Hacker News Reader

Comment by buserror | Hacker News Reader

I agree. In fact, what I find the most interesting part about reading is .... forgetting about it! Basically concepts will sip thru, but learning the details is just a waste of brain cells, in my opinion.

Just leave the brain do it's job, don't read as it's a marathon, take breaks, think about that bits you've just read that was interesting, then promptly forget about it. You'll forget the details, but not the backbone of it.

Details don't matter in the end. Quite frankly the idea of knowing /by heart/ the name of the greek goddess blah blah blah he uses as an example would bore me solid. Worse, anyone knowing it and telling me about it would bore me solid :-)

View on HN

> don't read as it's a marathon, take breaks, think about that bits you've just read that was interesting, then promptly forget about it.

That's basically the spaced repetition model. You need to forget a little bit, so that working memory isn't saving you, and the recall process takes effort. That's what builds long term memory. Spaced repetition systems just extend that process beyond the length of the book, in a time shorter than rereading a book.

> Quite frankly the idea of knowing /by heart/ the name of the greek goddess blah blah blah he uses as an example would bore me solid.

I agree, the names of greek gods is a bad example, unless you're a student of mythology. Spaced repetition is hard work, so probably only deploy it on things that matter. A better example might be Bayes Theorem. Incredibly powerful, but unintuitive and easily forgotten. Cards for Bayes' theorem might include the purpose: "Bayes' Theorem calculates how to adjust our prior beliefs given new evidence", as well as cards about the formula, or an intuitive visualization.

Or, maybe you want to learn more about the linux internals and spend a portion of your time memorizing the meanings of signals and errnos as a small part of a larger program of study. Sure, you can look these up in a man page, but part of the value in knowledge is knowing things exist. How many developers do you think know of SIGUSR2? Or... SIGBUS ;)

I don't see how cards would help me with mathematical ideas. You have to get them on a fundamental level, and then they're hard to forget. I'm more likely to forget the name of the theorem. But space repetition might be useful for formulas.

But I'm not too crazy about spaced repetition. I used it to learn all the capitals in the world, and after about a month I managed to do all of them without error. But after two years of barely using the knowledge, I only remember half.

Of course, I could keep reviewing it every few months to keep it fresh, but that's just not an efficient system, when you think of how many things I'm supposed to (and do) remember.

For me, at least, the best way to remember things is by tying them in as many associations and metaphors as I can, and that gives me a pretty reliable recall. It has some downsides: It's a bit more work than spaced repetition (requires creativity, for example), and it's not that good for unconnected data (but then, are random facts that useful anyway?). But I think that as a long-term method, it's much more solid.

I have had reasonable success using spaced repetition with math proofs (written in LaTeX). I create cards sparingly, often based on questions from problem sets which I shouldn't have gotten incorrect (i.e. the mistake stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of concepts, not a misstep in algebraic manipulation)

> I don't see how cards would help me with mathematical ideas. You have to get them on a fundamental level, and then they're hard to forget.

I find it too easy to trick myself into believing I understand a concept on a fundamental level. But often that "understanding" slips away, and six months later when faced with an example problem out of context I struggle to solve it.

Agreed.

Also notice how he mentions he remembers "trickle down economics" was a "very important idea" during Reagan's presidency. But there is no mention whatsoever about the idea itself, how it's considered today, whether it was a good or bad idea, its relation to neoliberalism, whether he understands how politically divisive the idea is, etc.

Someone remembering trickle down economics was something from the Reagan era tells me nothing about their understanding of that idea and their opinions about it. Precisely the bits I want to know!

The article not about 80's economics. He was just making a point, of course he knows the concepts he mentions with more depth than discussed in the post.

Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't.

He is arguing for memorization. I'm saying memorization of this kind of "facts" seems unconvincing at best. Memorizing a "data card" about Reagan with this scribbled on it seems like something that would only be useful for a trivia quiz. "Mozart composed this or that", "Reagan's presidency had something to do with trickle down economics", "Washington had false teeth [1]", etc.

I know this isn't your main point, but I cannot resist to comment:

> The article not about 80's economics

It still pervades political discourse in many countries of Latin America, and many believe it's the cornerstone of neoliberalism, so...

----

[1] I wanted to write "wooden", basing my knowledge in LucasArts' Day of the Tentacle, but apparently this is false.

Indeed, a fact like "Shostakovich composed his 5th sympohny in 1937" may have little value on itself, but its value is compounded with related facts. For example, if you also knew that Shostakovich was Russian, you could deduce with reasonable certainty that he composed this piece while living in the USSR (knowing also that the USSR was in place in 1937).

This in turn might allow you to enjoy the piece more, because you can relate the music to the time period and better understand what it depicts and what the composers intention was.

Now, you could also simply read a brochure about the piece/composer before the concert and you would know the same or more, but this would cost you time you may not have at that moment.

---

Anyways, I don't think he is arguing for memorization, rather, he argues that you should first learn something (by reading) and then use some tools to remind you of what you have learned in order to not forget it. It turns out that the tool he chose for this is one that reminds him of some facts once in a while. The intention is not necessarily to know these facts, but to be reminded of the learned concept through these. Whether this is an effective method or not I do not know. One could end up becoming very focued on the facts, forgetting the deeper knowledge behind them (as happens in eductation, but for different reasons).

---

Maybe I went a bit too in depth with this :p

I dont understand your point about my point (the article not being about 80's economics). Are you saying that because it is important, the article should have elaborated on it?

Thanks for the reply. I see what you mean, but I'm not entirely convinced that knowing trivia is really helpful, except maybe to impress your friends (I tend to effortlessly remember all sorts of crap from Wikipedia, the more useless the better recalled, which makes for fun conversation... sometimes).

As for my nitpick, it was a tangential point I couldn't resist making: that trickle down economics is not exclusively an 80s thing, but (sadly, in my opinion) remains very relevant today.

> I dont understand your point about my point (the article not being about 80's economics). Are you saying that because it is important, the article should have elaborated on it?

Not the person you're replying to, but my feeling is that if you're writing an article about a system to use to usefully remember things, if you're going to then cite an example of something you've remembered, you should focus on what is actually important to remember about that fact. Saying "I remembered that 'trickle-down economics' was 'important in the Reagan administration'" does not do that, and could demonstrate that this memorization method is actually teaching you to remember the wrong things.

It doesn't matter if the post is or is not about 80s economics, but if you're going to use an example out of 80s economics to prove that your method is good, then show that your method actually helped you remember something important about 80s economics, not a piece of trivia that not only isn't useful, but is counter-productive to learn about if you don't remember the meat of the idea, and things like whether or not it was a good idea.

It's possible that the author did actually know and remember the useful parts of those facts, but did not actually demonstrate that his method helped him remember actual useful facts... which is kinda the point of his article.

I absolutely agree that memorizing facts help you understand the world. Famously, students find memorizing dates in history tedious and useless, but it's important. Any new event you hear of can be compared with many concurrent events. I don't know all that much about Shostakovich, but hearing that he composed a symphony in 1937 triggers a sequence of questions. What was his relationship to Stalinist purges in the 1930s? Did he have contacts with the Russian post-revolution emigre artists across Europe and America. What did he think of Stravinsky or Ravel? I'm listening to his fifth symphony now and I can't help but imagine the ominousness of the first movement having to do with all this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com