News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: How do you learn complex, dense technical informa... by BeetleB on Friday February 14, 2020 @10:56AM (#22327564)
> For anything where the information is connected, it's a lot better to use those connections instead of drilling it in a decontextualized fragments via SRS.

It's a false dichotomy. You can, and IMO should, do both.

Re:Ask HN: How do you learn complex, dense technical informa... by AlchemistCamp on Friday February 14, 2020 @08:28PM (#22332346)
It's not a false dichotomy because time is limited.

Every minute spent on flashcards is a minute that cannot be spent on more contextualized study.

Re:Ask HN: How do you learn complex, dense technical informa... by BeetleB on Friday February 14, 2020 @11:43PM (#22333324)
> Every minute spent on flashcards is a minute that cannot be spent on more contextualized study.

I often spend less than 5 minutes in the morning on my flashcards. There's not much deep contextualizing you can do in 3-5 minutes. Certainly not in areas like physics.

It is a false dichotomy. All minutes are not equal. I'll gain much more by spending less time on HN than by cutting out flash cards.