Here’s the re-written version, and thanks for the feedback.
Having an Anki deck is kind of useless in my view. When you encounter a new idea, you need to integrate it with the rest of your thoughts. For a technique, you must integrate it with your unconscious. But often, there’s a tendency to just go “oh, that’s useful” and do nothing with it. Putting it into space repitition software to view later won’t accomplish anything since you’re basically memorising the teacher’s password. Now suppose you take the idea, think about it for a bit, and maybe put it into your own words. Better both in terms of results and using Anki as you’re supposed to.
But there are two issues here. One, you haven’t integrated the Anki cards with the rest of your thoughts. Two, Anki is not designed such that the act of integrating is the natural thing to do. Just memorising it is the path of least resistance, which a person with poor instrumental rationality will take. So the problem with using Anki for proper learning is that you are trying to teach insturmental rationality via a method that requires instrumental rationality. Note its even worse teaching good research and creative habits, which requires yet more instrumental rationality. No, you need a system which fundamentally encourages those good habits. Incremental reading is a litttle better, if you already have good reading habits which you can use to bootstrap your way to other forms of instrumental rationality.
Now go to pargraph two of the original comment.
P.S. Just be thankful you didn’t read the first draft.
Haha, thanks for the rewrite, makes much more sense now.
tradeoff cognitive buck
Completely agree: too easy to cram mindlessly with Anki, I think in large part because of how much work it takes to make cards yourself.
I’m a bit skeptical of the drilling idea because cards taking more than 5 seconds to complete tend to become leeches and aren’t the kind of thing you could do long-term, especially with Anki’s algorithm. Still worth trying though, would be interested to hear if you or anyone else you know has gotten much benefit from it.
With the thoroughness vs. designer complexity, I think all the options with Anki kind of suck (mainly because I don’t think they would work for my level of conscientiousness, at least).
If end users make their own cards, they’ll give up (or at least most people would, I think. It’s not very fun making cards from scratch).
If you design something for end users (possibly with some of the commoncog tacit knowledge stuff) I think it’s sort of beneficial but you wouldn’t get same coherence boost as making stuff yourself. Too easy to learn cards but not actually integrate them, usably. It also seems like a pain to make.
For declarative knowledge, I think the best balance for learning is curating content really well for incremental reading alongside (very importantly) either coaching* or more material on meta-skills of knowledge selection to prevent people from FOMO memorizing everything. I think with SuperMemo it wouldn’t be hard to make a collection of good material for people to go through in a sane, inferential distance order. Still a fair bit of work for makers but not hellish.
I’m very, very, very curious about the tacit knowledge stuff. I still haven’t gotten through all of the commoncog articles on tacit knowledge, though I’ve been going through them for a while, but in terms of instrumental rationality they seem very pragmatic. (I particularly enjoyed his criticism of rationalists in Chinese Businessmen: Superstition Doesn’t Count [by which he means, superstition doesn’t mess much with instrumentality]. I still have yet to figure out how to put any of it to use.
*while teaching people how to do IR, I’ve found direct feedback while people are trying it works well. It took me ages to be any good at IR (5 months to even start after buying supermemo and then another like 3 to be sort of proficient) while I can get someone to me after 1-2 month proficiency in a single ~2 hour session. Works wonders in areas where you can do lots of trial/error with quick feedback.
Could you rewrite some of the first paragraph? I read it 2-3 times and was still kind of confused.
Funny you linked commoncog, was about to link that too. Great blog.
Here’s the re-written version, and thanks for the feedback.
Having an Anki deck is kind of useless in my view. When you encounter a new idea, you need to integrate it with the rest of your thoughts. For a technique, you must integrate it with your unconscious. But often, there’s a tendency to just go “oh, that’s useful” and do nothing with it. Putting it into space repitition software to view later won’t accomplish anything since you’re basically memorising the teacher’s password. Now suppose you take the idea, think about it for a bit, and maybe put it into your own words. Better both in terms of results and using Anki as you’re supposed to.
But there are two issues here. One, you haven’t integrated the Anki cards with the rest of your thoughts. Two, Anki is not designed such that the act of integrating is the natural thing to do. Just memorising it is the path of least resistance, which a person with poor instrumental rationality will take. So the problem with using Anki for proper learning is that you are trying to teach insturmental rationality via a method that requires instrumental rationality. Note its even worse teaching good research and creative habits, which requires yet more instrumental rationality. No, you need a system which fundamentally encourages those good habits. Incremental reading is a litttle better, if you already have good reading habits which you can use to bootstrap your way to other forms of instrumental rationality.
Now go to pargraph two of the original comment.
P.S. Just be thankful you didn’t read the first draft.
Haha, thanks for the rewrite, makes much more sense now.
tradeoff cognitive buck
Completely agree: too easy to cram mindlessly with Anki, I think in large part because of how much work it takes to make cards yourself.
I’m a bit skeptical of the drilling idea because cards taking more than 5 seconds to complete tend to become leeches and aren’t the kind of thing you could do long-term, especially with Anki’s algorithm. Still worth trying though, would be interested to hear if you or anyone else you know has gotten much benefit from it.
With the thoroughness vs. designer complexity, I think all the options with Anki kind of suck (mainly because I don’t think they would work for my level of conscientiousness, at least).
If end users make their own cards, they’ll give up (or at least most people would, I think. It’s not very fun making cards from scratch).
If you design something for end users (possibly with some of the commoncog tacit knowledge stuff) I think it’s sort of beneficial but you wouldn’t get same coherence boost as making stuff yourself. Too easy to learn cards but not actually integrate them, usably. It also seems like a pain to make.
For declarative knowledge, I think the best balance for learning is curating content really well for incremental reading alongside (very importantly) either coaching* or more material on meta-skills of knowledge selection to prevent people from FOMO memorizing everything. I think with SuperMemo it wouldn’t be hard to make a collection of good material for people to go through in a sane, inferential distance order. Still a fair bit of work for makers but not hellish.
I’m very, very, very curious about the tacit knowledge stuff. I still haven’t gotten through all of the commoncog articles on tacit knowledge, though I’ve been going through them for a while, but in terms of instrumental rationality they seem very pragmatic. (I particularly enjoyed his criticism of rationalists in Chinese Businessmen: Superstition Doesn’t Count [by which he means, superstition doesn’t mess much with instrumentality]. I still have yet to figure out how to put any of it to use.
*while teaching people how to do IR, I’ve found direct feedback while people are trying it works well. It took me ages to be any good at IR (5 months to even start after buying supermemo and then another like 3 to be sort of proficient) while I can get someone to me after 1-2 month proficiency in a single ~2 hour session. Works wonders in areas where you can do lots of trial/error with quick feedback.