
Augmenting Long-term Memory - rrherr
http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
======
kalonis
I use anki for around seven years now and it has proven to be the best
learning technique for me so far.

When I went to university I still believed that understanding is everything
and learning will happen en passant. I read many books, pondered long about
them, and forgot everything a month later.

Five years ago I started studying again (computer science) and as anki has
already been usefull in learning programming for me I used it extensively
during my studies. Instead of taken notes on paper I just marked important
facts while reading and made anki cards for them afterward. Sometimes these
where simple atomic facts like "What is the definition of XYZ?", sometimes
they demanded a longer answer "How does x yield y?". It took me about 20 to 30
minutes each day to reherse my cards (while commuting to work) and learning
has never been that easy.

I soon realized that understanding a fact or each step of a proof the first
time you read it is not as important as often stated. Understanding often only
came with learning because anki forced me to think about these facts daily.
That was much more effective than pondering hard about them once.

I made a deck for each course the day it started and archived it after the
exam. But not only did this help me during the exam I also forgot far less of
what I have learned afterwards. Overall I would say that learning with
flashcards took only about a fifth of the time it would have taken with other
learning techniques that have a stronger focus on understanding (mind-maps,
active reading &c.)

~~~
notheguyouthink
What are the biggest features for your use of Anki, if you don't mind me
asking?

I'm writing my own self hosted backend for this type of thing, and I'm curious
what features might be of most help for me to memorize data. Though, it's
quite possibly that I'd just make a bridge to Anki, who knows.

~~~
kalonis
As I used Anki to learn a lot of math and computer science related topics one
of the most valuable features has been its integration of latex and the
possibility to type formulars.

The thing I missed the most about anki was any possibility to edit and manage
my cards in plaintext files. I would have really liked to type my cards with a
real texteditor like Vim instead of the integrated gtk text input field.

~~~
tbabej
> The thing I missed the most about anki was any possibility to edit and
> manage my cards in plaintext files.

Well, that's exactly what I implemented with the vim plugin referenced in
comment below!

------
tbabej
If somebody is looking to streamline their Anki/Mnemosyne card creation, I
created this vim plugin a while back:

[https://github.com/tbabej/knowledge](https://github.com/tbabej/knowledge)

It takes a plain text note file and converts it to a set of cards. Syncs the
updates if the notes change, and also supports things like images.

I don't have as much time as I used to for open source development, and could
certainly use some help (especially on the Anki side, as I am a Mnemosyne user
now).

Note that this allows you to not only have a set of flash cards, but also a
nice collection of notes grouped by topic, if you want to have an overall look
at the section of your domain knowledge (say, linear algebra) in context. This
is a bit hard to do with a set of cards already entered in a flash-card
application.

~~~
GGjj
Besides there are several scripts that make flashcards from text files for
Anki. My favorite at the moment is [anki-editor for
emacs]([https://github.com/louietan/anki-
editor](https://github.com/louietan/anki-editor)) because it stores the anki
note-id in the org-file so that I can update existing notes in Anki (contrary
to most other scripts I know).

------
carapace
Fantastic article!

I want to point out that the essence of these systems, Anki and the others, is
that you are teaching your brain what you value.

Your brain is an organ, a kind of _gland_ for _thought_ , and it uses a huge
amount of energy (in the form of calories and oxygen, your brain uses
something like 20%-- one fifth --of all the oxygen you breath) to do its job.

The brain is only going to spend as much energy as it has to for you to
survive, because evolution made it that way. It's only going to spend its
energy budget on memory of "facts" if it's convinced there's important
survival value to do that.

This budget is largely automatic, but you can influence it, and these flash-
card systems work by doing that.

The time and attention you put into setting this up and then being able to
successfully answer the questions that pop up, exactly mimic the time,
attention, and reward of _hunting small game_.

Think about how a cat _studies_ anything mouse-like, and compare that to the
way _most students_ treat studying...

Anki, et. al., set up a scenario where your brain is being trained to regard
memory and recall of facts as a fun and easy way to scratch that survival
itch.

Your brain can actually remember things instantly and permanently and without
conscious effort (in the extreme, pathological case we get _phobias_ ) but it
won't bother unless it's convinced you care.

------
r41nbowdash
"Most students will not use such trivial devices as flash cards; it seems to
be beneath their dignity. They suffer accordingly."

