Re: Using unmaintained plugins

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* Bithov Vinu <bithov.vinub@gmail.com> [2021-04-19 23:17]:
> I will most certainly look into the book you referred - as soon as I
> get through my current backlog :)

I am glad, just contact me privately I will dispatch the PDF>

> I'm not certain that you understand what the Supermemo method is. It
> lies on the following principles:
> 1) memory decays at a predictable, rapid rate
> 2) review reduces the rate of forgetting
> 3) review at too early or late a time results in excess repetitions or
> forgetting of knowledge respectively

I cannot find myself in none of those subjects. My memory never
decays. Please note that scientists have never proven where is human
memory stored, so if this cannot be proven scientifically they also
cannot prove that it decays. If you don't know where is something it
is hard to say that something is not any more there. There are many
reasons why memory can be blocked, one of reasons is trauma, drugs,
accidents, and so on, but memore is always there just may not be
easily accessible. When problems or obstacles are solved then memory
may be accessed. Today my memory is better than before few years,
better than before a decade or few decades.

Some of abusive scientists researched which parts of brain have to be
destroyed for memory not to be accessible, but that kind of research
does not prove where is memory, it only proves that when some human
parts are destroyed it is hard to access it. According to
calculations, there is not enough space in human body to store the
memory we record. It is similar to CPU and memory, if one destroys the
keyboard already or monitor, memory cannot be accessed, but chip remains
somewhere in existence.

Especially me, who is one of them:
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=children+who+remember+past+lives

cannot easily just say that "memory decays".

> (Those axioms aren't entirely true; when digging into the research you
> find that frequent, early repetition negatively impacts the rate of
> forgetting later on, but for the sake of argument, we'll ignore
> this)

Repetitions methods I have been using as a child as I was in the
environment where nobody knew better, neither my parents or
grandparents neither teachers. Then I got the a sexy coach to teach me
polynomials. Boy, I was getting it right! She explained me so that I
understand it in all details. Professor of mathematics did not believe
me when I got each of the tests perfect. I have even taken those most
hardest polynomials from a friend in the subsequent grade so I knew
already which tests will come and got myself well prepared. For
professor it was phenomena he never have seen before. But since then,
I have not been using repetition, I used methods to understand first
each and every part of whatever miniscule or large subject of
learning, especially I put attention to clarify all words by using
dictionary. 

> The Supermemo algorithm is simply a mathematical method of attempting
> to calculate the optimum interval for review, from the most crude and
> simple SM-0 to SM-2 (used in Anki/Mnemosyne) to SM-5 (org-drill) to
> SM-18, the latest iteration.
> It isn't a mnemonic in any sense of the word - I hope that you can
> explain how you understand the Supermemo method to be like a
> mnemonic.

Definiton of mnemotechnics or mnemonics (synonyms) is that it is
technique of improving the memory, reference:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mnemonics#medicalDictionary

and Wordnet:

1. mnemonic, mnemotechnic, mnemotechnical -- (of or relating to or
involved the practice of aiding the memory;

To say how your system, which improves your memory is not mnemonics
only to "debunk" other systems comes from a conflict of interest, but
any system helping the memory is mnemonics nevertheless.

> You are most certainly right that the articles I linked may be
> biased

They appear biased, I do not say that their method do not work. People
have various methods selling this and that, they don't like
competition.

There are those who truly like to help, no matter what, so they will
rather give more independent analysis. 

> - of course, the latest iterations of Supermemo are pieces of
> proprietary non-free software, and, ultimately, Piotr Wozniak's
> motives will always be to sell you the software that he wrote and
> invested his time into.

Well now it explains it all.

> There are definitely some snake-oil-like stuff on supermemo.guru,

I would say, as I already know you a little and how you will be in
rush to say so, don't say so, until you have exchanged opinions with
those who have tried it out.

Person's specific experience may be failure, but somebody else may be
using it right, often I would need to see what is wrong in my
application of a method and maybe I am doing something wrong. Once you
and few other people have tried it out, and also tried other methods,
then you could say that particular one does not work.

