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> they think memorizing all the world capitals was a way to improve your intelligence. It's not.

It definitely is. I don't understand the disdain for facts. If, when talking about a city, I know that it's a capital city, I am smarter than I would be if I did not know, and I have a better ability to participate in the conversation. If I know a bunch of constants (in whatever trade I work in) offhand, I can quickly do calculations in my head. Does knowing how many centimeters are in an inch make me smarter? Yes, it does. There was a reason why you memorized every letter in the alphabet.

> The way to do that is to just read books, study, work hard in your chosen field

Spaced repetition is literally just a way to study. You make the cards as you read books.

> Same thing with, like, "memory palace" stuff: being able to memorize a deck of cards is probably fun, and it's a nice parlor trick, but it will not help you solve real-world problems, analyze situations, make discoveries or be a better engineer.

> The way to do that is to just read books, study, work hard in your chosen field and keep up with the latest developments.

These are the same things, just a different form.

Ahh got you. Yeah agreed on a lof of that. What I do is when I learning something that I think will be useful, but that I'll forget, I stick it in Anki.

Otherwise I know the fact will be written in the sand, it won't be there for me to use at the time when it would be useful. That's terminology from a book on memory I read a while back, which ironically I've now forgotten name of because I never put it in Anki.

Also should say I used to be much more scatter gun with what I put in Anki, but these days I combine it with Obsidian which I think is more managable.

Anyway not trying to sell Anki to anyone, if you don't need it don't use it for sure. I just know (think?) it's working for me, at least compared to the alternatives.