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Comment by bertylicious | Hacker News Reader

Exactly my thoughts. The article is all pseudoscientific hogwash.

I skimmed through to understand what it's about or at least to know what a "prompt"/"spaced repetition" is. I still don't know, but I bet it's something very trivial.

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I find it peculiar that you can confidently dismiss something as pseudoscientific hogwash while simultaneously admitting that you don’t know what it is.

This might help:

https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition#

Because one can recognize the signs of pseudoscience even without knowing anything about the subject matter. E.g.:

- obscuring language

- missing references and/or imprecise citations

BTW your link does not explain what a prompt is.

A prompt in this context is just the side of the flashcard that prompts you to remember the "other side"/answer. They can be questions, sentences with words missing, or many other things. E.g. for learning a language a prompt could be the English word, prompting you to remember the translation. Gwern calls them "questions" in his article, but "prompt" is more general, given that they're often not phrased as questions.

There are many examples of prompts and answers in the main article, with blue backgrounds, and prompts about the article's content with red backgrounds.

It doesn't explain what "spaced repetition", "memory", "understanding", or "experiments" are either. It is written for people who already use spaced repetition, and aims to help them improve one aspect: writing prompts. It is not intended as an elementary introduction to spaced repetition, and so it doesn't bother to explain basic concepts.

Your objection is a little like complaining that a computer science textbook aimed at post-grads doesn't bother to explain what a variable is. Some background knowledge is assumed.

Man, those two comments sound uncharitable. In the first paragraph Andy states:

> This guide assumes basic familiarity with spaced repetition systems.

The words "prompt"/"spaced repetition" are basic jargon for such systems.

But to make this comment at least a bit helpful, too: An example of a "prompt" in a spaced repetition system is the front of a flashcard. It's "spaced repetition" because you look at them multiple times, spaced out over time.

So it is something rather trivial indeed.

Your persistent desire to expose your ignorance and belligerence to us all on this subject is quite fascinating. Spaced repetition as a mnemonic tool and pedagogical technique has decades of scientific research behind it and a simple search on Citeseer leads me to more than a thousand citations. It is neither trivial or pseudo-scientific.

Maybe it is time to stop digging.

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