Albert Jamie Wu - Quantum Country interview - 2019-06-11

“Stalwart” user

Synthesis + highlights

Albert’s a dilettante: he likes reading interesting things on the internet; this isn’t part of some larger program to learn QC.

Albert’s skeptical of the value of memorizing bare facts as we suggest. He reviewed a bunch at first, but then stopped for a month. Then the search essay came out. He started reading, realized that he didn’t remember what a Tofoli gate was, then decided to reread the first essay.

“A lot of the questions are trivial. They felt like memorization. … ‘What is in the bottom-left corner of the Y gate?’ … You must have made those just for us to get thinking about the essay again. … Can’t you just look it up?”

When I pushed him on what happened when he re-read the essay, he acknowledged that because he’d reviewed the cards there so many times, it was much faster for him to read it a second time (30min vs. 4 hours).

He doesn’t pay attention to the levels or the completion screen’s graph. When I told him that more than half of his deck is at the 2-week level, he was indifferent. His sense of the emotional journey was… total flatness.

He loved the prose.

“It was like nothing I’d read before. … You lead with a very big question. Universe-scale. And you talk about it casually. That was new to me! Not only do you talk about it casually, but also analytically.”

He didn’t feel bad about marking any questions wrong.

Preparation notes

Has read both essays
Has done 9 sessions

Read QCVC in two big batches.

Clicked “continue reading” on 04/19

His average level is 4.5, between 1 week and 2 weeks. Deciles:
3
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
5
5

So median card is 2 weeks.

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Raw notes

• How did you find it?
  • I can’t remember! Twitter?
  • “I look up to a lot of researchers.”
• “It was like nothing I’d read before. … You lead with a very big question. Universe-scale. And you talk about it casually. That was new to me! Not only do you talk about it casually, but also analytically.”
  • “Last week, I started reading Feynman’s lectures. The first 7 reminded me of the quantum essay. In this essay, it’s just totally sequential: you don’t have to go back and forth.”
• Hasn’t studied or been interested in quantum computing before.
  • “I tried to read about Shor’s algorithm on Wikipedia.”
• “The medium was really good.”
  • “Obviously you don’t want the questions to be difficult. They remind you at first.”
  • I stopped doing it for a month, until the search essay came back. When you have to review, I found that the recall questions didn’t help at all.
  • I had done recall myself because I had watched the “Learning How to Learn” Coursera
    • After I read a section, I go back and try to recall what I remember from it. I just lean back and try to remember what I read.
  • “A lot of the questions are trivial. They felt like memorization.”
    • “What is in the bottom-left corner of the Y gate?”
    • “You must have made those just for us to get thinking about the essay again.”
    • “Can’t you just look it up?”
• Took him 4 hours to read. Then reread it before rereading the search essay, taking him half an hour.
• When he reread the search essay, there was some point where the material felt alien, then he decided to reread the first essay.
  • I forgot what a Tofoli gate was.
• About the medium
  • “There’s nothing to make you answer: just check and X”
  • “You should have control over how you learn.”
  • “I’ve learned not to have an ego whatsoever when trying to learn. It made me feel like less of an impostor. It’s something concrete. And Nielsen said not to worry if you don’t get it.”
  • How does it feel to mark one wrong?
  • “You mark it wrong and then it’s over.”
• “I’m really interested in new mediums too.”
  • Has new media.
• The levels?
  • “It’s too small. I didn’t really pay attention to it.”
  • “It’s a bit scary. The icons… too many dots, I feel like.”
• The completion screen?
  • “I don’t really look at that.”
• “Even if I knew all the questions, I would still need to reread.”
  • “Every time I was answering the question I was remembering more of the essay besides the question.”
  • “I didn’t really think the questions were good.”
  • I nudged him…
  • “When I came back after the month, I wasn’t able to remember anything except the cards.”
  • “Part of the reason it didn’t take me long to reread is that I still remember the basics due to those cards.”
• How do you feel about being at 2 weeks of retention?
  • “I don’t think grades or test scores are a good thing.”
• Uses Anki to study for the GRE
  • “It’s very difficult to set up.”
  • “It’s too much to introduce at once.”