"We underappreciate the role  that memory has in our lives. If what you're trying to do is  to understand something pretty   difficult your ability to understand that thing   is still absolutely going ..."

"general to comment on. I think it's certainly the  case that most students don't actually want to do   this because they're learning stuff that they  don't actually care about learning or even if   th..."

"we have all these online resources, some of  which you’ve helped develop like Khan Academy,   it seems that the value of conscientiousness  as a trait has dramatically increased. If you   can motivate..."

"somebody else. One problem you might have  as a self learner is you have some goal,   a reason for learning, and then you start  thinking, “Well, do I really need this chapter?   Do I really need this..."

"modeling a path or predicting a path or saying,  “Well, I guess I'd need to see how this connects   to that or something like this.” And if your  destination and your starting point are very   far awa..."

"to happen and what you'll be able to do as a  consequence of certain degrees of knowledge   compilation. I think he'd probably respond to this  by saying that — actually, in order to effectively   com..."

"publishes some academic articles, plus like  a bunch of other collateral. That is notes.   And I think it's also important to note that like  the way that Tyler writes these blog posts and   the way t..."

"For instance, your ability to understand a  difficult argument, even in the course of a text,   is memory bound. Some of that's working memory.  But your ability to understand an argument that   has m..."

"Early on in my time in Khan Academy I learned a  whole lot of details about the education market in   a very thorough way using memory systems.  This let me be in high level executive kinds   of conve..."

"weird ideas that feel very new is that it feels  very personal, it feels very [unclear]. I often   haven't been able to describe, textually,  the constituents of the thing very clearly.   There's just..."

"mind all the time. I don’t want it to be hyper  salient the way that I want some very important   design principles to be. So yeah, there's some  role there. There's also some theories that   the reas..."

"Certainly people who are multi-lingual have  really, really absurd numbers of things memorized.   So there isn't a resource management argument. If there isn't, why do we forget so many things?   Is t..."

"answer those kinds of things very effectively,  because all this stuff is coming up for you, that   is much less relevant. One of the theories about  how well we remember stuff in what circumstances  ..."

"really familiar. It was mostly flow all the time,  every day. I was just in it. I knew the stuff that   I needed to know. I was very well practiced. And  the space didn't change that much. Most engine..."

"on. Maybe I'll just mention the other one. This  is also related to the thing we're talking about   a few minutes ago with LLMs. Swanson-Linking.  Swanson was just somebody who read the medical   lite..."

"practice. It's going to be integrative. It's  going to be socially based. So there's a bunch   of stuff about social learning that's relevant. A  problem though is that say you decide you want to   le..."

"the long tail of events that might come up  is a thing, it might happen once every few   months but the regularity is not a thing that  matters, right? It's [unclear] on your work.  Here's a question ..."

"a life force that permits you to act according  to your will or something like that. Maybe it's   gumption, maybe it's willpower, maybe some people  call it [unclear], these aren't all the same thing ..."

"attention kind of slipping because I'm just  not that attached to the text emotionally,   I'm kind of reading dutifully, I'm like  trying to get through it. That sometimes   produces an adversarial as..."

"think that is? Is it just an inherent limitation  of everything but text and lectures or people just   haven't given it the right content and design? Yeah, I'm fascinated by this question. Let's see, ..."

"designers. It's like, “Ah, he's asking me to do  this here.” No one's asking you, right? There's no   text, but you can feel that you are being asked.  You perform some interaction in the environment ..."

"is in the course, is in the structure of the  material. I think some kind of mass medium   that is like that is waiting to be created, but  that can be applied in many, many circumstances.   We have t..."

"period of time. By watching George do it, I think  that people do absorb stuff. They can absorb some   of that knowledge. That's part of how apprentices  absorb that knowledge. There's a few things th..."

"On the point about more programming books.  Ironically, the reason why there's some more   resources on programming is that it's just  so legible, but it already makes it easier to   understand in the..."

"then your project will be done, and you'll  be able to go to, so you're like, “Well, I'll   just stay up and I'll debug this one last thing.”  And then you start debugging it, and you get it,   and yo..."

