I was curious what you wrote but a search turned up no comments/messages from you on Patreon (likely their bug!)—do you happen to remember what post you commented on?
Conversation
Must have been around end of August 2020. Patreon don't let me go so far. Once you unsupport all archive is gone.
I'm not sure if my feedback went as a comment on a post, a tweet or elsewhere.
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my feedback was essentially asking why u are so focused on spaced repetition & didn't explore other ways like retrieval practice or generation.
Was short.
A few months later you explained (a post or talk) that you will engage more w/ your sponsors but I was on my way out anyway
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Thanks for looking—I can't find it on either Twitter or Patreon.
One curiosity: spaced repetition (at least as I've been working with it) necessarily involves retrieval practice; in fact, that's the mechanism at play. Is there some other sense of that phrase you mean?
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I don't agree. SR is a special case of space practice but retrieval practice is a lot more general and don't imply repetition. You could very well vary retrieval practice. One time check terms/definition, another time retrieval and again later generation and finally an MQ.
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SR works very on terms,unequivocal Q/A like extending foreign language vocabulary, acquiring jargon or exact definitions.
I used flashcards a lot for all those purposes.
but two/three main drawbacks ...
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1/ Knowledge is rarely forgotten completely, what is forgotten is the index, the key. The way you learn (ex: list of formulas) is rarely the same you will use to retrieve it at the time of apply. Multiplying the pathways that leads to K is essential. SR don't encourage that ...
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2/ Preparing cards takes time and is limited to the understanding at that time. Time better used at enlarging your knowledge to understand deeper ( like reading examples of use, or how it became so).
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3/ SR encourage narrow views. One problem, one answer in isolation of the context, the history, prior and future knowledge or gaps. Generation and retrieval overcome that.
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SR works well for very formal stuff I normally just don't memorize. I don't pass exams. I can have a cheatsheet, or write shortcuts, checklists & other job aids
the best memorization technique is to not need to memorize.
Why memorizing the syntax of 'ln -s' for example ?
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Replying to
I could defend "ln -s", but I think that's less interesting than the broader question of the value of memory in professional work. One angle I like:
Creative insight requires noticing connections, contradictions, coincidences. These necessarily depend on your "working set".
e.g. if you stumble upon a finding which intriguingly contradicts a previous result you'd seen—in a way which could yield some new theory—you can only notice this contradiction if you remember the prior result.
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half true. It will depend if your pathways lead there, not assured by SR and a vague memory is enough, you can always look in your references, or books.
Typically when I read something complex, for a long ago topic, I will refresh my memory before.
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