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I don't read for speed nor for retention. Your process certainly help with retention. It engage learning strategies such as active recall and generation. Myse

by kiba 6y ago

I don't read for speed nor for retention. Your process certainly help with retention. It engage learning strategies such as active recall and generation. Myself, I don't try to answer questions that much, but rather I like to organize information into a bunch of interconnected facts like people, events, claims, and look them up. For example, I discovered that a professor confused which Ruska brothers invented electron microscopy. He also made claims that I struggle to find citation for with a cursory google search. Then I goes a step further. I input the information into a spaced repetition system. In this way, a book or an article or a youtube video gradually disappear into knowledge and become part of my long term memory about things. Intensive or incremental reading is extremely slow for sure(I probably spent 8x times as long on my notes than reading), but knowledge creation is superior.

bonoboTP 6y ago
Unfortunately I do have problems with explicit retention. Probably some of the strategies in the comments would improve it a lot. I have implicit retention of many things, but I often forgot the sources, I cannot list my favorite books on the spot, but if we discuss a topic I'd have flashes of relevant memories come back. It's like I'd grapple with a book, dream about it, get confused, shaken, startled, questioning, then I integrate it back into normal life. Especially deeper books, like I had with The Selfish Gene which dispelled so many myths I had and confirmed things I thought to be correct. You have to go through the Baader Meinhof effect of seeing that thing everywhere. With each book I view the world from an entirely new point of view, that each seem all encompassing (how ads manipulate you, how social status and prestige works, how the finance world works and cheats, how employers manipulate, how sexual behavior works, how quantum physics works or evolution or mental games we play etc), to get the smug feeling that this current book explains it all. After going through this with 5 books, you realize that no one story explains it all, but then what to do, read about narratives, move to nihilism, then realize the boundaries of rationality and faith, believing that "good" may be in one sense illusory but worth striving for. Then you read up on more traditional views on this etc. Trying to "retain" is a bit like measuring the quality of your friendships based on how many life facts you've memorized about them. It's surely correlated, but also misses the point. The time you spent together and the experiences you had together are valuable in themselves.
- kiba 6y ago
  Unfortunately I do have problems with explicit retention. Probably some of the strategies in the comments would improve it a lot. This is pretty normal. For example, students who learned physics often forgot to apply what they already know to situations that differ slightly. If you want to bring that knowledge to the surface more often, you're going to need to add cues.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    Another meta skill is to decide when to use which type of reading. You have to do both the free-association, daydreaming, thinking-outside the-box, connecting-the-dots, aha-moment style but also the practical get-things-done down-to-earth concentrated reading. For some reason the latter style has been difficult for me outside of exam prep. So when people say college is just a prestige scam, the exams are bollocks and pointless, I always remember how it at least got me to sit on my ass and crunch through the material in a focused way. Pretending is not enough. Learn it out of passion and enjoyment but solidify it with the boring exam-style stragtey is best. The latter without the former is rote memorization that many college students mistakenly equate with simply "studying" and it leads to the issue of not being able to use it outside a course context or quiz type scenarios.
gowld 6y ago
Why work so hard to memorize facts, instead of focusing on the ideas and the consulting a reference for details when something jogs your memory? Someone mentions the Ruska bothers, you remember something about thr microscope, so you go look it up to refresh your memory.
- kiba 6y ago
  So I can look deeper the next time it comes up. You'll always be looking up reference, but your understanding will be deeper.

by kiba 6y ago

bonoboTP 6y ago

Unfortunately I do have problems with explicit retention. Probably some of the strategies in the comments would improve it a lot. I have implicit retention of many things, but I often forgot the sources, I cannot list my favorite books on the spot, but if we discuss a topic I'd have flashes of relevant memories come back. It's like I'd grapple with a book, dream about it, get confused, shaken, startled, questioning, then I integrate it back into normal life. Especially deeper books, like I had with The Selfish Gene which dispelled so many myths I had and confirmed things I thought to be correct. You have to go through the Baader Meinhof effect of seeing that thing everywhere. With each book I view the world from an entirely new point of view, that each seem all encompassing (how ads manipulate you, how social status and prestige works, how the finance world works and cheats, how employers manipulate, how sexual behavior works, how quantum physics works or evolution or mental games we play etc), to get the smug feeling that this current book explains it all. After going through this with 5 books, you realize that no one story explains it all, but then what to do, read about narratives, move to nihilism, then realize the boundaries of rationality and faith, believing that "good" may be in one sense illusory but worth striving for. Then you read up on more traditional views on this etc. Trying to "retain" is a bit like measuring the quality of your friendships based on how many life facts you've memorized about them. It's surely correlated, but also misses the point. The time you spent together and the experiences you had together are valuable in themselves.

kiba 6y ago
Unfortunately I do have problems with explicit retention. Probably some of the strategies in the comments would improve it a lot. This is pretty normal. For example, students who learned physics often forgot to apply what they already know to situations that differ slightly. If you want to bring that knowledge to the surface more often, you're going to need to add cues.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Another meta skill is to decide when to use which type of reading. You have to do both the free-association, daydreaming, thinking-outside the-box, connecting-the-dots, aha-moment style but also the practical get-things-done down-to-earth concentrated reading. For some reason the latter style has been difficult for me outside of exam prep. So when people say college is just a prestige scam, the exams are bollocks and pointless, I always remember how it at least got me to sit on my ass and crunch through the material in a focused way. Pretending is not enough. Learn it out of passion and enjoyment but solidify it with the boring exam-style stragtey is best. The latter without the former is rote memorization that many college students mistakenly equate with simply "studying" and it leads to the issue of not being able to use it outside a course context or quiz type scenarios.

gowld 6y ago

Why work so hard to memorize facts, instead of focusing on the ideas and the consulting a reference for details when something jogs your memory? Someone mentions the Ruska bothers, you remember something about thr microscope, so you go look it up to refresh your memory.

kiba 6y ago
So I can look deeper the next time it comes up. You'll always be looking up reference, but your understanding will be deeper.