Thanks, added!

Thanks!

Thanks! My account is parconley if you'd like to add me as a co-author.

I tried, but I don't have the 100 karma on the EA Forum required to cross-post. If you or someone else would like to, feel free!

Also, if you want to work with rat-adjacent people every once and a while, there's an EA Focusmate Group you can join.

Thanks for the point. I was going to add this as a footnote in a draft relating to uncertainty about the anecdote specifically (though it doesn't quite capture your critique):

Sometimes called the Bannister Effect, though the 4-minute mile effect is more understandable. Also, I chose the 4-minute-mile anecdote because it is pithy and present in the Overton window. There exists conjecture as to whether subsequent records after Bannister's mile were due to a psychological effect (compared to, say, equipment improvements; I'm not concerned with the epistemics of this particular anecdote, so I did not investigate this in detail).

It's possible that some of the other anecdotes also were linear rather than step changes. Though, I still lean towards thinking they were step changes in behavior.

You've probably thought of this and have reasons for and against it, but maybe some hotels (bedside) and restaurants (on tables) would be willing to take copies too? Seems much less likely that libraries though.

How large do you think the marginal benefits of doing the full workout you recommend in Updates and Reflections on Optimal Exercise after Nearly a Decade versus the quicker version in this post?

Useful clarification and thanks for writing this up!

Inspired by and building on this, I decided to clean up some thoughts of my own in a similar direction. Here they are on my short forum: What are the actual use cases of memory systems like Anki?

What are the actual use cases of memory systems like Anki?

Epistemic status: spent 30min cleaning up some notes from my Obsidian I jotted down yesterday. This ontology is rough and a bit illegible but potentially useful for narrowing down the actual use cases of memory systems.

Inspired by @Saul Munn's recent short form: Active Recall and Spaced Repetition are Different Things. The concepts of active recall and spaced repetition apply pretty well here, but I saw Saul's post after writing most of the text below.

Roughly, there are types of knowledge in domains (recalling from Scott Young's Ultralearning, I might be slightly off):

• Proceduralized knowledge
• Conceptual knowledge
• Factual knowledge

I think spaced repetition systems are useful for three types of domains based on the nature of the cues in the domains:

1. Domains where you are already cued on the learnings often (e.g., key business procedures in your full-time job). You naturally get spaced repetition in these domains, so memory systems like Anki are less useful.
2. Domains where you are not cued on the learnings often or at properly spaced intervals. This may include domains where you were an expert at one point and then stopped being an expert.
3. Domains where you need to understand cues before being effective. (e.g. understanding a new language or technical domain like quantum mechanics; see Quantum Country.)

Combining the two frameworks above, Anki is useful for:

• Proceduralized knowledge where you can appropriately cue yourself and you're not cued often on.
  • Cueing procuduralized knowledge is hard, though. For example, if I wanted to review my knowledge of 'how-to-play-beach-volleyball' on a regular basis, I have to spend a time coordinating or attending an event.
  • Though, some proceduralized knowledge is possible to cue: for example, I have been using Anki to review LeetCode problems.
• Conceptual and factual knowledge that you're (2 above) not cued often on or (3 above) need to meet a criteria of knowing.
  • Conceptual and factual knowledge is much easier than procedural knowledge because these types of knowledge neatly fit in flashcards. I'm still not sure about the strict boundary between conceptual and factual knowledge, though.
  • And I think the general heuristic that conceptual knowledge is harder to cue than factual knowledge is true: medical students are obsessed with Anki while students in other vocational schools (e.g. law) don't seem to be

Accordingly, memory systems may not be useful for:

• Domains where you are cued on information often enough to get natural spaced repetition.
• Are highly procedural in a way that can't be Ankified and therefore active recall is hard.