Mnemonic medium

The mnemonic medium embeds a Spaced repetition memory system within narrative prose. Spaced repetition memory systems make memory a choice, but they’ve suffered significant barriers to adoption. The mnemonic medium is designed to solve many of these problems.

It was first used in Quantum Country. I’m now working to expand its scope considerably in Orbit. (see more Substantive examples of the mnemonic medium)

• Key design properties:
  • The mnemonic medium gives structure to normally-atomized spaced repetition memory prompts
  • The mnemonic medium supplies expert-authored prompts to remove the burden of prompt-writing
  • Mnemonic medium prompts are interleaved into the reading experience
  • The mnemonic medium may help scaffold prompt-writing through author-provided prompts
  • The mnemonic medium’s design relies on light-weight prompts
  • The critical thing to optimize in spaced repetition memory systems is emotional connection to the review session and its contents
  • Secondary properties:
  • SRS retry mechanism
• Impact
  • Effects of the mnemonic medium on reader memory
  • What’s the big-picture impact of the mnemonic medium on readers?
  • The mnemonic medium keeps readers in contact with material over time
• Hypotheses/questions
  • Extending scope / scale:
  • How does the mnemonic medium’s efficacy vary across platform-knowledge-style topics?
  • How might the mnemonic medium enable readers in genres outside platform knowledge?
    • Lessons learned from applying the mnemonic medium to non-technical texts
    • The mnemonic medium works well for linear primers in established fields
    • Memory augmentation can accelerate the unpleasant early stages of learning a subject—does the MM’s costs outweigh its benefits outside these contexts?
  • How might the mnemonic medium adapt to readers’ differing backgrounds and goals?
  • How might spaced repetition memory systems intervene when the student struggles with material?
  • Non-memory impact:
  • The mnemonic medium may push readers to read more slowly and attentively
  • Interleaved mnemonic medium prompts promote a feeling of safety
  • What if the mnemonic medium were reframed as a means to engage more deeply with a text?
  • Different types of understanding
  • The mnemonic medium can help readers apply what they’ve learned through simple application prompts
  • How might the mnemonic medium support readers in building more complex understanding?
  • Towards virtuosic use:
  • Important attributes of good spaced repetition memory prompts
  • What might constitute canonical uses of the mnemonic medium?
  • In what senses is the mnemonic medium more than an annotation layer on ordinary prose?
  • Embedded prompt templates may actively scaffold prompt-writing for mnemonic medium readers
  • Benefit to author:
  • Question-writing in the mnemonic medium may help the writer think about their topic
  • Optimization:
  • How should mnemonic medium review sets be spaced in the text?
• Future directions
  • Taking emotion seriously: How might we apply insights from the mnemonic medium to forms which focus on deep emotional connection?
  • Timeful text: The mnemonic medium can be adapted to author an experience which unfolds over time
  • The mnemonic medium can generate interesting author analytics
  • The mnemonic medium can surface “proof of memory” social signals
  • OS-level spaced repetition system
  • Turning any web page into the mnemonic medium
  • How might we adapt existing texts to the mnemonic medium, without participation of the author?
  • Spaced everything: The mnemonic medium can be extended to one’s personal notes
  • Other host media types
  • Mnemonic video may present a smoother on-ramp to mass adoption than mnemonic text
  • Twitter threads could be an interesting context for the mnemonic medium
• Challenges
  • The early mnemonic medium’s structures are too rigid for others to help define the medium
  • … to adoption by end-users:
  • Many people view memory as unimportant to deep creative work
  • The initial mnemonic medium is implicitly authoritarian in premise
    • The mnemonic medium should give readers control over the prompts they collect
  • Mnemonic medium onboarding depends on a critical mass of content
    • Spaced repetition review sessions often become boring and detached without a steady stream of new prompts
  • Mass adoption of the mnemonic medium seems to require mass adoption of web publishing
    • Reading texts on computers is unpleasant
  • Regular spaced repetition memory practice is an onerous habit to adopt
    • Spaced repetition memory systems don’t rapidly demonstrate their benefits
    • Spaced repetition memory systems make you feel like your memory is worse than it really is
  • … for designers:
  • The dominant culture around spaced repetition memory systems is fixated on meaningless goals
  • The mnemonic medium should be developed in a context where people really need fluency
  • I can’t easily iterate on the design of the mnemonic medium by testing it on myself
  • Quantum Country lacks a coherent spatial representation of the mnemonic medium’s cards as objects
  • Extremely data-dense texts need a different mnemonic medium design
  • Aggressively scaling the mnemonic medium in 2020 is premature
  • … for authors
  • Writing good prompts for others is likely harder than writing good prompts for oneself
  • How often and where should mnemonic medium review areas be inserted?
• Other implementations
  • Login - Dawnguide
  • TakeAway
  • Thought Saver

The mnemonic medium may help scaffold prompt-writing through author-provided prompts

The mnemonic medium supplies expert-authored prompts to remove the burden of prompt-writing, which helps ameliorate Writing good spaced repetition memory prompts is hard. But by including the prompts, we also help readers who want to write some prompts of their own. They get to see expert examples of prompt-writing, which they can use as templates for their own prompts.

Several Quantum Country readers have told us that they’d tried and abandoned Anki before reading Quantum Country, but that they’ve since returned to it now that they have a clearer idea of how to write prompts.

A more active variation: Embedded prompt templates may actively scaffold prompt-writing for mnemonic medium readers

Important consideration: How important is it to write your own spaced repetition memory prompts?

