Great quote! Where's it from?
730 karma · joined July 31, 2019
Which I discovered from this post: https://blog.stephsmith.io/how-to-be-great/
I wasn't sure how to name this post well so if anyone has any ideas let me know (since it's not about literal magicians)
There's generally a tradeoff in communication between convenience and value over time. Talking is highly convenient but value doesn't extend over time because of forgetting. Messaging is better because of history but is hard to reference because of sheer volume. Emails and threaded conversations are better and easier to reference (alongside being parallelizable) but don't hold up over decades.
To extend problem solving processes over decades, systems like Andy Matushak's evergren notes [1] or supermemo.guru (site article is from) are essential. Having ideas in a place where they can be reused and built on is import for building up higher and higher level ideas.
Take this statement for example: "In a society structured around the idea of a concept network [2], a new layer of conceptual organization can be formed in which humans, computers, intelligent agents, databases, executive agents, organizations, corporations, etc. can form an equivalent of advanced concepts."
Sharing a statement like this, and being at least sort of believed, requires that people can follow path of derivation. Shared, collective (or even individual) concept networks make this possible so that an idea I come up with today can be reused by me and others in the far future.
This is just for knowledge. In terms of networks of people that self-organize more effectively, some of the links at the bottom of the page are interesting. Haven't gotten around to all of them yet but I quite look forward to reading about teal organizations [3].
[1] https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes
To maximize intelligence, we should focus on maximizing the acquisition of high-quality knowledge
I've found it quite useful and stress relieving. Instead of worrying about if I'm good enough, I can spend my focus on what knowledge to acquire and acquiring it effectively.
None of these people criticizing SuperMemo have actually used it (as far as I know, or if they did, probably a decade or two ago). I know lots of people that have switched from Anki to SuperMemo with way better rep loads. If you look at supermemo.guru and any of the writings of the creator, it's quite clear he knows what he's talking about. It would be pretty insane that over 30 years of research, he couldn't come up with a significantly better algorithm (currently sm18).
When it comes to SuperMemo though, you're not managing learning. You more put in what you want to learn, push a lever or two (priority/intervals) and supermemo takes care of the rest. SuperMemo is way less stressful than normal learning because when you use it and are doing reps, you can focus as much as you want on what's in front of you and move on when you want to. The costs of switching between things are near 0 since you'll always see the thing again (unless you decide not to).
For working on more than 1 project at once, I think that's pushing it though with incremental writing (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_writing) it becomes more feasible to work on multiple things in parallel incrementally (also enjoyably).
Agree. Also agree that actually using something is more important than how good it is. I just strongly object to:
>outdated algorithm corresponding to worse or better results to me is neither here nor there. There's evidence that the repetition interval itself is not the critical factor in retention.
claiming that algorithm does not matter, especially from people without experience actually using both.
>(Example: I learn through cognitive dissonance so I use it primarily to deprogram certain associations in my head. For instance, the word "oficina" looks like "office" to my English brain, but the word actually means "mechanic's workshop" in Portuguese. Or "pretender", which looks like pretend in English, actually means "intend". SRS helps me drill the Portuguese meaning into my skull. I use SRS to memorize bits of knowledge that don't fit anywhere and that are hard to create a context for.)
you look to be describing exactly interference: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Interference you might find 20 rules article useful for it: https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20ru...
>I have looked into SuperMemo in the past because I was attracted to the prospect of a general pro-level memorization tool. I use complex pro tools all the time and was not fazed by the learning curve, but I felt the UI was, let's say, overfitted to the creator's personal preferences. It was a purely emotional decision but I knew I wouldn't use it regularly, and the best SRS tool is one that one would use over one that one would not.
That is understandable. I will say: I personally like the interface. To anyone reading this, I might seem insane but for a high-level user it just clicks and works (with few quirks here and there). Likely because I lack imagination I can't imagine how I'd make it look nicer while still maximizing usability.
