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I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

miguelconner.substack.com

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Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#21

Post by vslira »

I use Anki to study all kinds of subjects, and more than half of the value is processing what I learned (usually with pencil and paper) into good anki cards ("atomic", as per Michael Nielsen's definition), including the insights that I had when studying the subject (like "what's the comparison with X that I used to understand Y?")

I'm not sure if it is efficient, mind you, but I suppose it's effective because I can recall information later when relevant, and I believe that like exercising just being able to stick to a study routine ends up being more important than picking the best routine

Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#22

Post by wahnfrieden »

majorchord wrote: post #11
aizk wrote: post #8

The Japanese immersion language learning rabbit hole goes very very deep, and it super interesting. I'm writing some info about it here because I just don't want it to be lost to the sands of the digital times: It all started way back when with this guy named Khatzumoto who did his own guerilla academic research, for lack for a better word - and proving it by getting fluent in 18 months. The theories were based in co…

> fluent in 18 months That's a very interesting definition of fluent.

It’s not a definition

Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#23

Post by andoando »

vjerancrnjak wrote: post #18

Spaced repetition is incredibly inefficient. Despite exponential guarantees, there's information and incredibly complex concepts that are with me forever, after learning about it once. Yet somehow a German word is impossible to remember. LLMs suck, because their goal is not to improve learning. Same way Duolingo sucks, the goal is to optimize global metrics over a massive userbase, not optimize individual metrics, wh…

True with all the apps. Hated this about working with Tinder.

All the conversations, KPIs are "What gets the most users, makes them stay on the app longest, paying the most money". 4 years and not a single conversation about how to improve dating.

Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#24

Post by hombre_fatal »

uludag wrote: post #13

Alas, the mote around LLM integration is practically non-existent so I'd think that productization around this would be next to impossible. Anki is already extremely extendable so I would think that with a not too much work deep LLM integration could be implemented in Anki. Like, instead of showing static content for a card, have Anki call an LLM to create the daily iteration of a given prompt.

My ideal flash card for vocabulary (foreign language) focuses on one word per card but always uses that word in a sentence since words never have one single meaning. Like a single sentence or two with the word in bold that you must define.

I think it'd be cool to then use that "{word} {part of speech} {example sentence}" info to generate more example sentences with an LLM.

That way you can grind your problem words with real sentences and cement it quickly, otherwise this process happens too slowly through regular reading.

Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#25

Post by wahnfrieden »

This is why I built Manabi Reader (currently only for Japanese)

https://reader.manabi.io

It helps you discover reading material suited to your current knowledge. It’s better to acquire new words within colorful contexts, and then use flashcards to review them after learning the material. (It has its own flashcard companion app or you can use Anki.)

Soon I am working on making the activity of reading words in native texts also count as reviewing those words in current and future flashcards, using FSRS. So that you can spend more time reading and not see it as detracting from catching up on your flashcard review workload. And because the reader tracks every word and kanji you come across, it can start to find and suggest the most effective passages to revisit or read for the first time from your personal corpus it currently accumulates from what you load in.

But next I am working on adding manga and video to enhance the fun of it, as OP mentions being important too.

I’ve recently managed to go full-time on this project and hope to bring it to more languages and platforms before long.

Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#26

Post by atrus »

erikw wrote: post #20

I think that the author was using Anki incorrectly, and that led them to the spurious conclusion that "Anki is dead". I also have attempted to use Anki this way- using someone else's deck to try to force myself to learn something new. But that doesn't work, because it is just memorizing random symbols, as they noted in the article ("The enemy is the static card"). For example in maths learning, memorizing arbitrary t…

Using someone elses deck is such a siren song, and I honestly believe it's detrimental to properly using Anki. Making and curating your own cards is an essential step in learning the new concepts.

Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#28

Post by franktankbank »

erikw wrote: post #20

I think that the author was using Anki incorrectly, and that led them to the spurious conclusion that "Anki is dead". I also have attempted to use Anki this way- using someone else's deck to try to force myself to learn something new. But that doesn't work, because it is just memorizing random symbols, as they noted in the article ("The enemy is the static card"). For example in maths learning, memorizing arbitrary t…

Look, if you want to learn a new language, move to a country and get a boyfriend/girlfriend. slaps hands my job is done here

Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#29

Post by zelphirkalt »

I found Anki way too heavy and the available decks mostly wrong way around for actually learning vocabulary (that is they were from foreign language to native, instead of the other way around) and switching the direction was way too cumbersome.

I have not yet found a really good tool for learning Mandarin, except for classes and actually talking with people and doing the hard work of writing the characters again and again, for which I rarely have energy or patience.

One thing I did notice in a course was, that writing an article about a topic helped a lot. It needs to be something where you use the same new vocabulary many times. But the problem with that is, that it makes my hands and wrist hurt after a couple of writings.

Re: I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead

#30

Post by 13324 »

I used Anki pretty heavily during ~8 years of law school and it was a game-changer. Two things that helped me the most (and that I think apply to any kind of flashcards, digital or paper):

- The twenty rules of formulating knowledge (https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...) ; old but really solid advice on how to actually write cards that stick.

- The book Fluent Forever; it’s meant for languages, but the general principles carry over to learning basically anything.

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