"progress. You're just kind of exploring parts of  the search space, and you're learning that parts   of the search space don't work. And eventually  you stumble on one that does, but you don't have   ..."

"they're doing it. I have mostly decided  to let them do that. I’d focus elsewhere.  Yeah. No, I see tremendous value in focusing  on the cool new shit that's coming out, where's   that coming from? An..."

"a problem that feels maybe tractable. Once all the tools are built,   when you're at the end of your career, is  the learning process supposed to feel fun?   Or does it have to feel fun? Is there an e..."

"I'm actually surprised to hear you say  that because one way in which I read   some of your stuff is that this is actually a  way of endorsing the traditional way of thinking   about education, but us..."

"The histories in educational psychology that  I'm most aligned with are the most robotic,   authoritarian kind of histories, and also the  ones that are most kind of unschooling and   Montessoriesque...."

"Actually, this is maybe a good place to ask you  about unschooling and your attitude towards it.   Somebody on Twitter had this question, how  are you structuring the education of your   kids as they'..."

"maybe a difference. During the pandemic, I was  struck by a company called Schoolhouse, which is   now defunct, started by Brian Toball. The idea  was that he noticed that people were getting   togeth..."

"Yeah, this is really challenging. One of the  heroes of the reform school movement is this   philosopher named John Dewey, and he has a  lovely book called Experience and Education,   sort of written ..."

"if they just want to compose music all day, we  could talk about like, well, what does that mean?   What kind of life does that look like? I would try  to be non-coercive in this as much as possible. ..."

"explains the broader sort of stagnation here? The funny answer to your question is actually   there's been a ton of progress. Actually, things  are pretty good. I think the stat is that in 1900,   6% ..."

"particular level. If you look at the national  tests of fourth, eighth and 12th grade math   and language proficiency, you'll see really  pretty slow movement in the 75th percentile and   practically ..."

"have always been people who have been using  resources outside of those kinds of systems.   So the mass system doesn't seem to help those  people, I guess. That doesn't seem surprising.  By the way, o..."

"case that some tutors have been priced out of the  market, but it's not clear to me that the most   expensive tutors actually would be the best. There  is a bunch of empirical research on tutoring,   ..."

"be just one appropriate answer and your students  will throw all kinds of stuff at you. And you have   to be able to take that stuff and integrate it and  show how one student's answer relates to anot..."

"how people write more? Often I write a blog post  and I actually do wonder how much different it is   with the knowledge that I can add footnotes and I  can link to things. I'm actually kind of a fan ..."

"don't quite stand on their own so cleanly.  You kind of need sinews, you need linkages.   And actually, I want to make the case that  while Wikipedia is an astounding resource,   I find it rarely to b..."

"Not everything, but things that are not so raw  and atomically informational. There were all these   dreams of hypertext novels, for instance, and some  people wrote them. And one of the problems that..."

"the questions, but on the general effect it has  on stuff that isn't touched by the questions.   I have some notes on the design decisions  of the mnemonic medium, this Quantum Country   thing that I ..."

"It's an argument for ephemerality,  for recreating the thing every day,   because it will change and it will become  inflected by what you're thinking about and   your experiences. It's pretty interes..."

"because he can't update them. That format of  writing a newsletter and then linking it to past   newsletters, or as you say, the former blogosphere  thing to do, you have a series of six words and   e..."

"there's an amount of prepping that's good. We  live in California and maybe everybody should   have an earthquake kit. Maybe that's good, but  maybe you don't need to hoard 300 cans of beans.   There'..."

"to try things that were straightforward. The most  powerful design work has ideas in it. What makes   a nonlinear text editor, the text editors that we  all know and love, so powerful is this observat..."

"by means of building an MVP very rapidly. Now, if  you have an idea that you think is interesting,   it is good to test it rapidly. Part of  why I'm confused in my response here is   that it's good ad..."

"But it's not necessarily at that  place. Until it's at that place,   there's a lot of thinking and sketching that goes  along with the building and prototyping. Part of   my confusion here is that oft..."

