JacekLach comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong

74 Post author: Yvain 19 January 2014 02:51AM

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Comment author: MondSemmel 19 January 2014 12:59:07PM *  12 points [-]

Thanks for taking the time to conduct and then analyze this survey!

What surprised me:

  • Average IQ seemed insane to me. Thanks for dealing extensively with that objection.
  • Time online per week seems plausible from personal experience, but I didn't expect the average to be so high.
  • The overconfidence data hurts, but as someone pointed out in the comments, it's hard to ask a question which isn't misunderstood.

What disappointed me:

  • Even I was disappointed by the correlations between P(significant man-made global warming) vs. e.g. taxation/feminism/etc. Most other correlations were between values, but this one was between one's values and an empirical question. Truly Blue/Green. On the topic of politics in general, see below.
  • People, use spaced repetition! It's been studied academically and been shown to work brilliantly; it's really easy to incorporate in your daily life in comparison to most other LW material etc... Well, I'm comparatively disappointed with these numbers, though I assume they are still far higher than in most other communities.

And a comment at the end:

"We are doing terribly at avoiding Blue/Green politics, people."

Given that LW explicitly tries to exclude politics from discussion (and for reasons I find compelling), what makes you expect differently?

Incorporating LW debiasing techniques into daily life will necessarily be significantly harder than just reading the Sequences, and even those have only been read by a relatively small proportion of posters...

Comment author: JacekLach 23 January 2014 07:12:00PM 0 points [-]

People, use spaced repetition! It's been studied academically and been shown to work brilliantly; it's really easy to incorporate in your daily life in comparison to most other LW material etc... Well, I'm comparatively disappointed with these numbers, though I assume they are still far higher than in most other communities

I'm one of the people who have never used spaced repetition, though I've heard of it. I don't doubt it works, but what do you actually need to remember nowadays? I'd probably use it if I was learning a new language (which I don't really plan to do anytime soon)... What other skills work nicely with spaced repetition?

I just don't feel the need to remember things when I have google / wikipedia on my phone.

Comment author: memoridem 23 January 2014 07:43:02PM 1 point [-]

Isn't there anything you already know but wouldn't like to forget? SRS is for keeping your precious memory storage, not necessarily for learning new stuff. There are probably a lot of things that wouldn't even cross your mind to google if they were erased by time. Googling could also waste time compared to storing memories if you have to do it often enough (roughly 5 minutes in your lifetime per fact).

What other skills work nicely with spaced repetition?

In my experience anything you can write into brief flashcards. Some simple facts can work as handles for broader concepts once you've learned them. You could even record triggers for episodic memories that are important to you.

Comment author: JacekLach 23 January 2014 08:47:33PM *  0 points [-]

Isn't there anything you already know but wouldn't like to forget?

Yeah, that's pretty much the problem. Not really. I.e. there are stuff I know that would be inconvenient to forget, because I use this knowledge every day. But since I already use it every day, SR seems unnecessary.

Things I don't use every day are not essential - the cost of looking them up is minuscule since it happens rarely.

I suppose a plausible use case would be birth dates of family members, if I didn't have google calendar to remind me when needed.

Edit: another use case that comes to mind would be names. I'm pretty bad with names (though I've recently begun to suspect that probably I'm as bad with remembering names as anyone else, I just fail to pay attention when people introduce themselves). But asking to take someone's picture 'so that I can put it on a flashcard' seems awkward. Facebook to the rescue, I guess?

(though I don't really meet that many people, so again - possibly not worth the effort in maintaining such a system)

Comment author: Nornagest 23 January 2014 08:09:53PM *  0 points [-]

I don't know what you work on, but many fields include bodies of loosely connected facts that you could in principle look up, but which you'd be much more efficient if you just memorized. In programming this might mean functions in a particular library that you're working with (the C++ STL, for example). In chemistry, it might be organic reactions. The signs of medical conditions might be another example, or identities related to a particular branch of mathematics.

SRS would be well suited to maintaining any of these bodies of knowledge.

Comment author: JacekLach 23 January 2014 08:45:09PM 0 points [-]

I'm a software dev.

In programming this might mean functions in a particular library that you're working with (the C++ STL, for example)

Right. I guess I somewhat do 'spaced repetition' here, just by the fact that every time I interact with a particular library I'm reminded of its function. But that is incidental - I don't really care about remembering libraries that I don't use, and those that I use regularly I don't need SR to maintain.

I suppose medical conditions looks more plausible as a use case - you really need to remember a large set of facts, any of which is actually used very rarely. But that still doesn't seem useful to me personally - I can think of no dataset that'd be worth the effort.

I guess I should just assume I'm an outlier there, and simply keep SR in mind in case I ever find myself needing it.

Comment author: Antiochus 24 January 2014 06:45:13PM 1 point [-]

I've used SRS to learn programming theory that I otherwise had trouble keeping straight in my head. I've made cards for design patterns, levels of database normalization, fiddly elements of C++ referencing syntax, etc.

Comment author: ChristianKl 24 January 2014 07:16:41PM 0 points [-]

Do you have your design pattern cards formatted in a way that are likely to be useful for other people?

Comment author: Antiochus 24 January 2014 08:14:29PM *  0 points [-]

They're mostly copy-and-pasted descriptions from wikipedia, tweaked with added info from Design Patterns. I'm not sure they'd be very useful to other people. I used them to help prepare for an interview, so when I was doing my cards I'd describe them out loud, then check the description, then pop open the book to clarify anything I wasn't sure on.

edit: And I'd do the reverse, naming the pattern based on the description.

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