User feedback regarding this effect

Giacomo Randazzo on Quantum Country’s influence / 2020-03-28:

The Quantum Country series was essential in stepping up my Anki game. The flashcards are well thought and incorporate ideas for building questions and answers that are not obvious when starting out. The authors do a great job at introducing the ideas gradually. For people with a sufficient mathematical background, that want to learn how to use any spaced repetition software effectively, I think the investment of time in going through the entire series is exceedingly valuable!” [source 1, source 2]

References

Matuschak, A., & Nielsen, M. (2019, October). How can we develop transformative tools for thought? https://numinous.productions/ttft

… making good cards is a difficult skill to master, and so what users lose by not making their own cards is made up by using what are likely to be much higher-quality cards than they could have made on their own. In future, it’s worth digging deeper into this issue, both to understand it beyond informal models, and to explore ways of getting the benefits of active card making.

Writing good spaced repetition memory prompts is hard

People regard flashcards as something trivial from their school days, so they don’t take writing them very seriously. But it’s awfully hard to write good prompts for a Spaced repetition memory system. For example, good prompts:

• access an idea from multiple angles
• capture one precise thought (likely reflective of “Chunks” in human cognition)
• avoid unintentional ambiguity
• are concise
• get to what really matters about the topic, not just what’s easy to memorize

For more, see: Important attributes of good spaced repetition memory prompts

It’s harder than people think

Unfortunately, it’s not obvious when the prompts you’ve written are bad, so people often don’t realize that their prompts are bad. This can cause them to underrate the performance or overrate the tedium of spaced repetition memory practice. More: To what extent do review sessions offer prompt-writing feedback?

One solution: The mnemonic medium may help scaffold prompt-writing through author-provided prompts

It’s taxing even if you know how

Even if one develops the skill to write good prompts, it’s quite time-consuming and cognitively taxing to do it. I believe that this is another significant barrier to widespread adoption.

One solution: The mnemonic medium supplies expert-authored prompts to remove the burden of prompt-writing. Or, maybe Using machine learning to generate good spaced repetition prompts from explanatory text.

References

Matuschak, A., & Nielsen, M. (2019, October). How can we develop transformative tools for thought? https://numinous.productions/ttft

Nielsen, M. (2018). Augmenting Long-term Memory. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics - Michael Nielsen

https://andymatuschak.org/prompts

Anki Practice Cards: Language, Music, Mathematics - Album on Imgur some examples and notes from Eric Siggy

Important attributes of good spaced repetition memory prompts

This note collects ideas about how to encode knowledge into Spaced repetition memory system prompts, both to support memory of facts but also to foster richer understanding (Spaced repetition memory systems can be used to develop conceptual understanding).

See How to write good prompts (2020) for a published manuscript on this topic.

Basic attributes of prompt-writing:

• Spaced repetition memory prompts should be concise
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should usually focus on one atomic unit
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should encode ideas from multiple angles
  • Spaced repetition memory prompts should connect and relate ideas
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should unambiguously produce a specific answer
  • Prompts must make clear what “shape” of answer they expect
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should ensure reviewers must retrieve answers from memory
  • Avoid yes-no spaced repetition memory prompts
• Spaced repetition memory prompts should be written to discourage shallow “pattern matching”
• Beware set\/enumeration SRS prompts
• Cloze deletion prompts seem to produce less understanding than question-answer pairs in spaced repetition memory systems
• Expert response heuristic, after Issa Rice

“Covering” material:

• Avoid orphan spaced repetition memory prompts

Meta / mental models:

• A pattern language of prompt-writing
• Rule of thumb: write more spaced repetition prompts than seems natural
• Spaced repetition prompt design is about designing tasks for your future self

Related: The “reflected essay” metaphor for the goal for the mnemonic medium

References

Matuschak, A. (2020). How to write good prompts: using spaced repetition to create understanding. https://andymatuschak.org/prompts

See section Improving the mnemonic medium: making better cards in How can we develop transformative tools for thought? and Nielsen (2018, 2019).

Nielsen, M. (2018). Augmenting Long-term Memory. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

Using spaced repetition systems to see through a piece of mathematics - Michael Nielsen

Piotr Wozniak - Effective learning - Twenty rules of formulating knowledge

Soren Bjornstad’s patterns

Fernando Boretti: Effective Spaced Repetition

Avoid orphan spaced repetition memory prompts

When adding prompts to a Spaced repetition memory system, it’s usually a mistake to write prompts about a detail that seems interesting, but which is disconnected from everything else you’re thinking about. Spaced repetition memory prompts should connect and relate ideas—and it’s even better to make them connect and relate to ideas that you’re regularly thinking about.

“Orphan questions” (coinage per Michael Nielsen, 2018) cause two important problems:

1. After a while, these isolated prompts often start to feel like a burden in the review session, disconnected from what you actually care about (contra The critical thing to optimize in spaced repetition memory systems is emotional connection to the review session and its contents)
2. You’ll likely have more trouble remembering the answers to these questions, since they won’t be naturally reinforced through your daily life. Even if you do remember the answers, there’s a danger that they’ll be pattern-matched because they don’t connect to other knowledge (Spaced repetition memory prompts should be written to discourage shallow “pattern matching”)

At least for me, one common situation that often results in orphan questions is: someone shares an interesting paper in a field I know nothing about; I read it and write a few prompts. A few months later, I have no idea why I’m reviewing them. They don’t relate to anything I’m doing or thinking about.

Michael underscores the particularly harmful case of “lonely orphans”:

It’s particularly worth avoiding lonely orphans: single questions that are largely disconnected from everything else. Suppose, for instance, I’m reading an article on a new subject, and I learn an idea that seems particularly useful. I make it a rule to never put in one question. Rather, I try to put at least two questions in, preferably three or more. That’s usually enough that it’s at least the nucleus of a bit of useful knowledge. If it’s a lonely orphan, inevitably I get the question wrong all the time, and it’s a waste to have entered it at all.

References

Nielsen, M. (2018). Augmenting Long-term Memory. http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html