I swear I have read this exact same comment before

Edit: oh good I’m not crazy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38428309

You can put that card at the end of the deck now ;)

That's super weird, I wonder if GP just copy-pasted it or if there's some other weird automated business going on.

Yeah sorry, I started writing the comment, then had deja vu, so I looked at my HN history, realized I'd already said it better before, and thought it was worth just pasting the previous one. Not automated.

Damn, that's a really human-like response. This bot game is really getting serious.

Sivers is an OG. Definitely not a bot. I've looked at sivers.org/multiply at least once per year for the last 15 years.

Derek is so cool. I'm a huge ruby nerd and his approach to coding is so refreshing. [1] No libraries except sqlite for instance.

[1] youtube.com/watch?v=No3sUctcAOA

Didn't watch the video, but if I recall correctly it was always PostgreSQL?

That's what they want you to think. He's probably been replaced by a Chinese AI.

Yeah, I mean as far as HN goes, he's kind famous.

100% relevant here, and I appreciate you sharing it again. I'm inspired to try this with my 9 year old.

I frequently search my own comments too for the same reasons.

Haha no worries, hope you didn't take any offense by it

We'll find out in a year ... boy should be 12 by then.

GP is a well known entrepreneur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Baby

Interestingly this taught me I never look at usernames, thanks for pointing out

Reposted story, reposted comment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That's marketing for you - now with Genuine People Personalities™.

Who's marketing a free app with no profit motive?

He was referencing the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

Was referring to the top comment bordering on self-promotion, not the app.

Proof for everyone that these programs do work. You have a good memory!

:)

I clicked the comments section hoping to see sivers response because I remember him mentioning it before. I’m glad I did.

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 :)

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

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/)

That's spaced repetition in a nutshell.

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.

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.

Are these separate decks or a single deck for your son? Do things come out of the deck(s)? What triggers that?

His decks:

* computer

* culture

* English

* math

* music

* nature

* where

I don't think we've ever pulled anything out of the deck. There are some cards that it says, when we mark [easy], that it will ask him again in 6 years. We joke about how at the age of 17 it will be asking him how to spell "sing", or whatever.

Can we get a copy of your deck?

Seconded! At least the countries please.

There is a shared Anki deck about this https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/2109889812

Is he on the autism spectrum?

Who, the commenter or his child?

All of us.

Not at all, and not particularly smart. Just a normal fun-loving kid, and this is something we do just 2-5 minutes a day.

Do you have a similar habit? How does one get started making Anki a habit? I've used Anki for studying before exams, but I haven't been able to integrate it into my life.

If you care enough, you'll do it. Every day I brush my teeth, write in my diary, do my Anki, check email, eat something, etc. It's only a few minutes a day.

That's a fair argument. Maybe my problem is that I overestimate how much time it takes every day. It really should be only a few minutes a day, with that effort adding up over enough days/week/months. I guess the bigger time sink comes when authoring decks.

The hard part (in terms of time) for me is creating the content. I cheat. I throw whole paragraphs and sentences in without clozes or refinement.

Then when I review them I think, "Well, that was informative but not answerable, what does 'easy' or 'hard' mean when I'm re-reading a paragraph?" So I spend some time refining them. This is iterative. The first pass on a paragraph of content might just be to split it out into several cards with one sentence each, nothing more. Then when I see the sentence cards (some time later) I turn them into clozes or Q&A cards. Then I realize they need images to really help so I add some. After 2-5 iterations they're useful and effective cards, but the work ends up being distributed over a more reasonable period of time (usually 1-3 weeks). Each refinement step only takes a minute or two per card, if that, especially as you get more comfortable with the editor.

I’m curious, how did you manage to get a child into Anki and make them self sufficient on it? Kudos to you

We do it together, just 2-5 minutes a day. When I'm away he does it on his own maybe 50/50.

Do you have any particular system in place for creating decks?

Most of these things don't require Anki. It's a tedious waste of time.

> every country, recognized by unlabeled shape on the map

That's a stupid thing to memorize, not to mention constantly churning due to political instability.

You really need to gatekeep what you stuff into your noggin.

Most educated people could recognize certain countries by shape, like Italy, Africa, USA. But every country? Come on ...

