I'm glad this post looks at how we can get better at learning — it's an interesting area, and I think that meta "how does my brain work" is important to understand as part of the process.
I did want to give some feedback, though. I think this post suffers from too much hand-waving, which is what plagues most other posts about learning and spaced repetition (excluding probably just Gwern). For example, it compares flash cards and reading to just reading, citing the results of the study as a negative:
> This is however a very slow process. One study implies that in the best case it takes adults 10 years of reading 1 hour a day to get twice as effective at reading. Even if this is technically learning exponentially, the improvement rate is so slow that the process is indistinguishable from a linear one.
...
> We said in the best case it takes adults 10 years to get twice as effective reading. With spaced repetition it takes only days for your time to get twice as effective. These growth rates are completely different.
Maybe the rate of change of effectiveness of the reading is slow, but does that matter if you're accumulating knowledge from all of that reading, especially as it builds off of prior knowledge? I also don't think it's a 1:1 comparison to contrast these. It only takes days to get twice as effective at reading with spaced repetition? Or at learning? If it's the latter, I don't think that's what the earlier study measured?
The other thing that jumped out at me is the huge focus on spaced repetition and memory for learning, which are absolutely helpful, but there seems to be a lack of what constitutes memorizing versus understanding (and I'm not sure I see that in the Learning is Remembering post either). I think about other ways to build your understanding, like working through problems and applying the knowledge, that are key to learning. Much of learning physics is getting your hands dirty in the equations, and there's a big difference between knowing a formula and really understanding it in action.
> It only takes days to get twice as effective at reading with spaced repetition? Or at learning? If it's the latter, I don't think that's what the earlier study measured?
It only takes days for spaced repetition to get twice as effective, not reading. It takes you years to get twice as effective at reading.
> I think about other ways to build your understanding, like working through problems and applying the knowledge, that are key to learning. Much of learning physics is getting your hands dirty in the equations, and there's a big difference between knowing a formula and really understanding it in action.
I agree, you should definitely work through problems and apply your knowledge. The post is arguing that you should do that AND spend a little bit of time doing spaced repetition, not to only do spaced repetition and nothing else.
Ah OK, that makes more sense. I think my main confusion there is that getting twice as effective at spaced repetition doesn't seem to directly translate into learning more — as another comment mentioned, you're still learning the same number of flash cards in the second week, right? What really is the y-axis in the graphs?
> The post is arguing that you should do that AND spend a little bit of time doing spaced repetition, not to only do spaced repetition and nothing else.
From my perspective as a reader, I'm not sure I see either post discussing working through problems and applying your knowledge, but I do think the inclusion of that would make them both much stronger, especially since it seems like you've clearly thought about them from your comments! I do see the mention of reading + spaced repetition and the mention of memory helping math problems in the other post, but I'm not sure I see where you've explored what that active use and problem solving looks like (or how spaced repetition helps).
Again, I think this a great idea, and I don't mean to be negative for the sake of negative — you were asking for feedback on your post, and I figured I'd offer some :)
I did want to give some feedback, though. I think this post suffers from too much hand-waving, which is what plagues most other posts about learning and spaced repetition (excluding probably just Gwern). For example, it compares flash cards and reading to just reading, citing the results of the study as a negative:
> This is however a very slow process. One study implies that in the best case it takes adults 10 years of reading 1 hour a day to get twice as effective at reading. Even if this is technically learning exponentially, the improvement rate is so slow that the process is indistinguishable from a linear one.
...
> We said in the best case it takes adults 10 years to get twice as effective reading. With spaced repetition it takes only days for your time to get twice as effective. These growth rates are completely different.
Maybe the rate of change of effectiveness of the reading is slow, but does that matter if you're accumulating knowledge from all of that reading, especially as it builds off of prior knowledge? I also don't think it's a 1:1 comparison to contrast these. It only takes days to get twice as effective at reading with spaced repetition? Or at learning? If it's the latter, I don't think that's what the earlier study measured?
The other thing that jumped out at me is the huge focus on spaced repetition and memory for learning, which are absolutely helpful, but there seems to be a lack of what constitutes memorizing versus understanding (and I'm not sure I see that in the Learning is Remembering post either). I think about other ways to build your understanding, like working through problems and applying the knowledge, that are key to learning. Much of learning physics is getting your hands dirty in the equations, and there's a big difference between knowing a formula and really understanding it in action.