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Augmenting Long-Term Memory
This places us in a curious situation: we have enough understanding of memory to conclude that a system like Anki should help a lot. But many of the choices needed in the design of such a system must be made in an ad hoc way, guided by intuition and unconfirmed hypotheses. The experiments in the scientific literature do not yet justify those design... See more
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
Simon estimated chess masters learn between 25,000 and 100,000 of these chunks during their training, and that learning the chunks was a key element in becoming a first-rate chess player. Such players really see chess positions very differently from beginners.
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
I see chunking like zooming out on a map. If you’re an amateur you’re probably looking at the street view, or maybe a block of a neighbourhood, as you become more experienced, you’re zooming out, as these neighbourhoods seem common, similar to a degree, they become chunks like cities, districts and so on.
Speed of associative thought is, I believe, important in creative work. – John Littlewood
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
What you Ankify is not a trivial choice: Ankify things that serve your long-term goals. In some measure we become what we remember, so we must be careful what we remember*
* With apologies to Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”.
. This is always true, but Anki makes it especiall... See more
* With apologies to Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”.
. This is always true, but Anki makes it especiall... See more
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
While this wasn't too difficult, it was somewhat demoralizing and discouraging. It'd be better if Anki had a “catch up” feature that would spread the excess cards over the next few weeks in your schedule. But it doesn't.
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
Richard P. Feynman, “What Do You Care What Other People Think? Further Adventures of a Curious Character” (1989)
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
I've tried one experiment in this vein: miming the action of typing commands while I review my Anki cards. But my subjective impression was that it doesn't work so well, and it was also quite annoying to do. So I stopped.
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
Reminds me of Feynman — behaviour and style of writing.
That said, it'd be good to better understand when the transfer works and when it doesn't. Even better would be a memory system that integrates into my actual working environment. For instance, it could query me on Unix commands, while placing me at an actual command line. Or perhaps it would ask me to solve higher-level problems, while at the comma... See more
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
Context-aware programs that can interact with me actively or passively. This is what I want to make.
I know many people who try Anki out, and then go down a rabbit hole learning as many features as possible so they can use it “efficiently”. Usually, they're chasing 1% improvements. Often, those people ultimately give up Anki as “too difficult”, which is often a synonym for “I got nervous I wasn't using it perfectly”. This is a pity. As discussed e... See more
Michael Nielsen • Augmenting Long-Term Memory
Andrew Price gave the same advice in his Blender for beginner’s course.
And we praise those to be really creative when they have to “think outside the box” while constrained in a box, so to speak. Play within a simple set of constraints and see the endless combinations you can come up with.
Between 0 and 1 is a series of infinite numbers right?