The mnemonic medium should be developed in a context where people really need fluency

Quantum Country’s readers are mostly driven by curiosity, rather than a serious context of use. These readers don’t supply enough pressure on me as the system designer. Sure, if it felt like a huge waste of time, they’d stop reviewing. So there’s not zero signal. But it’s very difficult to get a clear sense of how the memory system interactions are translating into anything real.

If the readers were all graduate students embarking on their first research, or people trying to pivot into a career in quantum computing, we’d be able to have lots of good conversations with them about where the text/medium seemed to succeed or fail in supporting their goals. But because these readers are driven by curiosity, there’s little external force “kicking back” and revealing the inadequacies in what they’ve learned.

Ideally, the pressing need for fluency comes from some personally meaningful goal (like a creative project), rather than from wanting to pass an exam: The mnemonic medium should be developed in a context where learning is in service of some meaningful use

This criterion suggests that collaborations with informal/casual “content creators” (e.g. Grant Sanderson) are likely not a good context for developing the medium, since their readers/viewers typically don’t actually need fluency.

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Last updated 2023-07-13.