Epistemic status: splitting hairs. Originally published as a shortform; thanks @Arjun Panickssery for telling me to publish this as a full post.

There's been a lot of recent work on memory. This is great, but popular communication of that progress consistently mixes up active recall and spaced repetition. That consistently bugged me — hence this piece.

If you already have a good understanding of active recall and spaced repetition, skim sections I and II, then skip to section III.

Note: this piece doesn’t meticulously cite sources, and will probably be slightly out of date in a few years. I link to some great posts that have far more technical substance at the end, if you’re interested in learning more & actually reading the literature.

1. Active Recall

When you want to learn some new topic, or review something you’ve previously learned, you have different strategies at your disposal. Some [...]

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Outline:

(00:54) 1. Active Recall

(01:46) 2. (Efficiently) Spaced Repetition

(03:39) 3. The difference

(04:42) 4. Implications

The original text contained 4 images which were described by AI.

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First published:

Source:

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

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