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636 points domenicd | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0.886s | source
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bearjaws ◴[] No.44020922[source]
Spaced repetition has been all the rage for 20 years now.

Dozens of apps, thousands of lectures, and it turns out its not really a silver bullet.

There's nothing really wrong with it, it's just that people tend to fall off the same way they do on any other education pattern.

A couple years ago I was thinking "If Google and Apple really cared about kids they would make a spaced repetition unlock system", where by you have to make note cards every week and then have to answer correctly to get into your phone. (obviously requires some bypass system, other rules, etc)

You could probably jury rig it with a popup that comes up after you unlock, but people would never install it anyway.

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sn9 ◴[] No.44022229[source]
You say that but it's completely revolutionized the way medical students study.

IIRC the effect was so profound they had to modify the structure of some tests or something to that effect.

And polyglots have been using SRS for years.

As always, the real problem when people fail to do something that works is psychological, not technical. I'd say anyone who made an Ozempic for motivation would make a killing, but I believe it's already a scheduled substance. Maybe one without potential for addiction or abuse. Or maybe an Ozempic for conscientiousness.

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1. cpburns2009 ◴[] No.44022812[source]
I'm not so sure. My brother's medical school had to tell students they had to study the actual material rather than Anki decks because so many students were failing tests.
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2. sn9 ◴[] No.44022919[source]
That seems highly atypical.

Perhaps they were relying on LLMs to generate decks?

3. pastage ◴[] No.44023511[source]
Doing anki cards with words two hours every day, and not doing any reading of material is very detrimental for me.

I do not study medicin, but for language I have to actually be able to use what I memorize. Knowing how to use words is harder than it sounds, you need context. A common mistake when constructing sentences is getting the tone wrong and choosing the wrong synonyms.

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4. ragazzina ◴[] No.44024529[source]
..this is why you usually have whole sentences on Anki cards, not single words.
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5. pastage ◴[] No.44024887{3}[source]
Does not always help, but I am not picking. You are right it only fails in 1/100 cards.