Hi! I’m Andy Matuschak. You’ve stumbled upon my working notes. They’re kind of strange, so some context might help.
These notes are mostly written for myself: they’re roughly my thinking environment (Evergreen notes; My morning writing practice). But I’m sharing them publicly as an experiment (Work with the garage door up). If a note seems confusing or under-explained, it’s probably because I didn’t write it for you! Sorry—that’s sort of an essential tension of this experiment (Write notes for yourself by default, disregarding audience).
For now, there’s no index or navigational aids: you’ll need to follow a link to some starting point. You might be interested in §What’s top of mind.
👋 Andy (email, Twitter, main personal site)
PS: My work is made possible by a crowd-funded research grant from my Patreon community. You can become a member to support future work, and to read patron-only updates and previews of upcoming projects.
PS: Many people ask, so I’ll just note here: no, I haven’t made this system available for others to use. It’s still an early research environment, and Premature scaling can stunt system iteration.
While a Spaced repetition memory system is primarily designed to help people remember facts, their flashcard mechanism can be used for a variety of other purposes.
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URL to send him a message if you like (via Taylor Rogalski, 2020-06-11)Outside of the simple flashcard format, the general spaced repetition mechanism can be applied to many domains; see Spaced repetition systems can be used to program attention for more. Related: Spaced repetition systems as catechism.
Ava (bookbear) suggests that love is, in many ways, about repetition—choosing the same person or idea or way of being over and over again.
I haven’t figured out how to write about this without it feeling too squishy, but spaced repetition has been a really interesting venue for experimenting with this sort of feeling. I have lots of prompts whose primary purpose is reinforcing my emotional connection to a person, or a place, or an ideal, or an idea. It sometimes feels like a misshapen emotional crutch, but sometimes it feels like it expands my capacity to love!