A parent is sharing their joy(!) of using Anki to help their child develop curiosity, feel a sense of accomplishment, and learn about the world.

And your response at someone else's joy is to swat it down and call it tedious and stupid?

> swat it down

I don't know what you're imagining by "it", but my remarks are only about memorizing all countries by border shape, not the use of spaced repetition as a whole.

That's the "it" I have swatted down.

Memorizing names of countries -> continent, I could swallow. That is useful. Or even latitude and longitude (rounded off to nearest ten degrees, say). Or some general indication: is it to the north, south; landlocked or coastal.

So if someone talks about Venezuela, the kid knows it's a coastal country in South America's north.

If you can't tell me that, what's the use of recognizing the shape of Venezuela and mapping it to a name?

I think you're missing my point.

The OP was a positive story. There could be an interesting discussion to be had around the subject of useful things to remember. But you literally used the words "tedious" and "stupid", and this sort of comment doesn't usually result in good conversation or debate.

You'd do well to heed the downvotes and constructive feedback you're getting :)

Here are some quotes from HN guidelines in case you missed them!

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

I’ve found that there is a noticeable correlation between high HN karma and just poor behavior in general. Most of the least insightful and most nitpicky replies I’ve ever received were from people with karma > 10k.

I wonder about why this is.

I wasn’t aware that Africa was a country, seems like I need to do some flashcard learning myself

You got my George W. Bush reference!

"Africa is a nation that suffers from terrible disease ..."

> You really need to gatekeep what you stuff into your noggin.

Pointless self imposed limitations don't help.

Self-imposed limitations are absolutely key to being effective in life. You cannot go everywhere, do everything and memorize everything.

Self-imposed limitations are key to being effective. I was referring to pointless self imposed limitations.

I was reading an interview with Andy Matuschak[1].

> One of the things that I think is kind of weird about this memory system stuff, or like memory champions, or something like that is “Oh, if you do these things, will you start to forget other normal human stuff?” And what's weird is, no. I've been doing this memory system stuff for years and I just know more stuff now. This is aligned with the experimental literature, which seems to suggest that, there's probably upper bounds but we're not close to them. Some of these memory champions have memorized maybe two orders of magnitude more things than I have practiced. Certainly people who are multi-lingual have really, really absurd numbers of things memorized. So there isn't a resource management argument.

The notion that stuffing your brain with trivia will be damaging is merely an unwarranted fear.

[1] https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/andy-matuschak

> So there isn't a resource management argument.

Time???

You think you know better how to spend Derek Siver's son's time than he does?

If you enjoy it and want to learn it, it's not a waste of time. Or at least, there are likely plenty of things ordinary people do that are bigger wastes of time.

Unless he runs out of memory.

That's what swap is for.

When I stop responding and the wife asks if I'm still listening, sometimes I tell her I'm swapping right at the moment.

Does your wife get the joke?

> Most of these things don't require Anki. It's a tedious waste of time.

I doubt anything requires Anki; rather it's more efficient than the alternatives.

Curious: How many cards are in his deck(s)? Do you do it with him daily? I was wondering when to start with my kid. Any writeup would be great.

My other question: For me a lot of this is trivia (No judgement! That's fine!) Has he found it useful for education (i.e. school), and for anything that he applies on a semi-frequent basis (I suppose UNIX commands could be a good example).?

I personally have used SRS since late 2018, and it's been quite useful - as if releasing a latent superpower. But I haven't applied it for regular schooling.

Thanks!

About 1000 cards now. We do it daily. It's often just a few cards per day, so it takes 1-5 minutes.

Spelling is the biggest category. I record myself saying a word that I've seen him spell wrong. The answer is the written word.

Many of his old life-memories are saved. A picture of a playground he loved, where we used to live. A frame from a movie he liked. Asking for the name of the hero in a book he loved. Anki makes him recognize these things, which keep his memories of them alive. Often ilicits an "Oh yeah!" nostalgia.

Recognizing countries on the map is not trivial. On the playground, he met a kid from Syria. He asked the boy if he lived closer to Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, or Lebanon. My jaw dropped, but the boy was touched and yelled, "Mom! He knows where it is!" and they became friends (for the day). Other times he'll decide out of the blue that he wants to know more about Azerbaijan or some other country that he only knows by shape.