Richard Hamming

------
veli_joza
This article is about committing knowledge to long term memory. I've been
thinking about ways to actually augment long term memory with external
storage. I'm unsatisfied with current software (mind maps, OneNote/Evernote,
WorkFlowly, org-mode...). They all feel like building a document. I noticed
when I come back to my notes in those formats it takes too much time to
retrieve information and to add new information without re-structuring
existing information. The existing solutions are not optimized for quickly
putting down some facts/ideas/goals for later retrieval, without worrying
about layout and structure.

To efficiently augment memory, the software (especially UI) should mimic the
way we think. Each captured thought should be in some way related to one or
more previous thoughts and stored in the correct context. Inputted notes
should be fairly short and they should be organized in graph structure. Edges
should define relations, for example: contains, depends on, implies, follows.

When retrieving a thought it should be visualized in context with other
related thoughts. This graph should have same layout each time it's retrieved,
for better visual navigation. If the system limits the visualization of graph
up to 2nd neighbors, there should always be enough space on 2D plane to expand
the graph with new thoughts. Manual layout should be discouraged because it
wastes too much time.

The basic storage/retrieval model could also be expanded with additional
processing to further offload brain activities: logical processing (if an
assumption proves to be incorrect, all dependent thoughts should be flagged as
incorrect/uncertain), goal prioritization, future event reminders.

The hard problem is entry method. Because such system should always be
accessible, the candidate devices are smartphone and smart watch. So far all
input methods except keyboard are too slow and error prone. Most input methods
also obscure much of screen space and require visual feedback to verify that
text is correct (swiping and auto-correct). I'm researching gesture-based and
chording virtual keyboards, but there's nothing suitably fast.

This is on my side-project back log, but hopefully I'll find something close
enough I can use instead of building from scratch. Any suggestions?

~~~
dangirsh
You are describing a Memex, and I agree there are no satisfying options.

Some related keywords / projects (from my natural memex): IdeaFlow, Mark
Carranza, The Brain, Org-brain.

For input methods, I'm excited for a combination of text-to-speech and neural
interfaces like Ctrl-Labs.

Given the level of augmentation users of Anki and Org-mode tout, I'd be first
in line for a better interface (like the one you described).

~~~
veli_joza
Great list of related projects! I missed some of them in my research. Now I'll
deep dive into each and steal all the good ideas.

Text-to-speech is very promising, but I could use it only about 20% of time
during the day. Other problem is I would constantly have to check the
recognized text for errors and have a way to delete and re-entry. So far it's
been frustrating to use.

Neural interfaces are really the end goal. AFAIK current commercially
available solutions are able to recognize only a dozen actions after training,
not enough for text input.

------
edanm
Great article! I'm a long time Anki user, and while our use patterns for Anki
are a bit different, I really identify with almost everything in that article.

I _highly_ recommend you learn and use Anki, _especially_ if you're actively
studying something (e.g., for a degree). I'm using Anki to (partially
re-)learn mathematics, and it is gratifying to know that, with a reasonable
amount of certainty, whatever I learn I'll actually _remember for the long
term_ (unlike when I did my CS degree).

------
s9w
My experience with Anki and similar programs has always been that my ability
to recall the learned information is heavily dependend on context. Words or
facts I can perfectly recall in Anki often didn't come to me in real-life
situations.

~~~
drivers99
Is part of the context translating from one language to another, vs producing
it directly? (e.g. is the front of your card "cat" and the back "gato"?) Or do
you use pictures (google image search[1] for "gato" and see what comes up, use
one of the pictures for the front of the card, and "gato" on the back). For
example, being able to speak the new language without having to think of the
words in your first language and then mentally translating it?

As mentioned in the book and website "Fluent Forever" (a language learning
method which also recommends Anki), it's better to translate from a picture to
the new language rather than learning to translate from your first language.

[https://fluent-forever.com/](https://fluent-forever.com/)

"No Translation"

"Use pictures when learning new vocabulary and grammar rules. You'll discover
that you can actually remember what you've learned."

[1] "Fluent Forever" suggests trying google image search in your target
language because many words are not direct translations, and you'll notice
differences in what types of images come up for words. gato/cat is not a great
example of this though

~~~
yorwba
Words and pictures are just different ways to represent a concept whose
description in the target language you want to learn. It probably impacts
fluency (i.e. speed) when you first come up with a word in one language and
have to translate it into the other, but learning the connection "word ->
word" and "picture -> word" should be equivalent otherwise.

