I think Karpathy is not in line with latest research. I’ll quote verbatim the following paragraph: “Motivation plays a crucial role in facilitating LTM retent

I think Karpathy is not in line with latest research. I’ll quote verbatim the following paragraph: “Motivation plays a crucial role in facilitating LTM retention. It may derive from external incentives (i.e., reward and punishment) or/and intrinsic incentives (i.e., personal curiosity) [29]. During the learning process, students, driven by external incentives such as high scores in exams, are more likely to focus only on unfamiliar items to “recognize” them in exams, whereas items “recognized” but not yet “rehearsed” are skimmed. As a result, these items may never be recalled outside of testing, resulting in limited access to LTM storage [23,29]. On the contrary, students with high intrinsic motivation might find studying more effortful and thus develop personal insights into the content. Therefore, spaced repetition may indirectly influence LTM storage strength through the intermediary of intrinsic motivation. Specifically, it elevates students’ learning capacity, self-efficacy, and incentive for self-growth, while controlling for their baseline proficiency [29]. The underlying reason is that spaced repetition helps students maintain the conscious effort to continue engaging with the spaced learning schedule.” You can find the original references in the quoted paper below: Yuan X. Evidence of the Spacing Effect and Influences on Perceptions of Learning and Science Curricula. Cureus. 2022 Jan 13;14(1):e21201. doi: 10.7759/cureus.21201. PMID: 35047318; PMCID: PMC8759977.