100 ms·
The good news is that memory techniques have never been as accessible as they are now. I am fully in agreement with the conclusions drawn in the article, but t
by Bakary 4y ago
The good news is that memory techniques have never been as accessible as they are now.
I am fully in agreement with the conclusions drawn in the article, but the bad news is that even with those techniques it can be a slog. Any Anki user will tell you that maintaining dedication and avoiding burn-out is your Achilles' heel, not the limits of your human ability. Understanding something for the first time (in the Feynman technique sense of being able to explain it well), and doing that multiple times per day, takes up a lot of mental energy even if you are smart and naturally talented.
In conjunction with using memory techniques, we need to add dietary practices where we become much more selective with the information we take in. Places like HN give the illusion of learning (and to a great extent help broaden your mind about certain topics), but the actually utility of all that random knowledge butts up against the opportunity cost. There are already many more worthwhile pursuits than can be fit into your lifespan.
- p-christ 4y agoCompletely agree on Anki requiring too much effort, its the main reason why i'm making Save All (https://saveall.ai/ https://saveall.ai/). Save all is a simpler version of anki that use AI to try and make it less effortful
- mohamez 4y agoAll it takes then is just move from a method of remembering to another more efficient and enjoyable one, I can illustrate what I am trying to say using your Anki example by saying that once a language learner for example reaches a certain level in the language after acquiring a sized set of vocabulary, the learner can move to "abundant reading" as a way to memorize words through frequency as a more effective method of learning new vocabulary. So it's all about remembering, but what differs is how someone approaches it depending on their level and understanding of the topic they are trying to learn.
- Bakary 4y agoThis is definitely true. The snowball effect and the networking of information helps a lot. I'm trying to look at the problem with a wider lens, however. For example, if learning that language is actually something we want to do in opposition to all the things you could be doing. In the context of public education, since this is the theme the author focuses on, we don't just study certain topics, we study a certain spin on some topics that is determined by a range of government officials. In other words, you have to deal with severely limited energy and interest compared to all that is available in life so cutting chaff is probably even more important than boosting your ability to remember. In fact, selecting what to learn is life, just like a sculptor removes the parts of the marble that aren't in the end result.