The rest, he's just really proud to know. A kid at school says the moon is a million miles away. He was proud to know the more accurate distance. He wants to know the actual distance to the beach from our house, instead of just "takes forever".

> About 1000 cards now. We do it daily. It's often just a few cards per day, so it takes 1-5 minutes.

1000 cards over 5-6 years is 160-200 per year, so on average less than one a day. Did you start out slow and increased the pace as he grew, or is it more of chunking (e.g. add a few cards per day for some days, then just review for days before adding more)?

I'm sure whatever approach you did was organic and not planned the way I'm writing it, but am curious how it actually evolved.

> Recognizing countries on the map is not trivial. On the playground, he met a kid from Syria. He asked the boy if he lived closer to Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, or Lebanon.

OK, this is beyond simply recognizing the country from its shape. How did he encode what the neighboring countries are?

When learning the countries, does the card show only the outline of that country, or is it more like a map with all countries, and the one under review is highlighted? If the latter, then it makes sense.

> The rest, he's just really proud to know. A kid at school says the moon is a million miles away. He was proud to know the more accurate distance.

Psst... Everyone knows it's 300,000 km away.

<checks>

OK, fine. I memorized it wrong as a kid. Need to add it to my Anki deck ;-)

> How did he encode what the neighboring countries are?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria#/media/File:Syria_(ortho...

That map of the globe is what we use as the front of the card

He sees that and knows the answer is Syria.

But because we also do that for the other countries around it, he knows Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, etc. He knows where that country is, in context of its neighbors.

We have some little mnemonics to remember things like, "I packed my bags in Pakistan. After that, Afghanistan. Then Iraaaan all the way til I hit a rock in Iraq."

He might enjoy this: https://worldle.teuteuf.fr

I bet he's really good at it!

He'll probably rock at this game https://imois.in/games/travle/

one deck or a different one for each topic ?

Interesting, because the creator of Supermemo wrote that Spaced Repetition doesn't work on children because their brain re-arranges and repurposes structures far too much, making children's forgetting curve far too unpredictable, or at least different from adults.

https://supermemo.guru/wiki/SuperMemo_does_not_work_for_kids

Spaced repetition flaschard software is all about scheduling the flashcards around predictions of your forgetting curve, and Anki and Supermemo are designed for the forgetting curves of adults.

I think sometimes statements like this probably apply in aggregate, as in you can’t safely say they work in the general case due to too much response variance. But it’s not unrealistic to think it works well for some.

It's not perfect, but it's better than not doing it. He enjoys it.

That is important. SRS doesn't work for many people because, in short, they don't really enjoy it.

When I start to dislike opening up Anki, it’s usually because my cards are too complex and take too much time to memorize. Creating multiple cards with single cloze words makes the process much more enjoyable. Anki has helped me so much with memorizing programming language syntax for example.

Can you share some deck?

Exactly, and that lack of enjoyment comes from the learning content in their SRS app rather than the SRS itself.

I showed my son Anki when I was using it to memorise things for an exam I had to do. He has been using it very successfully to memorise things too.

I'm not certain that the research on forgetting curves has nailed down the timelines well. I know the Supermemo creator thinks his algorithm is best, but I suspect there's a lot of wiggle room and individual differences. Who besides Ebbinghaus has published rigorously on it?

> when Judaism began & who started it

A bit off topic, but this is a very tricky question to answer. The traditional answer is Moses, ca. 1200 BC. The real answer would take many PhD theses to arrive at. It's really a process that took place between the 10th and 5th centuries BC (and arguably continued even much later than that).

Technically Abraham, as he was the one, with whom G-d established the Covenant. Although I'm pretty sure there are lengthy disputes in Talmud arguing that it started with Adam and Hava.

I'm counting from when Yahweh declared Israel his people and handed down the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai (all mythological, of course, though there may be some real inspiration for Exodus, like the mythological Iliad and the real city of Troy).

The problem with asking "when Judaism started", is that the religion of the Mishnah and Talmud is (very likely) so different from the religion of David and Solomon that they are arguably two different religions, even though one is a descendant of the other.

