Re: Using unmaintained plugins

[Bithov Vinu <bithov.vinub@gmail.com>]

Thanks for your input. I think I'll keep using org-drill (and hopefully
learn emacs lisp over the years) rather than moving to another spaced
repetition application. Since I collected Paul Sexton's org-drill and
org-learn.el, there have only been trivial changes, which I have been able
to fix (for example, org-drill depends on *cl*, which I was informed by
Emacs was deprecated, so I used cl-libify
<https://github.com/purcell/cl-libify> to convert the org-drill.el source
to not use *cl*). I can at least hope that changes to Emacs/Org-mode don't
cripple it any more than I know how to fix. Having said that, I'll be sure
to use it with caution and learn Emacs Lisp and org-mode programming. On
that note, does anyone have any resources for learning org-mode
programming? Emacs Lisp guides are abundant, but I'm not sure how to
learn org-mode programming.

The ongoing discussion about the spacing effect and memory seem
interesting. I'm leaning towards Mr Borkowski's view; I've been reading
memory science and around the forgetting curve in general as a hobby for a
good few years and his arguments seem fairly sound. I partly understand
Jean Louis' point, but a lot of the points made about mnemotechniques have
been addressed by Dr Piotr Wozniak (see here
<https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/english/company/wozniak> for
credentials) pretty extensively here
<https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/myths>.

The point that mnemotechniques can be used solely as a panacea for memory
is directly debunked in that article; many of the courses that claim to
give the audience "infinite memory" and are self-described "mentalists" are
often snake-oil salesman and shills. Jean's point that you ought not to use
spaced repetition, because it relies on rote memorization rather than
understanding, isn't sound in that:
a) no-one versed in the field of spaced repetition and the forgetting curve
is advocating substituting understanding for rote memorization through
spaced repetition
b) in fact, Piotr Wozniak (the first researcher to implement a spaced
repetition algorithm on a computer) argues that formulation of knowledge is
hugely important in using spaced repetition, as summarised here
<https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20rules>. The
first rule of "formulating knowledge" is "do not learn (ie. memorise using
spaced repetition) what you do not understand (ie. what you haven't learned
in the traditional sense of the word)".

I could debunk each point that Jean made, but the field of spaced
repetition is incredibly well documented (mostly by Piotr Wozniak, see his
sites here <https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog> and here
<https://www.supermemo.guru>) so going through each point would be a waste
of time. I would highly recommend that you read SupermemoGuru in
particular, that site is rich in its writing.

More generally, the forgetting curve is found everywhere in nature, and
attempting to circumvent it using mnemonics is completely futile
<https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Mnemonic_anchor>. In fact, the rate of
forgetting is explained by Zipf's Law
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf's_law>, which is fantastically
explained in a video by Vsauce <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCn8zs912OE>.
*All *memory is subject to the forgetting curve, perhaps forgetting can be
delayed through the use of mnemonics, but ultimately, permastore is a myth
<https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Permastore>.

I've linked a lot to Piotr Wozniak's writings, so I'd advise that anyone
reading it check out the references page
<https://supermemo.guru/wiki/References> so that they can verify his
claims, and to ensure that Piotr Wozniak
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piotr_Wo%C5%BAniak_(researcher)> is actually
a legitimate researcher.

There have been some dubious claims made by Piotr, but, all in all,
supermemo.guru seems to be a legitimate site. Org-drill uses SM-2 and SM-5
officially and an experimental SM-8 algorithm, SM in this case standing for
Supermemo (the product in which Piotr implemented his spaced repetition
algorithms). SM-0 was the first one, SM-2 and SM-5 succeeded it. Up to
SM-5, the algorithm was peer reviewed (you can find them and his other
research papers here <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Piotr-Wozniak>)
but after this, the newer algorithms were not published and instead the
algorithms (the latest is SM-18) became a trade secret. You can read about
the history of the supermemo algorithm here
<https://supermemo.guru/wiki/History_of_SuperMemo_algorithm>.

There's a fantastic article by Wired that explains in great detail the
spacing effect, I'd advise you all read it. It's linked here
<https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/>.