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Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

>> The techniques suggested are things many people are already familiar with [...]

And you then list 11 concepts, 5 of which I'd never heard of before I took this course, 3 more which I had not associated with aiding learning and the remaining 3 not being sufficient to help me learn more.

Your tone is unhelpful, elitist and snobby. This course is extremely useful to a lot of people - there is a reason it's popular, a reason why I recommend it to many others who seem to be struggling with studying, and a reason why this should not be the top-voted comment.

I'm sorry but I find HN utterly dismal when people say things like "Oh, Einstellung, Feynman and chunking? Sure everybody knows that, right?"

Go have a think about this: https://xkcd.com/1053/

And next time, try and be more encouraging of others, please.

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The original comment was written hastily. I clarified what I meant in a separate comment (my mistake for not editing the original):

>>> Yea didn't phrase that correctly. What I really meant was it's largely the standard stuff you come across if you spend a handful of hours browsing on the subject. But there is a convenience in having it all in one place and extra assurance in seeing it validated with actual research (Dr. Oakley is especially good at collating relevant academic papers/articles).

So what I meant is that the content mostly isn't earth-shattering for anyone who has already spent a decent bit of time trying to explore learning methods independently. I made the obviously poor assumption that the HN crowd would be disproportionately interested in that sort of stuff.

The course is longer than it needs to be in MY opinion. For instance, of the notes I posted, only about 10% was in bold in the native styling and that's the part I considered useful. I also noted elsewhere that the book is a better alternative.

People are always welcome to disagree (and many have).

Thanks for owning the assumption you made, and clarifying your point.

I made a lot of notes when I went through it. Nearly all of it was new to me, and I've got a degree and also taught at undergraduate level!

Frankly, I'd never really thought about the process of learning, as I assumed what I'd been doing all my life was good enough - the course was enough for me to realise there were better ways to do it, and has helped me already.

Nothing wrong with his comment. Yours is rude.

The original comment is condescending, and is not unusual on HN. To call that out is not rude.

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