Augmenting Long-Term Memory

This places us in a curious situation: we have enough understanding of memory to conclude that a system like Anki should help a lot. But many of the choices needed in the design of such a system must be made in an ad hoc way, guided by intuition and unconfirmed hypotheses. The experiments in the scientific literature do not yet justify those design... See more

It is interesting to consider developing systems which may overcome some or all of these issues.

Break things up into atomic facts. Build rich hierarchies of interconnections and integrative questions. Don't put in orphan questions. Patterns for how to engage with reading material. Patterns (and anti-patterns) for question types. Patterns for the kinds of things you'd like to memorize.

Now, unless you've studied general relativity that question probably seems quite opaque.

After the match where AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, one of the strongest human Go players in history

Given how central memory is to our thinking, it's natural to ask whether computers can be used as tools to help improve our memory. This question turns out to be highly generative of good ideas, and pursuing it has led to many of the most important vision documents in the history of computing. One early example was Vannevar Bush's 1945 proposal** V... See more

While this wasn't too difficult, it was somewhat demoralizing and discouraging. It'd be better if Anki had a “catch up” feature that would spread the excess cards over the next few weeks in your schedule. But it doesn't.

It's worth deliberately practicing such switches, to avoid building a counter-productive habit of completionism in your reading. It's nearly always possible to read deeper into a paper, but that doesn't mean you can't easily be getting more value elsewhere. It's a failure mode to spend too long reading unimportant papers.

there is great value in learning to “think in more memorable ways”.

What you get from deep engagement with important papers is more significant than any single fact or technique: you get a sense for what a powerful result in the field looks like. It helps you imbibe the healthiest norms and standards of the field. It helps you internalize how to ask good questions in the field, and how to put techniques together. Y... See more