Conversation

Balaji Srinivasan
@balajis
Why does social media make us memoryless? One thesis is: each day we see the most important thing ever. But then yesterday’s most important thing is less important. And last week’s viral post? Already forgotten. Perhaps we want more consistency and less novelty.
73
164
1,156
Balaji Srinivasan
@balajis
Here’s
@micsolana
’s recent piece on the topic.
Quote Tweet
Mike Solana
@micsolana
·
america has amnesia. nuclear power, space, and who remembers when the virus came from china? memes, by way of viral misinformation, can be dangerous, but nothing is so dangerous as the antimemespace consuming our reality. piratewires.com/p/variant-xi
Show this thread
2
3
72
Balaji Srinivasan
@balajis
If we are interested in learning and building and focusing, the complete opposite of social media could be mnemonic media. See
@michael_nielsen
and
@andy_matuschak
’s phenomenal results below. Would love to see an update if it’s available.
Quote Tweet
Michael is back in San Francisco, soon in Santa Fe
@michael_nielsen
·
Here's the demonstrated retention versus the number of times each question in the essay has been reviewed. It takes a little work to unpack, but the basic point is: demonstrated retention appears to be increasing exponentially with the number of reviews.
Show this thread
Image
8
9
97
Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
Current versions of the data MN showed look basically the same, except even more steeply exponential (i.e. actually more efficient now). Have been working to understand the dynamics of review more precisely; lots of confusing/interesting details there not ready for publication.
2
6