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it's kind of crazy that spaced repetition has completely revolutionized language learning and then not really changed the world in any other way at all. why are there no great scientists who are inhumanly good at remembering the corpus of their field through incremental reading? why are there no insanely good engineers who know every detail of their entire stack through spaced repetition?
H1: Anki Doctors misdiagnose more often, because they get stuck with thought patterns like "Ah, sniffly nose, sore throat, must be... Diseasitise", instead of correctly thinking "Ah, sniffly nose, sore throat... might be Diseasitis, or the cold, or the flu, or..."
H2: Anki Doctors are worse because they over-fixate on interesting/novel diseases that are more salient in an Anki deck, instead of just putting some thought into what would be the most logical fit for the ailment. "Your big toe hurts? Must be super-cancer+", instead of "Your big toe hurts... [thinks for a bit] did you kick it on something?"
H3: Anki Doctors are better, because they know a larger range of diseases, and can diagnose more broadly. While a normal doctor might exit med school, and start with a broad range of diagnoses they hand out, perhaps as they gain XP, their range shrinks, and they find their 'go-to' diagnoses. On the other hand, an Anki Doctor might exit med school, and keep their range broad, as long as they keep practicing their Anki deck.
a really nice thing with spaced repetition is that you haven't replaced how your memory functions, just augmented it a bit. but it's still fundamentally your same brain, one with the ability to ask questions like "am I zooming too much/not considering all options?" or "is what's salient to me actually what's happening?" doing spaced repetition doesn't have any bearing here unless it gives you a false sense of confidence in what you know or doing it crowds out developing other skills.
I'd expect H3 to be true, ceteris paribus, but would also expect that hav... (read more)
Imo, best way to make cards is to do it while you study.
1. Read textbook
2. Highlight things that are discrete packages of info
3. Once you've finished that section, go back and turn the highlights into Q:A pairs
4. 1. Q: What is the capital of France?
2. 1. A: Paris
5. OCR those written down Q:A's and have Claude format them into proper Anki format, with a skill (Or, you could vibe code a program to do this. I was mostly adding cards before vibe coding was a thing)
6. Add the output .md file to anki
This was the best way I found to study head and neck anatomy. Worked especially well if I'd just come out of the cadaver lab, and was already in the right 'vibe'