I would try using pictures more to see whether there actually is a difference,
but most words I'm practicing with Anki don't corresponding to visible objects
at all.

------
nige123
The beauty of human memory is not what we remember but what we forget.

------
doneata
What is the current state of collaborating on Anki decks? I see there is the
CrowdAnki plug-in – this exports decks to a JSON file, which can be version
controlled and uploaded to Github. But how well does this work in practice? I
feel it would be nice to have a more integrated way of collaborating on decks.

~~~
michaelbarton
I took the "learning how to learn" course in Coursera. They discuss Anki and
recommend each person makes their own flash cards because that's also part of
the learning process.

------
tw1010
This is great. Anki looks amazing. The reason I don't use Anki, though, is
that I feel like the things I wish I could remember are rarely things I would
have had enough foresight to make a flashcard for. In other words, I rarely
feel like I have a problem remembering things that I would have been wise
enough to make a reminder about. The things I wish I could remember are things
in books that I didn't even pay much attention to on a first reading. It's
things that I wish I could see all the hidden connections to once I realize
some new insight.

There are things I know I want to remember and there are things I realize I
would have wanted to remember more clearly only after I have learned some
fundamentally new way of viewing the world. The former Anki solves but they're
rarely things I feel a problem with, and the latter is by definition things I
wouldn't have paid enough attention to to write down in Anki.

------
bra-ket
It would be interesting to automate the “ankyfication” process, i.e. given a
text extract a set of questions and answers , then it can be used either for
personal learning or as a feed to a memory machine

~~~
gnat
It would be interesting, and has been tackled eg by
[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mheilman/papers/heilman-smith-qg-
extr...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mheilman/papers/heilman-smith-qg-extr-
facts.ppt) . Nielsen specifically hypothesises that coming up with the
questions yourself is part of learning and building understanding. Using
software-generated q’s and a’s would be like using someone else’s deck, only
the someone else is a program.

~~~
closed
I haven't studied this issue much, but was surprised to hear on one of the
learning scientists podcasts that generating cards may not be very useful for
learning / consolidation.

(It was in one of their first 6 episodes, not sure what to think of the claim)

[http://www.learningscientists.org/podcast-
episodes](http://www.learningscientists.org/podcast-episodes)

------
ryanmercer
I augment my long-term memory by truly augmenting my brain via blog posts on
ryanmercer.com that I tag thoroughly, Evernote entries that are filed broadly
and tagged thoroughly and by forwarding remotely useful emails to myself in
Gmail with the search strings I'd likely use to find them in the future.

Obviously this requires connectivity but I'd rather offload the stuff to a
server somewhere than carry EVERYTHING in my mind.

------
elefantastisch
Does anyone know if there is an alternative to Anki with a better web
experience? My biggest hurdle in using Anki is working on computers on which I
am unable to install software and the lack of quality support for the web
version.

~~~
nlazaris
Yeah! I'm working on one here: [https://github.com/pensieve-srs/pensieve-
web](https://github.com/pensieve-srs/pensieve-web)

------
hossbeast
Anyone have a link for where to obtain the desktop and mobile clients? I
couldn't find links in the page, and Google play store has dozens of things
named Anki.

~~~
closed
Home page - [https://apps.ankiweb.net](https://apps.ankiweb.net)

Android app -
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki)

------
XorNot
This is fascinating. I'm starting a new job soon with a new platform to learn
and this is something I'm going to incorporate.

------
barking
windows client installer is pretty large at 29MB and scores 3 detections out
of 66 on virustotal.

~~~
GGjj
actually one flags it as suspicious. so 2 detections. I think that's quite
good if I compare it with the much more popular latest firefox for windows
installer which scores 1 detection out of 64
[virutstoal]([https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/d35d12cb0e864c59edbf7e2630...](https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/d35d12cb0e864c59edbf7e26304a0f33aa3a89e33299b91e62233ee43884cd74/details)).

------
hamilyon2
Remembering is not as important as training. As recent HN submission put it,
you can't tell people anything. You can, however, learn languages with anki-
style cards, if that is what you want.

