https://numinous.productions/ttft/#improving-mnemonic-medium
General Principles for Flashcard Creation
- Flash cards should be atomic: they should only have small ideas
- Flash cards shouldn’t be orphans, have interconnected webs of information.
- Learn before you memorize.
Argument against people who say that they don’t want to memorize and only want conceptual understanding: In order to have a good conceptual understanding of a field, you often need to know a base level of its syntax. Memorizing that faster instead of taking a while to internalize it will actually free up more time to get a deeper understanding.
To develop transformative tools for thought, we need to combine insight and making into a loop that feeds into each other. That’s the benefit of applied research, you can be both researcher and maker at the same time. Using controlled trials in your making will give you insights to explore in your research, which can enhance your making, and give you further insights. If this can become a rapid loop, you can have new insights rapidly.
Emotion should be taken seriously as it’s a key part of what engages us into wanting to learn more and participate.
How do we encourage tft research to actually happen? Any company that develops solutions could easily be copied.
- Philanthropic funding: Researched being funded out of no corporate agenda have no reason not to let people build off of their idea. This is probably better for the public anyway.
- TFT should be a part of a company’s operations but not a part of their way to distance themselves from their competition.
Executable books:
- We can create executable books/essays to help people interact and engage more.
- Example: https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/ipynb/Economics.ipynb
Summary:
- Memory systems make memory a choice.
- Memory systems are in their infancy
- What would a virtuoso use of memory systems look like?
- Memory systems can be used to build genuine conceptual understanding, not just learn facts.
- Memory palaces are good, but lead to “artificial” memory because they aren’t connecting to existing knowledge.
- Memory systems are more important than you might think (can be used for problem solving, creative work, meta-cognition)
- What practices would lead to tools for thought as transformative as Hindu-Arabic numerals? And in what ways does modern design practice and tech industry product practice fall short?
- Mnemonic video can help us take emotion seriously
- Tools for thought should be developed with deep, original work