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Yeah, that was painful. How does memory work? Me, teacher who took graduate school classes on educational psychology: he’s going to talk about short-term memory

Yeah, that was painful. How does memory work? Me, teacher who took graduate school classes on educational psychology: he’s going to talk about short-term memory, etc. now. Him: NEURONS! Also, the article never mentioned the one absolutely knock down, finding that has been confirmed over and over again as effective for learning (or at least remembering): spaced repetition.

galaxyLogic 3y ago
Spaced repetition takes effort, and causes pain. It is tedious. So it still fits in with the idea proposed. I believe you need to be conscious of what you are trying to learn and if it is tedious, then you are conscious of it because tedious means you experience some strain. You will remember it better because it was painful. Just speculating but it makes sense to my layman brain.
- dmvdoug 3y ago
  Your response prompts for me a point I left out above: there’s major ambiguity here about “learning.” Learning isn’t one thing. Memorizing definitions of vocabulary words isn’t the same thing as explaining how you might apply a word in different contexts (think categorization or classification). This is one of the major things I spend lots of time on as a history teacher. Ok, great, awesome, we can kinda say what a revolution is. Uh. Uh oh. Why do we have revolutions that are French and Scientific? Those don’t sound super similar. Hey, wait, let me tell y’all about how I got on the internet when I was your age. I had to plug my computer into a wall, dial something, and a box inside my computer would screech at me. Y’all carry the internet around in your hands everywhere you go. Is that a revolution? Etc. That kind of learning is very different than looking a word up in a dictionary. And there are other kinds (procedural learning, which turns out to be actually rather different from other kinds).
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  Spaced repetition happens everyday outside of a "sit at a desk and learn" setup and is plenty efficient without effort and pain. The obvious one is seeing again and again a concept so much you end up remembering it, like the Dunning Kreuger effect (or to take it darker, being able to recipe an ad you've seen hundreds of time) If anything, I'd argue the pain and effort can be negative it will still work.
  - galaxyLogic 3y ago
    Some things you learn without really trying. We learn our native language by repetition because we hear it all around us. But the question here is what if you want to or need to learn something you won't learn automatically? What helps? Try spaced repetition. It doesn't happen every day automatically. You must force yourself to do it even though it is tedious, if you want to learn what you want to learn.
    - arrowsmith 3y ago
      I think what GP meant is that we already learn a lot of things through "spaced repetition" even if we're not consciously applying that technique. E.g. if you drive the same route repeatedly, eventually you'll remember the way without needing to look at a map. That's spaced repetition.
- watwut 3y ago
  > Spaced repetition takes effort, and causes pain. It is tedious. So it still fits in with the idea proposed This is not true. Anki is tedious and causes pain. Flashcards are such in general. But dpaced repetition does not requires either.
  - Alt4Alt 3y ago
    Can you please expand on that. Is'nt Anki one of the most popular tools for using spaced repitition? By meaning spaced repetition is easier do you mean to refer to some other tools which makes it easy to implement and use?
    - watwut 3y ago
      If you reread chapters of a book in intervals, you are doing spaced repetition. If you return back to previous topic in math and do exercises again, you do spaced repetition. Flashcard are just easy to implement application of it. Yes among flashcards, anki is the most popular. But naive use of it leads to a lot of pain and tons of problems, you have to learn how to use anki.
      - blackbear_ 3y ago
        Do you have any resources for learning how to use Anki? I use the default settings and I find them okay
        michaelcampbell 3y ago
        /r/anki on reddit is actually pretty good. Default settings are ok although I'd say 2 things that are counter to some common advice there: * Actually use all 4 ratings buttons, and come up with a scheme for when. For me it was 1: missed it, 2: had to guess, but guessed right, 3: got it, 4: got it without even reading the entire prompt * If you're insistent on the (IMO bad advice) "only use 1 and 3 keys" thing, install the "Straight Rewards" plugin. Without it, all your ease factors will decay to their lowest level (130% by default) since '1' lowers it, but '3' does not raise it, so it can only go down. With "Straight Rewards", it'll up the ease factor for you gently as you rate a card '3' enough times in a row. Alternately, install the FSRS4Anki plugin. It's more work, but is a more dynamic scheduler. Requires the V3 Anki scheduler being enabled, and one of the more later versions. Do some reading on this before you try it; you can always go back, but it's not been proven yet to be substantially better than SM2.
- michaelcampbell 3y ago
  I find SRS to be more a scheduling mechanism, not a memory one. If my memory of something is "bad" before SRS, it's going to be bad after, it's just I can let the algorithm refresh it more often than the thing I CAN remember. Actual memory "devices" (tricks, schemes, etc.) are orthogonal; SRS (for me) just optimizes my time so I don't have to go over shit I know more often than I need to. For anyone curious, my 2 go-to books on actually learning how to remember are the ones by Higbee (dry, but thorough) and Lorayne (approachable, but feels less academic). I used SRS to remember those 2 authors w/o having to look them up, FWIW. ;-)

galaxyLogic 3y ago

Spaced repetition takes effort, and causes pain. It is tedious. So it still fits in with the idea proposed. I believe you need to be conscious of what you are trying to learn and if it is tedious, then you are conscious of it because tedious means you experience some strain. You will remember it better because it was painful. Just speculating but it makes sense to my layman brain.

