All Annotations of [Preview]

• I tried SuperMemo a few years ago, on a Palm Pilot. My experience was that the user interface was acceptable, though not good, but data entry was too difficult on a Palm. Furthermore, I was using it to try to learn Italian, and I discovered that, yes, it seemed to be good for memorization of words, but it didn't seem to help me string those words together; for that, I still needed my traditional language books and classes.

  
  
  

  Perhaps someone who has "[turned his] back on every convention of social life" isn't the best person to be writing software to help people communicate.

  
  
  

  Also: the SuperMemo website is terrible. When I first went to it, I thought it was one of those advertising sites that's just lists of other pages. A good interface is important.

• The utter lack of interest by the education community in the science of learning isn't that much of a mystery. Since the industry is dominated by government agencies the importance of learning is diminished. What's important to the people who run a school district, that kids learn or that next year's budget is greater then this year's?

  
  
  

  Kids are measured for the learning they've accomplished but education agencies aren't measured for the learning those kids have accomplished. So why bother with all that tedious scientific stuff? You can suit yourself, fall in love with content-free ideologies and there's never any consequences.

  
  
  

  It's the intellectual equivalent of Gresham's Law in which bad ideas drive out good. Good ideas - breakthroughs - result in political/organizational upheaval. Very upsetting to people who've achieved a certain degree of success under the old regime so best ignored in favor of innovations which leave the status quo unmarred.

• I don't think your use of Gresham's Law captures its spirit accurately. A better way to describe it's effect on organizations is perhaps that 'bad' people drive out good. Where 'bad' people dominate, most of the organization's energy will be focussed on problem solving / fire-fighting and the lower-value task of achieving short-term results disconnected from any long-term goals (vs the greater payback of long-term results/goal achievement). For example in a profit-driven company of a high percentage of 'bad' people just hitting this month's numbers will be the goal. Never mind that decisions driven by short-term results often 'result' in angry customers, underinvestment in R&D + marketing etc. 'Good' people, those focussed on long-term results, will be unable to achieve what they value and will be driven out of the organization.

• As an educator I found this to be a really interesting article. I'm all for people using the internet to look up facts and question a lot of the rote memorisation that goes on in classrooms, but that doesn't mean that trainees won't need to pick up a vocabulary for the field of study they're engaged with, or an understanding of what things are possible in that field.

  
  
  

  Both of these types of knowledge are essential for making good search strings in Google ^_^ and both require a fair amount of memorisation before the student can move from the 'I suck' stage to: 'I rock'. The less time they spend in 'i suck' the more likely they are to persevere and progress to the more interesting aspects of the subject at hand, and Piotr seems to have done some great work in this area.

• an acceptable clone for linuxfags: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mnemosyne-proj/
• This is a fascinating article. Several have commented on the utility/application of memory and the value of enhancement. I think that's the missing ingredient here. If Piotr suddenly starts winning Nobel prizes based on his self-inflicted research, then I can see the value to the individual and to mankind. Otherwise, you've got a trivia-master with no game to play. Piotr's benefit seems to be that he's "very happy". Why? More money? More sex? More leisure? If I can avoid swimming in a frigid ocean, I'm happy by default, no algorithm needed.

• I was wondering the same thing as marlborotestmonkey7 - this, to what end? Self realization and personal satisfaction? What's the point in becoming a "genius" if you only reach the goal just before you die? And what "few million" items do you choose to learn? Memorization is not the same as understanding or the ability to apply your knowledge.

  
  
  

  Don't get me wrong - I'm very interested in the software and I may try it. Certainly this work seems very valuable. I wonder why he didn't collaborate on it? It would be nice just to be able to license his algorithms and plop a decent interface on top :)

• The article is fascinating, but (in general), people are very social beings and the rigor needed to achieve this man's results are simply not there for most of us. I'd like to be able to "refuse interruption", but I do have a paycheck to earn. :)