I say this with all the kindness that I have... this article/guy is really sad.
First of all, if you think you've found the world's ultimate fighting technique, don't try to show it to random people for approval. Use it. Anki yourself in secret until you're a super-saiyan, and then unleash your strength on the quivering masses. Hear the lamentation of their women, until they are begging you for mercy and also to teach them about spaced repetition.
That brings us to the second problem... spaced repetition doesn't work. Or rather, it does work, but it does the wrong thing. If you want to be a walking encyclopedia, maybe SR is a good approach. But if you want to understand the world, be able to do things, be funny and gregarious, know the answer but also know when to play dumb... SR can't help you. Even if you want to learn a language, if you can't learn it by using it, do you even need it?
I was excited about SuperMemo, Anki, etc. too at one point. Eventually I decided that they just aren't that good. Now here's the thing: if you really think SR is the best thing ever, don't argue with people - prove us wrong.
> if you really think SR is the best thing ever, don't argue with people - prove us wrong.
Prove you wrong how? By learning things with it? Plenty of people already have used SR to pass tests, aid in learning a language, etc. There are scientific papers that show SR to be an effective learning tool.
I really don't get what you're asking for. It's not like SR learning is going to let you "unleash your strength on the quivering masses".
You also have to propose an alternative to it. In your comment, you seem to have critiqued it with "if you want to be an encyclopedia, maybe SR is a good approach. But if you want to understand the world .... SR can't help you".
The fact that you say "If you want to be an encyclopedia, maybe SR is a good approach" indicates to me that you think SR does actually work, and so there's nothing to prove here.
Yes, obviously if your strawman is "SR compared to moving to the culture to learn a language", then SR will fall short. But no one is saying that, everyone's saying "Instead of looking up a word in a dictionary each time you forget it, use SR, and instead of just doing immersion, do immersion + SR"
> Prove you wrong how? By learning things with it?
The author of the article is specifically struggling with his evangelism. He says he thinks the world would be a better place if everyone used spaced repetition. I don't know (can't imagine honestly) what sort of utopia he envisions, but he needs to show instead of tell. Just like I need to.
It's so insanely hard to lead people. I think the only thing that works is to lead by example. Any sort of talking is just fluff. You have to show people how to accomplish or attain something they care about.
As for SR itself... for decades we've had some of the smartest people (and perhaps even some of the best educators) like Richard Feynman decry rote memorization in the classroom. SR takes the worst 8th grade history class you ever had and doubles down on it. You can choose what to memorize, but it's still just memorization. Why not use a personal knowledge base (== your Anki deck) that you can refer to, and let your memory naturally cache the things you commonly use?
If you have a problem and you're considering SR as a way to solve it, my advice is to really drill down into what the problem is. Why do you think you need to fill your brain with snippets of data? (If you're just trying to pass a test, then sure, use Anki.)
> As for SR itself... for decades we've had some of the smartest people (and perhaps even some of the best educators) like Richard Feynman decry rote memorization in the classroom
At the same time, learning in most areas requires some memorization. Even if, in terms of knowledge skills, SR only helps directly with the memorization component, there's considerable empirical evidence that it does make that more time efficient. Using it to structure that part of learning allows you, all other things being equal, to reduce the proportion of learning time devoted to memorization.
> SR takes the worst 8th grade history class you ever had and doubles down on it.
Well, SRS maybe. Having first learned about SR in ballroom dance teacher training as a tool for structuring both curriculum for in-person instruction and personal practice, I disagree.
The common usage pattern for spaced repetition software may do that, but spaced repetition is more than just that.
The “Feynman technique” is all about writing your own notes, reviewing them to identify gaps in your knowledge, and organising them. That is basically how you are supposed to use spaced repetition software. In this context, Feynman’s criticism of rote memorisation just means “avoid downloading premade decks.”
Sadly Feynman technique presupposes you're taking good notes.
It is also extremely labour intensive compared to spaced repetition without noting - using direct material of similar or higher level, preferably different modality - passive, creative, vision, sound, kinesthetic.
How do you note a movement? Or sound?
You'll waste some time reading material you already know, but that is the essence of spaced repetition; the use of different modality makes it much more potent.
This is what the SR tools don't get, or where you need to put in huge amounts of time building decks. Most of them pose passive problems. Even the simplest learning books have exercises which are supposed to engage active modality, on top of testing.
> The author of the article is specifically struggling with his evangelism. He says he thinks the world would be a better place if everyone used spaced repetition. I don't know (can't imagine honestly) what sort of utopia he envisions, but he needs to show instead of tell. Just like I need to.
This standard isn't tenable for some things.
For example, I think the world would be a better place if we gave everyone free healthcare. What's that, the standard for this has to be me literally doing the thing I'm advocating for?
In a similar vein, all the author's really saying is "if people cared about learning, and implemented strategies to learn, we'd live in a better world" (a more informed, thoughtful society perhaps). Whether SR actually accomplishes any of that is questionable, but the idea that people continuing to practice to learn will improve the world does not seem like it merits a "show me and I'll believe you" answer.
Just like it's unreasonable to say "well, implement free healthcare, until then I won't believe that it's worth doing", it's unreasonable to say "convince everyone to use SR, until then I won't use it or be convinced". It's an impossible bar.
It's also impossible to lead by example for aggregate behaviors. If you think that a park would be better if everyone picked up dog poop, and you lead by example by picking up all your dog's poop, that doesn't mean you're wrong if other people still don't pick up their own dog's poop.
