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Fascinating. As a child, I semi-reluctantly learned vedic chanting when staying with relatives over the summer. It was very interesting to understand the “algor
by ajju 6y ago
Fascinating. As a child, I semi-reluctantly learned vedic chanting when staying with relatives over the summer. It was very interesting to understand the “algorithms” behind the techniques they used to have us memorize each “shlok”. As the author says, these served an important purpose to transmit knowledge to future generations when writing materials and books were scarce and delicate.
- naruvimama 6y agoThe idea that memorization was used due to a lack of writing material is just a modern and shallow interpretation. The ancients considered written text as less authentic, and rightly so. Oral knowledge is spread among the populance and can not be destroyed or distorted by few actors.
- keiferski 6y agoIt seems increasingly obvious to me that memorization and learning play a really important role in maintaining basic intellectual standards. Everything can’t be googled and even if it could be, retrieval isn’t equivalent to knowledge. Having personally memorized a lot of things via Anki, there is a noticeable difference when you can “chew on” something mentally at a subconscious level.
- moneywoes 6y agoAny tips for using anki?
- bloodorange 6y agoI'd suggest spending the time needed to read through the documentation they have. It's not a lot of reading and it helps you understand how it works, what choices it makes and subsequently, it is easier to figure out for yourself how you want to use it. https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual20.html https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual20.html
- keiferski 6y agoSure! 1. Use Cloze cards, not regular ones. Much more powerful. Also learn the shortcut for applying the Cloze label to a text selection. 2. Always create your own cards. I never download premade ones. 3. Break down things into small pieces. Cards should only be a sentence or two maximum. 4. Use audio, images, and animated gifs. Especially with languages, adding audio files to the cards is a game changer. 5. Create a deck for small random things and add them occasionally. For example, I can understand the alphabets in various foreign languages because I added the letters to Anki a few years ago. 6. Try adding stuff that you wouldn’t normally consider “necessary to memorize.” For example, a daily journal entry and notes from books you’ve read. Spaced Repetition guarantees that you will remember them over time. I try to do this with every book I read.
- pozazumi 6y agoIs there a way to store the database on my own server instead of the anki servers?
- keiferski 6y agoIf you never create an Anki web account, I don’t think your data ever hits their servers at all. The app itself is a downloadable. Unfortunately then you won’t be able to sync across devices. If you google around, I’m sure there is a solution to this problem somewhere. Now that I think of it, I suppose you could export your decks then import them manually on a separate desktop /laptop. Not sure if that would work on mobile.
- ajju 6y agoI had not heard of that interpretation. Interesting.
- schoen 6y ago> The ancients considered written text as less authentic, and rightly so. I know some of the ancients were skeptical of the impact of writing on knowledge and culture, but others seem to have held rather the opposite view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verba_volant,_scripta_manent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verba_volant,_scripta_manent
- earthboundkid 6y agoIf you have a long text and it is corrupted, it’s really hard to tell, particularly before the invention of checksums. Is this a hapax legomenon or did someone just misspell a word? Even things that should be clear like “is this part of the text or part of the commentary on the text” get murky: there are several parts of the Bible where scholars will say things like, we think this was meant to be an explanatory comment but it got put in the main text by mistake. Oral tradition can make these problems better because if one person has a distorted view of the text, they won’t be able to be certified as a reciter by their master. The Indians in particular had various checksum methods, plus a tradition of teaching how to pronounce things, which all would have made the text drift much slower than “a scribe messed this up and the only way to tell is to go to another region and see if their copy has the same words or not.”
- higerordermap 6y agoChants were not random data though. They had meanings in Sanskrit, (very similar to poems) and there were grammatical rules (called Chhandas). The deformation happened mostly after the practicing class stopped learning Sanskrit language and blindly memorized them.
- scpedicini 6y agoyou've obviously never played the game of telephone. If anything, purely relying on oral transmission means that the further that knowledge moves away from its source, the further variations and slight changes that will occur... intentionally or unintentionally. It is the reason why when you try to collect old folk tales or mythological stories, it is difficult to figure out the canonical version of it.
- keiferski 6y agoWe live in a culture that makes zero effort towards teaching memorization techniques. I’m sure if you had a bunch of memory champions play telephone, the end result would be pretty accurate.
- nathias 6y agoMemory isn't the faculty that makes errors in that game, the errors come from misunderstanding and that's true for any oral and written text, but in the case of writing the misunderstanding doesn't mutate the original.
- higerordermap 6y agoBut ironnically, chants themselves get slightly changed / deformed through generations. Especially because recent generations have not learned Sanskrit, and in fact many people who practiced them, while being Brahmins, had other occupations such as agriculture and accounting etc.. Few days ago, had to explain someone some word that they mispronounced was actually pronounced as something else and what it meant in Sanskrit. (Had to learn some Sanskrit in high school). The practices & customs are good only as long as the reasons / meaning are known. Otherwise they become superstitions. How many of your Indian priests actually study Upanishads? For most of them it's a job that brings food to the ~~table~~ banana leaf.