undefined | Better HN

0 pointsitsrajju2y ago0 comments

Your boy is precious! He's on his way to becoming a highly intelligent adult.

I've seen a lot of people going like... why remember stuff when you can easily google it? But it doesn't work that way. The more facts reside in your brain, the more avenues it has to connect them together and generate insights (after all, that thing is the OG "neural network").

I highly admire your parenting in this aspect, and I hope to do the same when I have kids of my own.

Edit: I noticed after publishing my comment that you're Derek Sivers! I've been a long time reader of your blog :)

0 comments

blago2y ago

I think it's even more precious that the boy has learned how to learn and has developed a taste for achievement based on a dopamine loop that doesn't employ sugar or special effects in 4K.

jhrmnn2y ago

I’ve never remembered anything by memorization. Only at school and university for exams, and only to promptly forget it one week later. The stuff that I have remembered for years I learned organically by using it, as part of some mental process, by embedding it in some larger structure. Be it coding, physics, or history. So I think this is a fairly individual matter

FL33TW00D2y ago

I highly doubt this is an individual matter. Cramming (massing) for exams is literally the antithesis of SRS.

Look into Andy Matuschaks work: [Dwarkesh Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmeRQN9z504) [How to write good prompts](https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/)

kiba2y ago

That's spaced repetition in a nutshell.

1 more reply

exe342y ago

Yep! This kid has a super power! I don't understand why this sort of learning to learn isn't taught in schools - I only discovered anki and even spaced repetition at age 35, and I could really have used it at school!

I think the workaround that I came up with myself was to work through a large amount of derivations (maths, physics and chemistry) and try to note the common stuff and prepared shorter and shorter versions of the notes from which I could rapidly reconstruct everything else.

In hindsight, I was training an autoencoder.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsitsrajju2y ago0 comments

Your boy is precious! He's on his way to becoming a highly intelligent adult.

I highly admire your parenting in this aspect, and I hope to do the same when I have kids of my own.

Edit: I noticed after publishing my comment that you're Derek Sivers! I've been a long time reader of your blog :)

0 comments

blago2y ago

I think it's even more precious that the boy has learned how to learn and has developed a taste for achievement based on a dopamine loop that doesn't employ sugar or special effects in 4K.

jhrmnn2y ago

FL33TW00D2y ago

I highly doubt this is an individual matter. Cramming (massing) for exams is literally the antithesis of SRS.

Look into Andy Matuschaks work: [Dwarkesh Podcast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmeRQN9z504) [How to write good prompts](https://andymatuschak.org/prompts/)

kiba2y ago

That's spaced repetition in a nutshell.

1 more reply

exe342y ago

In hindsight, I was training an autoencoder.

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse