SuperMemo Guru
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This site offers texts on memory, learning, sleep, creativity, problem solving, brain science, health, and education (2,447 pages, 31,625 edits)
Learning
- Problem of schooling: How schools make for unhappy lives for kids
- Pleasure of learning: Why pleasure is essential for high quality learning
- Natural creativity cycle: How cycles of attention, distraction and sleep lead to great discoveries
- Don't teach your child to read: How eager teaching may result in educational dyslexia
- Childhood amnesia: Why child's brain is totally different than adult's brain and how it affects early education
- Semantic aspects of childhood amnesia: Infantile amnesia is not entirely neurophysiological
- Speed reading: The trick to fast reading with comprehension is incremental reading
- Learn drive: Brains are equipped with detectors of valuable knowledge
- Toxic memory: Coercive learning is harmful
- School damages your brain: Many years of schooling result in maladaptive changes to brain architecture
- Principles of spaced repetition: By computing the optimum time of review, we can forget about forgetting
- 20 rules of knowledge formulation: The way we formulate knowledge may decide if we forget or remember for decades
- Semantic learning: Comprehension affects durability of memories
- Learning and depression: Learning may be one of the simplest preventive tools in a fight against depression
- Older people learn slower: Older people are harder to convince
- Social media feedback loop: Social media may lead to Educational Singularity
Creativity
- How to solve any problem? Simple tricks that great people use to solve problems
- Sleep and learning: Sleep has a powerful impact on learning (and vice versa)
- Creativity cycle: Sleep has a powerful impact on creativity (and vice versa)
- Productivity vs. creativity dilemma: Creativity is wild. It can easily take you away from your goals
- Confusing creativity with ADHD: Creative and unruly kids are often labelled as ADHD, esp. in the classroom
- Knowledge in creative problem solving: New learning must complement expertise to ensure lifelong creativity
- Fidgeting is good: How restless tapping may be a healthy response to rampant creativity
- Are extroverts more creative? One of Big Five traits may appear not to be a genetic trait after all
Intelligence
- Simple formula for high intelligence: We should never be inhibited by the thought that genes underlie genius
- Artificial intelligence might destroy humanity: Elon Musk and George Hinton propose a wrong formula for safe AI
- Genius checklist: 20+ things needed to maximize the brain power
- Optimizing the timing of brainwork: There are only two short windows of time each day when brain power is at its best
- IQ is a dismal measure of intelligence: Instead of serving humanity, many definitions of intelligence serve vanity
- Precocity paradox: Many who are first will be last, and the last first
- School undermines intelligence: It is a widespread false belief that schools improve intelligence
- Concept network: Simple model of how the brain works
- Conceptual computation: How thoughts flow in a concept network of the brain
- Abstract knowledge: The properties of knowledge that underlie intelligence
- Intelligence abhors schooling: Science of intelligence explains the error of schooling
- Bill Gates and his non-incremental reading: Bill Gates is a fantastic reader, but he could still improve
- Computer games will ensure a great leap in human intelligence: Parents and teachers wrongly condemn games as mindless
- Exploratory learning algorithm: Humans can achieve amazing feats of intelligence at microscopic cost of energy
- Great personalities do not come from genes: Heritability studies are highly misleading. They underestimate the effect of noxious environments
- Yuval Harari has a prescription for a war with AI: The greatest danger of artificial intelligence comes from humans
- Reddit is a horrible place to have intelligent discussions: Reddit got many things right, but is karma system is a killer of intelligence
- ChatGPT shows that all kids are born with a great potential: It is hard to escape 19th century notions that intelligence is genetic. ChatGPT helps
Sleep
- Science of sleep: Good sleep, good learning, good life
- Neural optimization in sleep: Sleep is like disk defragmentation that boosts fast thinking, problem solving, and more
- Sleep control system: Dozens of brain systems involved in the control of sleep
- Biphasic life: Humans are biphasic. Hence the invention of siesta
- Best time for napping: Naps should be taken within a 1-2 hour window in the middle of the day
- Power nap: How naps compensate for night sleep
- Curing DSPS and insomnia: DSPS and insomnia have reached epidemic proportions, but there are natural remedies at hand
- Baby sleep: Parents who understand how babies sleep are more likely to nurture healthy brains
- Sleep deprivation amplifies the harm of schooling: Learning in a sleepy state can ruin prior learning
- How do we fall asleep?: The cascade of events that lead to slumber
- Two components of sleep: Two components of sleep regulation determine when we fall asleep and how effective sleep is
Education
- Problem of schooling: We need a Grand Reform in education to prevent further harm to children
- Why kids hate school? Kids hate school almost unanimously
- 100 bad habits learned at school: School gives you some knowledge and a long list of bad habits
- Don't teach your child to read: Reading became the chief harmful obsession of parents and education systems around the world
- Dangers of being a Straight A student: Good grades are a delight for parents, but they can also spell a threat
- School damages your brain: Many years of schooling result in maladaptive changes to brain architecture
- Humanity's greatest blunder: It is not war. It is not destruction of natural environment. Humanity's greatest blunder is coercive education
- School Reform: Evolution or Revolution?: without a student strike, the school system is likely to retain its coercive nature for years
- Mythology of schooling: the school system is a self-perpetuating moloch: its pawns have received the best schooling in obedient conformity
- Education counteracts evolution: Education systems around the world are designed in opposition to biologically natural ways of learning
- 10 mortal sins of schooling: Problem of schooling in a capsule
- Freedom of education: Freedom of education is as precious as freedom of speech
- Schools are useless in teaching English!: Years of foreign language learning at school bring little effect
- Learning history: school vs. self-directed learning: Most kids leave high school with negligible understanding of history
- How baby brain does not work: The myth of "perfect learning machines"
- Daycare misery: Most of praise for benefits of daycare comes from exculpatory needs of busy moms
- Ban on homeschooling: Those who ban homeschooling block the best options for free learning
- Learning to navigate uncertainty and complexity: Schools focus on deterministic learning. Minimization of uncertainty undermines future problem solving skills
- The grind is the glory: Why loving parents often ruin the pleasure of learning for their own kids
- Videogames are better than teachers: Videogames are not mindless. They are one of the best learning tools
- Adults are incapable of empathy in education: School system survives on adult ignorance
- Can coercion cause dyslexia?: Dyslexia is not just about the brain and neurology
- Finnish school paradox: Wonderful Finnish school system may be a wolf in sheep's clothing
- Bill Gates is wrong about education: Bill is great. Bill is good. Bill is wrong
- Bill Gates is a reading toddler: Bill is a great reader. But his methodology is archaic
- How schools can contribute to Alzheimer's disease: Knowledge prevents Alzheimer's, but schooling can also contribute to senile dementia
- PISA fuels the education arms race: PISA tests are interesting, but they are also harmful
- Do children need boundaries to feel safe?: Children are often disciplined under the guise of making them feel "secure"
- Experts do not understand Khan Academy: why one man's revolution is another man's blasphemy
- Problems with special-needs education: Early academic instruction is harmful. How about kids with learning disabilities?
Memory
- Forgetting curve: How fast we forget after learning
- Mechanism of forgetting: How forgetting contributes to intelligence
- History of spaced repetition: How we dramatically advanced the science of learning in the last three decades
- Learn drive: The power behind curiosity and learning
- Grandmother cells: How a joke idea turns out to underlie human intelligence
- Two component model of memory: How long-term memory works
- Two component model of memory stability: What factors keep memories stable for decades
- Spaced repetition: How to eliminate the problem of forgetting
- Conceptualization theory of childhood amnesia: Why children have plastic brains and still learn slowly
- Error of Ebbinghaus forgetting curve: How SuperMemo added to Hermann Ebbinghaus reputation
- How are false memories born?: How faulty memory contributes to human intelligence
- On the superiority of a rat over a schooled human: Why rats learn smarter than kids in a classroom
- Neurostatistical Model of Memory: New model that attempts to describe the properties of memory
Health
- Optimum diet: Dieting is harmful. Mental health is the best prevention of obesity
- Stress resilience: Chronic stress is a brain destroyer in early childhood
- Dyslexia conspiracy: Dyslexia is a billion-dollar business. Beware
- Using stress valves to prevent chronic stress: Natural anti-stress weapons
- Baby management: Instead of providing room for growth, we try to push kids into a box of directed development
- Daycare infections: Daycare centers are germ factories that steal from valuable learning time
- Preventing infections: It is possible to build resistance to cold and flu viruses
- Reward diversity in preventing addictions: Parents and schools drive kids to addictions
- I have ADHD and I love it: One man's creativity is another man's mental health issue
- ADHD: ADHD is subject to over-diagnosis
- Trading genius for Asperger: A psychiatric disorder which may indicate a potential for genius
- War of the networks: Defying human nature is a root cause of the whole host of human problems
- You cannot catch a cold from cold: One of the most popular and highly detrimental myths about health
- Schools are the primary source of obesity epidemic: if there was no compulsory schooling, obesity levels would plummet
- Reinterpretation of stoicism: How creative elaboration assists a resilient stoic mind
Productivity
- Planning productive days: The power of the habit in maximizing productivity
- Micro-rules of productivity: Hard work can be immensely pleasurable
- Productivity vs. creativity dilemma: The quest for productivity does not need to kill the creative spirit
- Scott Galloway does not understand talent: The best life is the one that is driven by passions
Myths
- Myths are easy to swallow and hard to kill: how memory models help us tackle false beliefs
- The morbid myth of Digital Dementia: how Dr Manfred Spitzer fooled millions
- Omnipresent myth of immature frontal lobes: how Dr Victoria Dunckley uses a myth to sell a book
- Executive function is essential for success at school: how brain science is a cover for controlling children
- Myth: Students are naturally lazy and do not like to learn
- Horrible proposition of Dr Jonathan Haidt: how can child freedoms and phone lockers live in the same head
- Neuromythology: dozens of dumb myths about the impact of technology on our minds
- Myth: Artificial intelligence will never match human intelligence: many smart people claim that computers will never be conscious, emotional, passionate, nor even creative
- Do computers make children illiterate? how computers and smartphones improve reading
- Myth: Early reading is essential for literacy: schools induce dyslexia and reading without comprehension
- Myth: Blacks are less intelligent than whites: neural networks are unaware of the skin color
- Myth: Artificial intelligence will make humans stupid: with AI we will soar to new levels of intelligence
- Myth: Chores at home make kids happy later in life: again, science provides an excuse to control the lives of kids
For 100+ myths about memory, learning, sleep, and creativity see Myths
SuperMemo
- History of spaced repetition: all roads lead to SuperMemo
- History of incremental reading: 25 years of technology that builds upon spaced repetition
- How to read a book in an hour?: incremental reading makes it possible to devour books faster than ever
- SuperMemo does not work for kids: pushing SuperMemo on kids can be harmful
- Speed-reading on steroids: incremental reading makes it possible to read fast with high recall
- How to earn a million dollars with brain power: spaced repetition helped Jonas von Essen win "Who wants to be a millionaire"
- Hating SuperMemo: how to avoid the pitfalls of bad learning
- Advantages of incremental reading: all the best things about the best reading method
- Advantages of incremental writing: how to effectively combine creative ideas in writing
- Inevitability of incremental reading: why incremental reading had to happen
- Incremental reading step by step: best reading method explained on a page of text
- Why is incremental reading not popular?: why great technologies may be hard to use
- Harm of incremental reading: how incremental reading impacts the brain
- SuperMemo for Windows year by year
- History of SuperMemo
- Who is SuperMemo Guru?
Older texts
Warning! It is harder to correct errors in older texts. Please verify. For example, I had no idea of Dyslexia Conspiracy back in 2001. I was a lemming too.
- Roots of creativity and genius (2001)
- Incremental reading (2002-2016)
- Decade of speed reading (incrementally) (2014)
- Can too much learning cause Alzheimer's? (2002) (better alternative: Bad learning contributes to Alzheimer's)
- Myth collection: memory, learning, creativity and sleep (1999-2012)
- Good sleep, good learning, good life (2012) (better alternative: Science of sleep)
- How memory works? (1994)
- Decade of SuperMemo (interview) (1999)
- Goodness of knowledge (2002)
- SuperMemo as a tool for a programmer (1993) (see also: SuperMemo as a tool for a programmer)
Translations
Comments
Color codes
Important notes: the most important ideas are marked in yellow. Those are snippets I want you to remember most from my texts. If you do not have time for reading, reviewing those notes will tell you roughly what I want to say. If you disagree, you can dig deeper in the text to figure out my reasoning
Excerpts: mark the most remarkable or influential words taken from other authors. At times, putting things in my own words would not do justice to the original
Personal anecdote. Why use anecdotes?
Personal anecdotes: if you have an impression that my opinions about education are distorted by my own experience, you are right. I have spent all my professional life on self-directed learning, while my 22 years of formal schooling remained a distant memory. With each improvement to my own learning, I recall those early years with less and less respect to the old ways of learning. My personal notes are marked with this colored template. You can skip them without losing on the message, or dig into my own recall to see how my opinions have been shaped or biased
Anecdote. Why use anecdotes?
Anecdotes: some stories from lives of great and/or ordinary people
Motto: some witty idea or quote from a wise man, usually from ages ago. A quote that sets the theme for a chapter. Those witticisms often help us realize that we are re-learning history over and over again. The ancients knew things many people fail to see today
Metaphor. Why use metaphors?
SuperMemo insert. What is SuperMemo?
SuperMemo notes: are relevant only to those who care about SuperMemo. You can skip those inserts without missing main points
FAQ question. What are FAQs?
Frequently asked questions (FAQs): Interesting questions you might have about memory, learning, creativity, sleep, etc.
Archive warning: Why use literal archives?
Archive: Archive materials are presented for historic reasons. They may intentionally include wrong hypotheses or models, e.g. to illustrate the progression of thought
AI Chatbot: Text generated by AI with possible edits to make it more concise or to fit the context
✗ Myth: Myths: Important false claims popularly accepted as true, e.g. the myth of Digital Dementia on the harm of digital devices for children