Karpathy on Learning | Hacker News Reader

Karpathy on Learning

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19 pointssonabinu8 comments

Excellent point. The workout analogy is good. When I'm really studying something, I eventually get a 'heavy' or 'warm' feeling in my body from the effort of concentration. You can feel how metabolism increases from the sustained effort.

I think those light videos can work as an introduction, but then you have to start to dig in. Watch something for 20 minutes and make notes. Then study 2 hours with 1 to 2 breaks. I can't keep studying more than 2 hours a day because it's exhausting, but I may do a 30-minute refresh and recap later in the same day.

> Learning is not supposed to be fun.

I don’t see why it can’t be - at least some of the time. I’ve certainly had fun learning difficult things.

Rest of post seem solid - that part just stood out a bit

ive been debating buying an ipad to improve my learning ergonomics. Anyone use ipad as main learning device?

also i can rarely allocate 4 hrs of time to anything with two young kids at home

I’ve found that increasing the number of screens is not helpful at all for learning.

What worked for me was building a system that lets me think consistently everyday. And by system, I mean sitting in a library with paper books and if really necessary, with my existing laptop.

i've been mainly using chatgpt to learn. i can drill it endlessly for concept i dont understand. Previously i was forced to move on with holes in understanding.

also the new ui that is more visual is making a huge difference. only think i dont like is that i take a lot of detours but chat is linear instead of a tree.

I just bought an android tablet for myself yesterday and I'm reading and replying on it. It really helps me for reading longform content. I was mostly a mobile and paperback person, but when I started reading on my wife's ipad, it was a game changer. I read more books and comics in the past years.

It was hard to get back to reading after she passed, but getting a tablet for me is a fresh air and it now encourages me to read more. Mine is a 13 inch S10 Fe Plus, a bit large sometimes, so pick the right size that you like. Screen type might matters (if you're reading at night), but amoled ones are way costly right now.

sorry for your loss. Its so cool that you have this cool memory about borrowing your wife's ipad.

Honestly, I've been using a remarkable tablet for reading papers and also as a notebook to jot things down or to work out problems. It's fairly convenient and I think having a pen/paper like experience really helps with retention. Since it's pretty limited on what it can do (e.g. no notifications/no apps really), it's a fairly distraction free experience.

There's other tablets/systems that work similarly and tbh, I think having no apps or limited accessibility is really a bonus for this type of work.

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