51–60 of 208 posts
I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but: of all the really brilliant people I've ever met, interacted with or learned from, I haven't heard of anyone that used techniques like this. Like, the way they learn things and become brilliant is the exact same way every brilliant person has done it for thousands of years: they read books, they discuss and debate with other brilliant people, they study their subjects and…
I have been wondering about this in the context of being ready for work in the age of LLM‘s. What nobody can deny is that they memorize information at a superhuman level, so it might reduce the value of having done that myself. On the other hand, “couldn’t you just google that“has been an erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing. has been a er…
Silly.
I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but: of all the really brilliant people I've ever met, interacted with or learned from, I haven't heard of anyone that used techniques like this. Like, the way they learn things and become brilliant is the exact same way every brilliant person has done it for thousands of years: they read books, they discuss and debate with other brilliant people, they study their subjects and…
Spaced repetition is not meant for conceptual things or skills. It's meant for only the simplest of facts.
It's meant particularly for foreign language vocab, names and quantities in medical school, names of cases in law school, that sort of thing.
It has little to no relevance in math, physics, and engineering.
Just because it's not meant for all things doesn't mean it doesn't excel at some things.
I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but: of all the really brilliant people I've ever met, interacted with or learned from, I haven't heard of anyone that used techniques like this. Like, the way they learn things and become brilliant is the exact same way every brilliant person has done it for thousands of years: they read books, they discuss and debate with other brilliant people, they study their subjects and…
You're right that nobody became brilliant through spaced repetition. But spaced repetition is not meant for that. Spaced repetition is not meant for conceptual things or skills. It's meant for only the simplest of facts. It's meant particularly for foreign language vocab, names and quantities in medical school, names of cases in law school, that sort of thing. It has little to no relevance in math, physics, and engin…
> It has little to no relevance in math, physics, and engineering.
That's one bit I disagree with. Engineering is full of facts/concepts, things you often need to know inherently to be able to apply them, or even to know to google them at the right time. So I think SRS can apply there too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you tried Anki since FSRS was introduced? If not, may be worth giving it another shot.
Sorry what is FSRS? And when was it released?
It basically works by optimizing parameters of the "memory model" against your review history, thus fitting against your particular memory instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach.
It is described in (much) more detail here: https://github.com/open-spaced-repetition/fsrs4anki/wiki/The...
I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but: of all the really brilliant people I've ever met, interacted with or learned from, I haven't heard of anyone that used techniques like this. Like, the way they learn things and become brilliant is the exact same way every brilliant person has done it for thousands of years: they read books, they discuss and debate with other brilliant people, they study their subjects and…
> Aristotle, Leibniz, Einstein or whatever brilliant person you can think of didn't become who they are using cue-cards. Indeed, but I think that being relevant assumes that people using these techniques believe it will somehow make them brilliant/geniuses. > Spaced repetition always seemed like those schemes to get you fit or slim in 30 days that never work. I'm not arguing for spaced repetition, but the whole point…
Fair enough, I haven't looked into spaced repetition deeply.
I just always got this weird vibe from people talking about it, like they think memorizing all the world capitals was a way to improve your intelligence. It's not.
Same thing with, like, "memory palace" stuff: being able to memorize a deck of cards is probably fun, and it's a nice parlor trick, but it will not help you solve real-world problems, analyze situations, make discoveries or be a better engineer. The way to do that is to just read books, study, work hard in your chosen field and keep up with the latest developments. That is the only way anyone has ever gotten good at anything.
I have been wondering about this in the context of being ready for work in the age of LLM‘s. What nobody can deny is that they memorize information at a superhuman level, so it might reduce the value of having done that myself. On the other hand, “couldn’t you just google that“has been an erroneous retort to the value of space repetition for decades, during which I’ve gotten a lot of value out of doing. has been a er…
LLMs memorize information at a superhuman level the same way an 8 tb harddisk does. Silly.
The search is vague, and the result is nondeterministic, but in a lot of cases it's still the better method.
https://fchollet.substack.com/i/137628402/llms-as-program-da... I like the way this article puts it. "LLM is a continuous, interpolative kind of database"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Aristotle, Leibniz, Einstein or whatever brilliant person you can think of didn't become who they are using cue-cards. Indeed, but I think that being relevant assumes that people using these techniques believe it will somehow make them brilliant/geniuses. > Spaced repetition always seemed like those schemes to get you fit or slim in 30 days that never work. I'm not arguing for spaced repetition, but the whole point…
> I'm not arguing for spaced repetition, but the whole point is you do some amount every day (or as needed) for the rest of your life (within reason). So it's not equivalent to get fit/slim quick at all, it's more about disciplined improvement of yourself. If that isn't effective for you don't do it, but based on your comment it seems like you're coming at it from the wrong angle. Fair enough, I haven't looked into s…
Otherwise I know the fact will be written in the sand, it won't be there for me to use at the time when it would be useful. That's terminology from a book on memory I read a while back, which ironically I've now forgotten name of because I never put it in Anki.
Also should say I used to be much more scatter gun with what I put in Anki, but these days I combine it with Obsidian which I think is more managable.
Anyway not trying to sell Anki to anyone, if you don't need it don't use it for sure. I just know (think?) it's working for me, at least compared to the alternatives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs memorize information at a superhuman level the same way an 8 tb harddisk does. Silly.
Actually it's way easier to search for the information in an LLM compared to an 8 tb harddisk. The search is vague, and the result is nondeterministic, but in a lot of cases it's still the better method. https://fchollet.substack.com/i/137628402/llms-as-program-da... I like the way this article puts it. "LLM is a continuous, interpolative kind of database"
That funny way to spell "hallucinated"