> Does anyone actually ever just read a thing over and over again hoping that it sticks? I think that's what he's saying, yes. He opens with that exact anecdo

> Does anyone actually ever just read a thing over and over again hoping that it sticks? I think that's what he's saying, yes. He opens with that exact anecdote about himself: "I can still remember, after receiving a test grade that I wasn’t thrilled with, believing that I would’ve done better if I’d just gone over the material more times." I think I agree with his final point (as you seem to do), but I think he doesn't communicate it very well. I was going to object to his penny example, saying that although I've seen probably tens of thousands of pennies, I've never been once been asked to pick out the real one: that particular neural pathway I've never used. (Also, it's likely if these were actual pieces of copper that I could pick up and look at, I'd have a better feeling for which one looked right.) But in a sense, that is his point: What neural pathways are you using? Simply passively consuming material ("going over it") can make you think you've "got" it when you don't. Retrieving it exercises the "retrieval" pathway; so if what you're trying to do is pass an exam where retrieval of facts is an important factor, you should practice that. But you can't stop there; even practicing retrieval can get boring quickly, so maybe you need to add in ways to make it more interesting, so that you can actually get more retrieval in. And finally, sometimes retrieval isn't even what you want at all. I find this particularly when learning a language: that being good at flashcards doesn't translate well into being able to read or understand words in context. And reading a word in the same context over and over again quickly looses effectiveness too. If your goal is to be able to fluidly recognize a word in an unknown context, you need to actually see it in a lot of unknown contexts. His thing mainly seem to be about making it hard though, which is a bit confusing to me.