"I certainly could have done it much more rapidly. Why do you think that this idea of tools   of thought has nerd sniped so  many people in Silicon Valley?  It contains this message for technologists  ..."

"stuff like that is going to be pretty compelling. This was an interesting question from Matt Clancy   on Twitter - what are the characteristics  of a good crowdfunded research project?  One of the unf..."

"I've already chosen a research agenda or  direction, and I can express it. Crowdfunding   probably applies after the first few stages of  research have been completed. There's probably   standard gran..."

"wealth distribution of your audience. Maybe. There's a couple of ways to   interpret your question. One question is,  why crowdfund when I could appeal to high   net worth individuals? Another version..."

"early, I probably would have just reached out and  asked for individual help and I probably will if   it fails on me. I'll say also, when there have  been specific projects that I've wanted to do   th..."

"certainly wouldn't be okay for everybody. Even  for me, it doesn't allow me to support others.  Right. It's even more striking because you're  pretty well known, especially amongst the   audience that..."

"I systematically avoid marketing it. That's a  self-protection thing. I am really worried about   the corrosive influence of audience and marketing  on honest inquiry. It is very easy to distort my   ..."

"at least in my experience. Not only to be honest,  with what I think is interesting and important,   but even to be honest about the results.  Every paper is, in some sense, a little   marketing piece..."

"I've known about you for a long time. I do wonder  if there's an element of, if you get to a certain   level of quality, trying to market your stuff,  not only doesn't help, but probably hurts you. If..."

"than mine. There are a bunch of variables about  the way you talk about this membership offering.   None of us really want to think about them. I've  ended up at a slightly more effective part of the ..."

"I had much more success with my Patreon when I  recast it as, “Oh, please subscribe to support   my work”, like the thing you were describing,  to an offering to become a member. “When you   become a ..."

"member vibe. My instinct is that if you were  to move to “Become a member of Gwern’s lab”,   he would have better results. He has a thing on Patreon where   if you donate five bucks or eight bucks,  h..."

"behind a wall. I feel very conflicted about this  actually, maybe you can help me think about it.  I have all these patron essays. It's where most  of my writing is these days, because I'm waiting   u..."

"There are better ways to do this. There are  design solutions. For instance, if it were   the case that my work was mostly all in one place  rather than separate places, and the subset of the   work t..."

"this stuff to go viral. The primary value  that most of it has for people is opening   up a window into a particular very unusual kind of  creative work that they don't normally get to see   the behin..."

"I write something for broad public consumption. Okay, I've got some questions from Twitter.  Okay, bring it on Twitter. This is another question from Matt   Clancy. Are there other examples of benefic..."

"The thing that differentiates the formal practice  that I've been exploring is that it focuses on   material that you wouldn't normally have repeated  either because you're too early with it to have  ..."

"Often, once you understand the shape of making the  thing, it's not that effortful. My website was not   an enormous project for me, probably should have  been a slightly larger one, given that my inc..."

"because I just don't think it's important enough. I have a question about your time at Apple before   I ask the final Twitter question. Everybody  has an iPhone and from the outside, there must   be s..."

"At Apple, you have a little domain that's  your own, and the boundaries of that domain   are determined by everybody else's little domain.  There's a person who's responsible for thermals.   Actually,..."

"Is there a person whose job it is to take all  things into account? “I have decided, given the   memos from everybody, that thermals, you guys  need to work on this, you guys work on that?”.  Not exac..."

"rather than at a top level executive team. What I find really interesting about this   is that it's possible for a $2 trillion  company to integrate all this information   to have a cohesive hierarchy..."

"Let me first just respond to this observation  about the enormity of the company and then we'll   talk about the other firms. The reason Apple  is able to do this is because of the way they   delegate..."

"There's a really interesting Harvard Business  Review piece from a few years back about Apple's   management structure and how they have different  concentric rings of responsibility for any given   l..."

"As to why spaced repetition isn't widely  used, for instance, to learn quantum physics,   it's basically correctly priced. I can use spaced  repetition to learn quantum physics a bit faster.   It does..."