Possibly, Samaritanism is closer to the religion of the ancient Israelites than contemporary Rabbinic (or even Karaite) Judaism is.

I agree with everything you've said, which is why I earlier said that Judaism is arguably younger than the 5th century BC. The real Israelites were likely not even monotheistic during the time of David and Solomon.

Jesus christ. I often wonder why I can't compete at school and this is why.. you never know how much prep/silver spoon other kids got

How is this silver spoon? I grew up in poverty and my mum taught me to real (and learned herself at the same time) before I started school. She did this so I wouldn’t suffer through school like she did.

I taught my daughter to read and write before she started school. Being part of your children’s education is awesome.

Derek Sivers is definitely better off than most of us, but what he's describing is something any engaged parent could do. That's not a "silver spoon". Hell, my family was lower-middle-income (into solid middle-income with both parents working, then down again, these things can cycle) and they would quiz us on things like that. Though not with Anki. It's just good parental engagement.

I'm not taking a side, but I don't think that's a fair comparison. My family was lower income than this. My parents were at work so that we could have shelter, food, and not go into crippling medical debt for even basic care. There wasn't time for this kind of interaction.

Siverspoon

You're setting your kid up for a bright future, great parenting.

Genuine question, how will memorizing this info help him?

I’m a parent too, and have prioritized activities that teach my child critical thinking (so they can self-solve problems).

I’m curious if I should be layering in some memorization activities like this, which is why I ask.

(Please don’t take my question as judging, I’m genuinely curious how it’s helped because I might replicate. And I’ve got huge respect for all your writing over the years)

Any interesting links or suggestions on critical thinking activities? Thanks!

Hugely age dependent.

But in general: puzzles, strategy games, building blocks, and asking my kiddo questions that force them to think.

Passive learning. One can memorize stuff without comprehending its purpose, finding a direct use for it. But having information stored or encoded in long-term memory allows for new experiences or findings to be augmented by stuff one has picked up in the past. I think all kinds of magic can happen when an individual has a 'mind-library' and can combine it with newer learnings.

It’s probably more useful for working out the memorization muscle than the information itself.

Often to solve problems you need to have multiple pieces of knowledge at your fingertips (without having to lookup each piece up or reason about it from first principles).

In mathematics that might be related theorems/lemmas. In programming it might be existing functionality of libraries. Problem solving is often chaining a few things together, which you already know.

Children should understand how to derive the quadractic formula but memorizing makes solving equations a lot faster.

https://tabularasaeducation.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/knowled...

During the great internet blackout of 2032 he will be the one that remembers things!

To memorize something, it include two step: intake of information, and mobilization of this information.

So anki help to write into memory, expose to new things eventually, and associate two ideas. But the more there is association to ideas, to different contexts, the better.

I think kids benefit from Anki, it's not as different as a puzzle game, but side activities are as important as anki.

I think teaching kid all countries of the world might not be necessary, it might vanish if not used. But it's definitly not harmfull.

I would also recommend sporcle quizzes as a good way of learning and practicing information. Eg flags and countries.

Hope that the kid has time to have fun with friends as well, otherwise will become just a well educated sucker used by others.

> * unix filesystem commands

Father of the century, just for that alone.

Is there a forum where users share their decks? Asking for a couple kids that age who I mentor ;-) — Answered my own question Ankiweb /shared/decks

Sorry for the late response but I have a question regarding this that I hope you can answer.

I'm also a long time anki user for the purpose of learning a foreign language. It is one of the core tools that got me to the level that I am today. I like it so much that I am also using it with my son. I'm using it for spellings mostly. But (and here comes the question) I'm also contemplating making him another deck for the foreign language that I'm studying, however, I'm wondering whether to have separate decks or just one big deck of cards. What do you do with your son? Different decks for different topics or just lump them all together in the same singular deck?

Any advice would be most welcome.

General advice here is that separate decks are easier to review, but a single deck will result in better retention thanks to benefits of interleaving.

Congratulations on your boy.

As long as you and he are getting something out of it, fine, but do be aware there is some research into SRS not at all working like (nor as well as) it does for completely-formed, mature brains.