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Comment by fizixer | Hacker News Reader

> Anki as Learning Superpower

If it's a superpower, it's at best a rote learning superpower.

Can you use Anki to learn quantum field theory, and solve the lamb shift problem without looking at the existing solutions?

Cut out the hyperbole please.

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Perhaps an interesting article for you: Augmenting Long-Term Memory [1] by QUANTUM PHYSICIST Michael Nielson (emphasis mine)

[1] http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

And his website which teaches quantum computing with spaced repetition: https://quantum.country/

Memory is important part of thinking.

When you learn facts, they are easily accessible for thinking and the connections start forming even unconsciously.

The idea that you can keep the facts in a book and the brain is just like CPU that processes them is wrong. You have to remember if you want to learn complex stuff like physics.

(Author here.)

Learning has many components. Even on its own, brute memorisation is a powerful tool. But see e.g. SuperMemo's creator on Incremental Reading (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_reading) for a more generalised view of how to use spaced repetition for what you might refer to as "actual" understanding.

"learning superpower" = A learning technique so effective so as to be sufficient for all kinds of learning, to the exclusion of all other learning techiques.

Wait, what? How is that even remotely implied? Captain America's superpower is his immense strength, speed, and ability to heal; he can't read/control minds, which is Charles Xavier's thing. Just because you have a superpower doesn't mean you're God.

> Can you use Anki to learn quantum field theory,

Can you learn quantum field theory if you have to keep looking up Schrodinger's equations, and all the EM equations?

There is definitely a component of familiarity in the feeling or mental state that we call "understanding" (which is why analogies help understanding: they explain a lesser known thing using a more familiar thing). The brain is a neural network and repeated learning inputs definitely help. It's an oversimplification to look at the brain as if it's a simple Turing machine.

Yeah, somehow there's always a lot of love for spaced repetition even though it doesn't help with comprehension. I believe re learning complicated topics is better than mugging up jargon.

Rote learning absolutely does help with comprehension. If you understand all of the words in

“ Tod mach’s mir leicht, wenn du kommst vor deiner Zeit” reading it and understanding it is trivial. If you have to look up each word individually your comprehension will at best be enormously slowed. The same principle applies if what you’re reading is a chemical formula, a logical proof or a description of a historical event. Knowing the 200 or so most important events of the French Revolution by date with two sentences of explanation for context makes reading further on it enormously more productive.

Probably for languages, but even still I would assert memorizing a dictionary is less informative than reading 50 books.

I think there's a false dichotomy here. Memorising a dictionary is easy, because memorisation is a choice (with spaced repetition). Reading a book in an unfamiliar language takes lots of time and mental effort. Both will contribute to your understanding of the language; perhaps memorising a dictionary contributes less, but then there's a lower activation energy involved in it too: whenever you have five minutes spare, you can just sit down and learn a couple of cards.

Thanks! I guess I never really thought of going over cards in spare time. In retrospect, that might be why I never got into them. I only used them when I had a lot of time to dedicated towards learning the material anyway and then I preferred reading.

If you use vocab flashcards that contain an example sentence or two showing usage in context, then it is more efficient than reading a book (with regard to the language rather than the book's actual content). Personally, I read books and when I encounter an unfamiliar word, I add it to the flashcard pile, ensuring that I don't forget the new knowledge.

If you're trying to learn the content of the book, the process of converting the information into flashcards entails engaging with the material, so that isn't skipped.

No one memorizes dictionaries for language learning.

There are frequency lists of vocabulary words for languages: basically some words are used more frequently than others so memorizing the most common 1000-3000 words is enough to get very high comprehension rates for everyday conversation and reading.

https://blog.fluent-forever.com/vocabulary/

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