dmvdoug 3y ago
Your response prompts for me a point I left out above: there’s major ambiguity here about “learning.” Learning isn’t one thing. Memorizing definitions of vocabulary words isn’t the same thing as explaining how you might apply a word in different contexts (think categorization or classification). This is one of the major things I spend lots of time on as a history teacher. Ok, great, awesome, we can kinda say what a revolution is. Uh. Uh oh. Why do we have revolutions that are French and Scientific? Those don’t sound super similar. Hey, wait, let me tell y’all about how I got on the internet when I was your age. I had to plug my computer into a wall, dial something, and a box inside my computer would screech at me. Y’all carry the internet around in your hands everywhere you go. Is that a revolution? Etc. That kind of learning is very different than looking a word up in a dictionary. And there are other kinds (procedural learning, which turns out to be actually rather different from other kinds).
makeitdouble 3y ago
Spaced repetition happens everyday outside of a "sit at a desk and learn" setup and is plenty efficient without effort and pain. The obvious one is seeing again and again a concept so much you end up remembering it, like the Dunning Kreuger effect (or to take it darker, being able to recipe an ad you've seen hundreds of time) If anything, I'd argue the pain and effort can be negative it will still work.
- galaxyLogic 3y ago
  Some things you learn without really trying. We learn our native language by repetition because we hear it all around us. But the question here is what if you want to or need to learn something you won't learn automatically? What helps? Try spaced repetition. It doesn't happen every day automatically. You must force yourself to do it even though it is tedious, if you want to learn what you want to learn.
  - arrowsmith 3y ago
    I think what GP meant is that we already learn a lot of things through "spaced repetition" even if we're not consciously applying that technique. E.g. if you drive the same route repeatedly, eventually you'll remember the way without needing to look at a map. That's spaced repetition.
watwut 3y ago
> Spaced repetition takes effort, and causes pain. It is tedious. So it still fits in with the idea proposed This is not true. Anki is tedious and causes pain. Flashcards are such in general. But dpaced repetition does not requires either.
- Alt4Alt 3y ago
  Can you please expand on that. Is'nt Anki one of the most popular tools for using spaced repitition? By meaning spaced repetition is easier do you mean to refer to some other tools which makes it easy to implement and use?
  - watwut 3y ago
    If you reread chapters of a book in intervals, you are doing spaced repetition. If you return back to previous topic in math and do exercises again, you do spaced repetition. Flashcard are just easy to implement application of it. Yes among flashcards, anki is the most popular. But naive use of it leads to a lot of pain and tons of problems, you have to learn how to use anki.
    - blackbear_ 3y ago
      Do you have any resources for learning how to use Anki? I use the default settings and I find them okay
      - michaelcampbell 3y ago
        /r/anki on reddit is actually pretty good. Default settings are ok although I'd say 2 things that are counter to some common advice there: * Actually use all 4 ratings buttons, and come up with a scheme for when. For me it was 1: missed it, 2: had to guess, but guessed right, 3: got it, 4: got it without even reading the entire prompt * If you're insistent on the (IMO bad advice) "only use 1 and 3 keys" thing, install the "Straight Rewards" plugin. Without it, all your ease factors will decay to their lowest level (130% by default) since '1' lowers it, but '3' does not raise it, so it can only go down. With "Straight Rewards", it'll up the ease factor for you gently as you rate a card '3' enough times in a row. Alternately, install the FSRS4Anki plugin. It's more work, but is a more dynamic scheduler. Requires the V3 Anki scheduler being enabled, and one of the more later versions. Do some reading on this before you try it; you can always go back, but it's not been proven yet to be substantially better than SM2.
michaelcampbell 3y ago
I find SRS to be more a scheduling mechanism, not a memory one. If my memory of something is "bad" before SRS, it's going to be bad after, it's just I can let the algorithm refresh it more often than the thing I CAN remember. Actual memory "devices" (tricks, schemes, etc.) are orthogonal; SRS (for me) just optimizes my time so I don't have to go over shit I know more often than I need to. For anyone curious, my 2 go-to books on actually learning how to remember are the ones by Higbee (dry, but thorough) and Lorayne (approachable, but feels less academic). I used SRS to remember those 2 authors w/o having to look them up, FWIW. ;-)