> but a lot of the claims Dr Wozniak makes in reference to memory and
> forgetting are scientifically sound (for proof of this, I'd advise
> you read the Gwern article I originally linked; Gwern Branwen is an
> independent researcher and his article is richly referenced and
> makes conclusions based plenty of peer reviewed research).

Harry and many other people who mastered memory in such way to
demonstrate it to public are proof that things remembered in first
place need not "decay". I don't know why is it important to state
so. My grandmother told me it is impossible to remember what I was
doing before my fifth year, but I remember the taste of my toes when I
was biting them as baby and my mother's nipples including the taste of
milk. And so many thing I can remember what my mother doesn't, and she
was adult back then. Then I met so many other people who remember
better then me.

It is very hard to believe there is some "scientific proof" of memory
decay. I will not tend to believe things when they are rather of
authoritarian character. 

> I can't say I've done an extensive review of Harry Lorayne's work, but
> from the bits that I've seen, I'm skeptical. I'm immediately
> distrustful of someone for unbiased information if their occupation is
> professional magician, even more so when he has written books with
> titles as sensational and frankly nonsensical as "How to develop a
> Super Power Memory", "Harry Lorayne's Secrets of Mind Power", "Memory
> makes money" and, my personal favourite, "How to get rich using the
> power of your mind". Now, I might be overly skeptical, but I generally
> disregard sensationalised books written by someone with seemingly no
> credentials whatsoever in favour of huge bodies of peer-reviewed
> evidence.

I think I have all of those books, just tell me. Well... can't help
more than that. Harry's titles are not exaggerated. He is one of many
who is eloquent and who made the methods closer to the public, but
those are not new, they are ancient methods. There is nothing in those
books that is impractical, like some vague practices that may not give
you personal win. Each single method explained as soon as you learn it
and do it, is giving you personal wins and you can do what you could
not before.

By the way I remember daughter of my friend in Messina, Sicily in
Italy, we have let some of children movies play and she could speak
the movie speech in real time with all words correctly spoken in the
movie with proper time spacing between them, even without watching the
video while having turned her back to the movie, and she could do it
with other 30+ videos by choice. He father and my friend and mother,
did not regard it as something special, as they could not compare it
to many other children. She developed method in her mind to remember
what is spoken in the movie while watching it, and with few
repetitions over the time she remembered whole of the speech in the
movie.

> Mnemonics are definitely useful - I don't think I've ever argued that
> they aren't, instead, what I'm arguing is that they aren't a panacea
> to an indestructible memory.

I never heard of destructible memory, but I know there is
not-accessible human memory, in many examples of amnesia, trauma,
accidents, problems in life, that is what happens and then again there
are methods to regain it back.

Another important factor is importance of application. Memory as such
may be there, but unimportant to recall it. IMHO, the urge to apply
piece of remembered information automatically recalls it. Let us say
subject of verification of stones, in geology, when geologist has
rocks on the table and proper tools, it will be easy to check it out,
but maybe after years of not doing the job, due to lack of practical
importance, those methods may not be easily accessible from
memory. Then again put that same person in front of the rocks with
same tools, person will start recalling.

Personally, I have some artistic models that I have been making each
time with my hands, and I feel that memory is there as soon as I would
take the same tools in my hand. People call it muscle memory, I would
rather say it is practice memory, practical application plus
importance recalls the memory.

Typing is one example, when person knows how to type, typing is blind,
no looking into keys. It is muscle memory, but I would rather say
practice memory. I can type the word "memory" but if somebody would
ask me to say where exactly the key "e" is located I would need to
think longer than what I would need to type. As I did not practice to
find single letters, I have practiced to type words.

While I can type on the whole keyboard blindly, including the ghost
keys from other international keyboards, I would have some problems to
reconstruct the whole keyboard from mind.

If practice decays, recalling will apparently, not really,
decay. Memory is stored somewhere, when practice comes back, recalling
becomes automatic.

-- 
Jean

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