Learning

Learning how to learn.

Resources

• Thinking Fast and Slow
  • Great book. The capability, but also faults and bias of Systems 1 and 2.
• Epistemology | Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • "Episteme": Can refer to "knowledge", "understanding", "acquaintance"
  • "Logos": Can refer to "account", "argument", "reason"

Links

• YouTube: The Science of Thinking | Veritasium (System 1 vs System 2)
  • System 1: The intuition, fast processing
  • System 2: Smart and rational, but slow and lazy because it requires effort. It makes pupils dilate.
  • Chunking: we can remember 4-5 chunks. Learning is building larger chunks
  • The more confusing, the harder to understand, the more System 2 is involved (applicable in advertisements)
  • Implication on education: Forcing students to do more work also helps them to involve System 2 more, which makes learning better. Simply listening will exceed the capacity of System 2 because the chunks are not large enough to carry all information.
• YouTube: The Biggest Myth in Education | Veritasium (Learning Styles Doesn't Exist)
  • There is no scientific proof that learning styles exist (lots of links in the video description)
  • Everybody learns better with a multimodal approach (words & pictures together)
  • Not what/how information is presented but what is happening in the learner's head, active thinking and recall is more effective
• YouTube: The 4 things it takes to be an expert | Veritasium
  • Experts don't remember more chunks, just each chunk is larger
  • Repeated experience: Chess masters can remember chess boards better when the board makes sense, not when it's random
  • Valid environment (regularities): Stock picking is bad because of the low validity in the stock market. Humans have a hard time accepting average results and we see patterns even in randomness.
  • Timely feedback: Anesthesiologists learn better than radiologists, recruitment officers also suffer from delayed feedback
  • Deliberate practice: Practising with System 1 doesn't help, don't get too comfortable while practicing
• Edutainment is not learning (HN)
  • Edutainment: educational YouTube videos, Ted talks, Twitter, Hacker News, etc
  • A not-too-technical but friendly explanation of the reason why cognitive effort is required in learning
  • Frame "mindless" reading online as opportunities to scout topics to learn, but the actual learning requires time and deliberate effort to actively consume the content
• YouTube: The Backwards Brain Bicycle | Smarter Every Day
  • Turning the handlebar to the left makes the wheel turn to the right
  • Be careful of how you interpret knowledge. There is something special about knowing v.s. understanding