←back to thread

Spaced repetition systems have gotten better

(domenic.me)
679 points domenicd | 1 comments | 18 May 25 11:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.269s | source
Show context
aaldrick ◴[18 May 25 16:25 UTC] No.44022472[source]▶
I see a lot of discussion about SRS, and I think most can agree they have improved.

What I would like to see covered is a more vague area, but almost more important:

It’s the space in between reading/understanding something and the SRS. There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs (web browser, PDF readers etc.) into popular SRS (Anki, Mochi etc.). They should work almost as OS additions to make everything feel native and frictionless; I don’t need another standalone tool that does X Y and Z, I just need some sort of pipe into an SRS that is Mac friendly and does the job whilst not being in the way.

If someone knows of such a tool, I would love to hear about it.

replies(17): >>44022481 #>>44022516 #>>44022739 #>>44022956 #>>44023039 #>>44023159 #>>44023189 #>>44023292 #>>44023410 #>>44023414 #>>44023548 #>>44023614 #>>44023840 #>>44024127 #>>44024938 #>>44024962 #>>44025027 #
kqr ◴[18 May 25 18:16 UTC] No.44023292[source]▶
> There are almost no standalone tools dedicated to creating flashcards easily from existing programs

I think this is a common misunderstanding. Half the benefit of SRS comes from working out what the flashcards are. You have to circle around a concept, look for similarities, differences, examples, generalisations, properties, etc.

Is it hard work? Yes. Does it help understanding? Massively.

This is also a very difficult skill which, I believe, is why many people fail to appreciate SRS. They try, write bad flashcards, don't see results, and give up.

EDIT: This also leads to another common misunderstanding, that SRS is only good for memorising facts. With proper elaboration (thanks child comment), it can be used to build understanding of complex subjects too.

replies(7): >>44023326 #>>44023466 #>>44023623 #>>44023905 #>>44024137 #>>44024379 #>>44025195 #
1. aaldrick ◴[18 May 25 18:45 UTC] No.44023466[source]▶
Fair point, please see my comment in response to allenu, in this same thread, for a detailed view.

I did not mean to glaze over this aspect, I am aware this is very important. I can not and do not use AI for automating flashcards for this reason alone. But, I think my point still stands, getting information from one disparate app into another adds a lot of friction (saving it somewhere, copy and pasting and yada yada) to something that (I believe) should be as easy as possible. We have 1 click instant payment, but I can't have 1 click get this into some sort of inbox in Anki ready to flashcard-ify?

To be honest, I have a whole frustration with apps and windows that I'm still trying to word, but fundamentally all we are doing when we are "computing" is moving information around. I wish that information was a first class citizen at the OS level that could be leveraged by any app immediately. Utopian view but this stuff ain't gonna think about itself.