cheap. Our daughter is an excellent reader because she's a "bookworm", and her younger brother looks to be going the same way. She is hooked on fantasy fiction, he more on non-fiction about animals, space, dinosaurs. Some people wonder how they're such good readers. My answer is always. - give them books that make reading a joy and fun, then people want to, then they learn. To be honest, its incredible how schools manage to demotivate kids and they end up as "slow readers". Barring some kind of disability, I don't think that's a natural state for a child.

Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#145

Post by davty »

watwut wrote: post #91
Alt4Alt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please expand on that. Is'nt Anki one of the most popular tools for using spaced repitition? By meaning spaced repetition is easier do you mean to refer to some other tools which makes it easy to implement and use?

If you reread chapters of a book in intervals, you are doing spaced repetition. If you return back to previous topic in math and do exercises again, you do spaced repetition. Flashcard are just easy to implement application of it. Yes among flashcards, anki is the most popular. But naive use of it leads to a lot of pain and tons of problems, you have to learn how to use anki.

I think it is pretty well established that simply re-reading can trick you into thinking that you know the material (via recognition) instead of actually remembering/understanding.

Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#146

Post by michaelcampbell »

blackbear_ wrote: post #119
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. And it builds muscle memory. It's the difference between saying "Of course I can walk a mile" and actually walking a mile.

Thanks to muscle memory, I have a probability of about 50% of mistakenly typing "int" instead of "in" whenever I write text in human languages, lol

Same here. I must type "int he" as much or more as "in the".

Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#147

Post by michaelcampbell »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #74
dmvdoug wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that was painful. How does memory work? Me, teacher who took graduate school classes on educational psychology: he’s going to talk about short-term memory, etc. now. Him: NEURONS! Also, the article never mentioned the one absolutely knock down, finding that has been confirmed over and over again as effective for learning (or at least remembering): spaced repetition.

Spaced repetition takes effort, and causes pain. It is tedious. So it still fits in with the idea proposed. I believe you need to be conscious of what you are trying to learn and if it is tedious, then you are conscious of it because tedious means you experience some strain. You will remember it better because it was painful. Just speculating but it makes sense to my layman brain.

I find SRS to be more a scheduling mechanism, not a memory one. If my memory of something is "bad" before SRS, it's going to be bad after, it's just I can let the algorithm refresh it more often than the thing I CAN remember.

Actual memory "devices" (tricks, schemes, etc.) are orthogonal; SRS (for me) just optimizes my time so I don't have to go over shit I know more often than I need to.

For anyone curious, my 2 go-to books on actually learning how to remember are the ones by Higbee (dry, but thorough) and Lorayne (approachable, but feels less academic). I used SRS to remember those 2 authors w/o having to look them up, FWIW. ;-)

Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#148

Post by michaelcampbell »

bavell wrote: post #103
Alt4Alt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please expand on that. Is'nt Anki one of the most popular tools for using spaced repitition? By meaning spaced repetition is easier do you mean to refer to some other tools which makes it easy to implement and use?

Listening to your favorite new song everyday for a week is spaced repetition and very enjoyable, no pain whatsoever. You'll quickly learn the nuances of the song that you didn't pick up in your first few listens. Also a great way to memorize lyrics.

> Listening to your favorite new song everyday for a week is spaced repetition and very enjoyable, no pain whatsoever.

That's not really SRS though; a key part of SRS is the heuristic for when you next get exposed to the thing you're trying to remember based on your previous "got it"/"missed it" response. I suppose "every day" is one such heuristic, but it's not really in the spirit of SRS.

And you're mixing up enjoying the content with the mechanics of an SRS system.

Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#149

Post by michaelcampbell »

blackbear_ wrote: post #120
watwut wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you reread chapters of a book in intervals, you are doing spaced repetition. If you return back to previous topic in math and do exercises again, you do spaced repetition. Flashcard are just easy to implement application of it. Yes among flashcards, anki is the most popular. But naive use of it leads to a lot of pain and tons of problems, you have to learn how to use anki.

Do you have any resources for learning how to use Anki? I use the default settings and I find them okay

/r/anki on reddit is actually pretty good.

Default settings are ok although I'd say 2 things that are counter to some common advice there:

* Actually use all 4 ratings buttons, and come up with a scheme for when. For me it was 1: missed it, 2: had to guess, but guessed right, 3: got it, 4: got it without even reading the entire prompt

* If you're insistent on the (IMO bad advice) "only use 1 and 3 keys" thing, install the "Straight Rewards" plugin. Without it, all your ease factors will decay to their lowest level (130% by default) since '1' lowers it, but '3' does not raise it, so it can only go down. With "Straight Rewards", it'll up the ease factor for you gently as you rate a card '3' enough times in a row.

Alternately, install the FSRS4Anki plugin. It's more work, but is a more dynamic scheduler. Requires the V3 Anki scheduler being enabled, and one of the more later versions. Do some reading on this before you try it; you can always go back, but it's not been proven yet to be substantially better than SM2.

Re: Learning needs to be effortful to be effective

#150

Post by galaxyLogic »

TuringTourist wrote: post #128
eimrine wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being exposed to a song does not really counts as learning, but another thing is an analysis of chords, lyrics, post-procession effects, rhythm. Intention to repeat that in their own creative project is a judge.

If I have gained the ability to recite the lyrics of a song after being "exposed" to it for some time, it seems that I have indeed learned something.

Yes you have. But that has happened by accident. You didn't try to learn the song, you just happened to be somewhere it was playing many times. (I say 'many' if you really learned the whole song correctly)

If you really WANT to learn something you cannot rely on such accidents happening. Accidents are not a method.

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