It is of course terrible to share with newcomers. But I've taught many people SuperMemo, I think the main issue with the UI for most people is just that you don't understand it. Once you get over that I think it's not so bad.
I can comment on myself though. I'm very low conscientiousness/have ADHD (without conscientiousness issues I'd probably have gotten 3-4 times as much done as I otherwise have). Around 2 years ago, and much of last year, I was pretty miserable. It's hard to say exactly what my thought process was back then (since I think differently now) but I got stressed very easily, could not message people without bad anxiety/overthinking, was in poor fitness, got little done, etc. etc..
I'm not sure what percentage of it I can attribute to supermemo (since you can't tell where memories come from) and I still struggle a fair bit but I've been able to get significantly better at managing stress sanely, not stress about talking to people so much, improve fitness and other lifestyle changes. A lot of these seem like they'd be things you just sort of do build but for the stress stuff in particular, I think I've been influenced heavily by stuff I've learned (though a big part of that influence also comes from creator of supermemo himself, both over email and from supermemo.guru). If I get back to incremental writing, I think you'd be able to see some of the benefits I've had in terms of creativity. Some days I can't sleep because there are just too many ideas popping up to be written down. Unfortunately I haven't gotten into the habit yet though I plan to establish a few other baser habits (like better sleep, ironically) and after to move back to it.
If you want to hear a miracle story where I started using supermemo and then wrote 10 research papers and completed lots of huge projects, you won't find that with me (I think 5-10 years from now you might). I don't regret it all though because the delta from where I started and to where I am now is huge (though it's hard to feel it day to day because of hedonic treadmill).
I would note, if you do try SuperMemo, maintain skepticism. One mistake I made especially when I first started is just importing neat things and memorizing them, without thinking about application. I'm certain that there are users at least 3x better than me, entirely because they're good at being selective/have more base knowledge so they can get rid of more overlapping inputs.
The SuperMemo creator has spent 3 decades and collected plenty of data, it's hard to imagine that he wouldn't be able to improve on an algorithm from 1990.
These suggestions cannot be taken to their conclusions in many cases but I think they are still good inspiration to try.
to actually try supermemo, you can get sm15 full for free or sm18 as a trial: https://supermemo.wiki/learn/#/
One reason I never want to work for a normal company is that I wouldn't be able to take naps. Not sure how I'd survive that.
One note for anyone reading this wanting to try naps: the timing matters a lot. Woz recommends napping around 7-8 hours from waking, NOT at a fixed time of day. (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Best_time_for_napping).
There's lots of individual variance meaning it requires experimentation. For me, I usually take a nap between 5-7 hours from waking.
If you use supermemo/are interested in it, it has a thing called sleepchart (https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SleepChart) in which you can log sleep data and then see some cool graphs spit out (if you also use supermemo for learning, you can very cooly see correlations between sleep and repetition grades).
I think this might come down to heart rate. I've found that when I bike home at like 10 pm from somewhere say 30 minutes away, I'm fine now with sleep but when I first started biking back from somewhat far places I couldn't sleep well all night.
https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Circadian_phase I follow this graph from him and I've found that if I exercise at the time marked as "sports" even 1 hour isn't enough for my heartrate to lower which leads to a worse siesta nap. I'm hoping that long-term as I get more aerobically fit it becomes less of a problem.
More generally, I don't think the argument is that strenuous exercise impairs sleep. More that it effects your circadian rythm. iirc from talking to Woz, for him, sports make him more tired and bring sleep phase earlier and I think my experiences are somewhat similar, though both of us exercise in late morning.
I myself only started using SuperMemo over the last 2 years but I think in the last 1, I've seen lots of friends get massively better and I'm looking forward to what we create over the next 5 years.
In terms of new implementations, one thing I'm excited about is dendro: https://dendro.com.au/.
It's made by a long-term supermemo user and some other friends and I think is the best shot at a modern incremental reading alternative to SuperMemo. It's missing lots of features and is aimed at bring IR to the masses rather than power users but I personally like it and find it good enough to use on my phone when I'm on the go.