Right. If you're gonna "lead" by talking, the disconnect is only going to widen. A leader doesn't need to know the details, but need to know enough to be relevant.
Spaced repetition is the way your brain stores everything, even abstract ideas, mathematics,etc. You can only remember anything either by having repeated exposure to it, or having it really connected to some other memory of yours.
Also, you seem to underestimate the importance of having encyclopedic knowledge. I agree that it is not useful to have random facts in your mind, but passive knowledge is extremely important - like even on topics you are not well-informed about, having learnt something about it in the past will put you in a much more open-minded position on it.
If people were to remember some really basic biology from high school, they would be much less open to bullshit like “alternative medicine”,anti-vaccines, etc.
> If you want to be a walking encyclopedia, maybe SR is a good approach. But if you want to understand the world, be able to do things... SR can't help you.
Yes, merely memorizing a lot of facts is not very useful. But unfortunately, burning a lookup table to your head is often a crucial step for actually using many types of knowledge, and it's a real headache for beginners. I find it's entirely possible to fully understand a result, yet unable to clearly remember it. When you need to use the result, having to pause and think (even for a few seconds), creates a significant cognitive overhead. Being able to recall some results mechanically is often advantageous.
For example, a long time ago, it was lifechanging after I had discovered "man 7 units" and eventually remembered that 1 kilo = 1/(1 milli) = 1e3, 1 mega = 1/(1 micro) = 1e6, 1 giga = 1/(1 nano) = 1e9, 1 tera = 1/(1 pico) = 1e12, I was able to calculate much faster, and to say "The CPU is clocked at 1 GHz, which means it ticks every 1 nanosecond" without thinking. Previously, I fully understood what a SI prefix is, but I simply couldn't build a lookup table in my brain to map words to the number of zeros, and always needed to pause a moment to count. The man page allowed me to instantly check it while making calculation without leaving the commandline, effectively it was spaced repetition without software, and I finally remembered them...
This is when spaced repetition is useful - burning some lookup tables to your brain. It cannot help you to understand things, but it has its place. Just be aware of its limitation.
The thing is, SR is the world's "ultimate fighting technique" in school. Outside of school and language learning there are more caveats. It's not always obvious which facts are worth memorizing, and sometimes we're not actually doing much new in our day-to-day work. It certainly won't in and of itself turn you into a 10X programmer. But neither will touch typing. It certainly doesn't hurt though.
> Even if you want to learn a language, if you can't learn it by using it, do you even need it?
I'm not really into flashcards, but I'm seeing a lot of comments like this, that flashcards are only good for memorization. I think they're more useful than that. You can use flashcards similar to how you would train a machine learning model, large iterations of input and feedback. People who are serious about language learning with SRS don't just study words but whole sentences per card. You could probably use flashcard to train yourself in many things that would be considered skills, not just knowledge. For example, you could put chess problems with answers on flashcards. If the resolution were high enough you could probably train yourself to recognize forged paintings. Things like that.
It reinforces something I think I’m slowly learning: tools are just tools, nothing more. Anki has its place, as does an impact driver; neither will make you a better person by itself.
I don't think anyone promised that spaced repetition would turn you into The Most Interesting Man in The World™, and if they did you would be rightfully disappointed. But SR is good at getting you to remember things and sometimes that's the problem you need to solve.
Not everything can be solved with a hammer, but sometimes you have a bunch of nails that need to be hammered-in.
If memory helps, spaced repetition can help. You’re confusing knowledge with facts. You put in what you want to be reminded of at spaced intervals. Half of my spaced repetition stuff is actually my own personal philosophy and observations about life.
Knowledge isn’t that crap you get out of books. It’s whatever you can know that empowers you.
I read this article and I was “ok memorization, but is that learning??” And even after perusing the supermemo website, and so on I’m still not convinced that this isn’t anything more than memorization for exams.
There’s a reason why this is popular in the “rationalist” community: they’re mostly college kids. I have never seen a coworker or other industry professional use any of these tools.
Why, because doing isn’t the same as remembering. Over time you remember by doing. That’s it.
It's a good tool for learning natural languages especially if you cannot practice with native speakers every day.
I agree with you that for knowledge you need everyday it is better to just learn on the job. The relevant knowledge will stick/you can note it down in a cheat sheet if needed. There's just not enough time to learn the full feature set of a programming language, you won't need most of it anyway and you will be a better programmer by reading existing code and writing code yourself, which incidentally is similar to how best to learn a natural language (listening and speaking)
First of all, if you think you've found the world's ultimate fighting technique, don't try to show it to random people for approval. Use it. Anki yourself in secret until you're a super-saiyan, and then unleash your strength on the quivering masses. Hear the lamentation of their women, until they are begging you for mercy and also to teach them about spaced repetition.
That brings us to the second problem... spaced repetition doesn't work. Or rather, it does work, but it does the wrong thing. If you want to be a walking encyclopedia, maybe SR is a good approach. But if you want to understand the world, be able to do things, be funny and gregarious, know the answer but also know when to play dumb... SR can't help you. Even if you want to learn a language, if you can't learn it by using it, do you even need it?
I was excited about SuperMemo, Anki, etc. too at one point. Eventually I decided that they just aren't that good. Now here's the thing: if you really think SR is the best thing ever, don't argue with people - prove us wrong.