1,039 karma · joined March 26, 2019
Try creating a note, then highlighting a phrase from that note. You'll see that you have the ability to create a card from that phrase, which will then be attached to that note. The next time you pull up that note, you'll be able to see the card and vice-versa.
You can also see attached cards and notes side-by-side if you prefer working that way.
Some feedback: I don't really understand what your app does, to be honest. Like, I understand Anki, and workflowy seems to be a nested list/task management app.
But why do the two need to be connected? How often do you memorize nested lists?
Not trying to be rude, just honestly want to know the use case.
A big part of math is building up your toolkit: when I see x, I should do y. Feynman famously made this a big part of how he approached quantum mechanics, saying that it was his toolkit that allowed him to solve problems others saw as impossible.
While the initial understanding can't be done with spaced repetition, remembering what's in your math toolkit and how to use it can very much be aided by spaced repetition. I've personally used this to great effect teaching people math through my spaced repetition app.
If you're particularly interested in pre-made sets, both my app and Mochi Cards rely on importing from Anki and Quizlet, which both have a large amount of pre-made sets.
In my own spaced repetition app [1], I simply space out the amount that people have to catch up on if they develop a huge backlog. For anki, my best advice would be to take this opportunity to delete some of the cards that you really don't need, especially if you're just doing this for fun. Anki tends to be very conservative with how long it makes you review cards, anyways.
I base my tutoring practice around it, and I've developed an app around it [1]. I actually encourage my students (and my app users) to use spaced repetition not just for facts, but for processes as well, like coding or mathematics. Going back to old, difficult processes and repeating them has much the same beneficial effects as doing so for facts.
One thing that Gwern doesn't mention, but that I've been very cognizant of, is how hard it is to keep up spaced repetition over a long period of time. That's a big part of why I've implemented streaks and rewards in my app, and also allowed my app users to review things on their own schedule or follow the algorithm. Just forcing users to follow the algorithm continuously tends to result in very high dropout rates.
The paper then concludes that SARS-COV-2 must be a result of natural selection. While I think this is possible, they ignore the possibility that the virus is a result of artificial selection. If a laboratory were studying how SARS-COV-2 could pass to humans, they might serially pass the virus between mammals (like pangolins) in order to artificially select for mutations.
That is, in fact, exactly what previous scientists did in a 2012 experiment with bird flu. They wanted to make it transmissible between mammals, so they serially passed genetically modified bird flu between ferrets until it was. I wrote this up on my blog:https://get21stnight.com/2020/04/14/why-do-some-viruses-cros... . The result of this is that bird flu acquired previously unknown mutations in order to pass between mammals.
I'm not saying this is what happened, and there are some key differences (i.e. in the bird flu experiment, scientists had to start off with a genetically modified virus). Still, I disagree that we can definitively conclude this was a result of natural selection.
Submission statements aren't required here, but I like the practice, and I feel like most people just skip to checking the comments anyway.
This (long) essay was inspired by a couple of things. First, I recently created an app that I believe works better than Anki for a lot of use cases. That's a bold statement, so I wanted to back it up by explaining why I created it and how it fits into a learning process.
Second, I recently saw a post on Medium from someone who attempted to learn the med school curriculum just through their Anki decks (which, if you don't know, are incredibly extensive). It didn't work out that well, and they seemed surprised. It made me realize that there are a lot of misconceptions about spaced repetition and its limitations. More broadly, there are a lot of misconceptions about learning in general, which, as a test-prep tutor, is something I deal with every day.
There's a lot I cover in the essay, including why the attempt to learn the med school curriculum through their Anki decks didn't work. Basically, med school covers both content (facts) and processes (skills). Only content can go into Anki, so it's already impossible to learn processes just by Anki.
More importantly, spaced repetition works great for sticking facts in your mind, but you place a tremendous cognitive burden on yourself by just learning facts without a framework. It's like reading a word one letter at a time. Similarly, there's no guarantee that those facts will ever cohere into an understanding, especially if you're coming from zero knowledge about the subject.
That's why even though med students love Anki, they also very strongly recommend textbooks and problem sets to do well on Step 1 (the massive exam they all worry about). In fact, they have an acronym, UFAP, which is their recommended materials list (UWorld, First Aid, Pathoma).
Anyhow, apologies for the length of the essay, but there was a lot I wanted to put in there. I hope you all enjoy!