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Re: Using unmaintained plugins


From: Marcin Borkowski
Subject: Re: Using unmaintained plugins
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2021 08:51:57 +0200
User-agent: mu4e 1.1.0; emacs 28.0.50

On 2021-04-19, at 00:21, Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> wrote:

> * Bithov Vinu <bithov.vinub@gmail.com> [2021-04-18 16:15]:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I recently began to use Emacs org-drill (see:
>> https://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html) in Emacs which is an
>> unmaintained Emacs package for scheduling and reviewing flashcards
>> using a spaced
>> repetition <https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition> algorithm.
>
> The page explains the classical condition of memorizing it versus
> understanding it. People who do not understand what they read will
> tend to memorize it as by repetition. By repetition one can memorize
> anything, for example parts of foreign language, then can repeat it,
> but will not be able to apply it practically neither as it was never
> understood in the first place.

I don't really understand why you present it as "memorizing it versus
understanding it".  It is a typical example of false dichotomy.

As a long-time student of mathematics (5 years Masters program, then 4
years of PhD) I can assure you that understanding does not imply
memorizing _at all_.  In fact, I'd consider "understanding" and
"memorizing" two separate and pretty independent goals.

> Those people who would learn let us say some phrases of foreign
> language by understanding each word and full sentences and by applying
> words in sentences and in real life, would never forget about it, and
> also would not need the feeling to memorize it.

How about learning idioms which _by definition_ cannot be "understood"
by means of understanding their constituent parts?  You can either use
a mnemotechnic (a bad idea, since it introduces complexity - it requires
_thinking_ when one has no time or capacity for it (i.e., while speaking
in a foreign language and expressing one's thoughts on something else),
or just "cram" it (using repetition, because how else?).  The same (but
even moreso) goes for actual words, where (from a typical student's
point of view at least) there are no "constituent parts" at all (most
people do not learn etymology while learning a foreign language,
especially as kids).

I find your opinion not only wrong, but even dangerous.  If you
emphasize "learning by understanding" and skip the "tedious memorizing,
maybe even without understanding" part, you run the risk of not having
enough data readily available in your brain (without crutches like
"mnemotechnics") to e.g. find analogies.

An analogy (perhaps not the best one, but insightful, I think).  You can
only learn about more advanced concepts of calculus once you have
memorized the basic concepts of (elementary) algebra like simplifying
expressions, multiplying out brackets or factoring polynomials so well
as to be able to carry them out without actually _thinking_ or
_understanding_ them.  If what you need to do is integrating
a complicated function, you cannot "spend your brain points" on
performing elementary operations.  IOW, you need to memorize certain
rules - not necessarily "without" understanding, but - so to speak -
"beyond" it.

> IMHO, the whole concept is upside down, I find it as a useless
> disadvise as it brings people into such a wrong direction of
> thinking -- which is to memorize things without understanding and
> without associations.

Again, false dichotomy.  IMHO, the right way of learning is: understand
first, then memorize.

> Then associations instead of repetitions are used as a learning
> method, even then, a person need not have more than just one occurence
> of proper association, even for most stupidest things, to memorize the
> whole set even for life if necessary. No repetitions necessary.

I am strongly convinced this is not true.  Memorizing something for
a lifetime after one occurrence is only possible under the assumption
that you don't live long enough to forget it.  (Of course, with
especially strong experiences, the time-to-forget might as well be on
the order of millenia, which - given the lifespan of a human being - may
seem like "forever".)

> That is called mnemotechnic. It utilizes the power of association.
>
> We understand things by associations. This is similar to Emacs Lisp
> building of functions, as the majority of new function and variable is
> related to some previous functions and that is why program works. It
> relies on some previous foundation.
>
> Without association some people may say "to memorize it", but I find
> it an abuse of mind whereby mind is perfectly capable to understand
> things by association, forget about it and remember it at any time in
> future.

Yes, it does work like this for _some_ things (possibly substituting "at
any time in the future" with "at any time in the next several hundred
years" or something similar, as I mentioned above).  For some things,
however (language is the first example that comes to mind - whether it
is a natural but foreign language you learn, a programming language or
the language of algebra), not necessarily.

> Example is the word:
>
> The adj mnemonic has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts)
> 1. mnemonic, mnemotechnic, mnemotechnical -- (of or relating to or involved 
> the practice of aiding the memory; "mnemonic device")
>
> If person would not know the meaning of "memory" in the above
> definition, person would not have the association necessary to
> understand what would mnemonic mean. The association would be missing,
> and thus full understanding, because there is no association, when
> there is a real life need to use the word mnemonic, person would not
> be able to associate the memorized definition.

I am not sure what you mean by "full" understanding.

Is it enough for you to "fully understand" the word "mnemonic" if you
know what "memory" is?  Or do you need to know that it comes from the
name of Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, and mother of the nine
muses?  If you only know the former, your understanding is not really
full (as you have demonstrated by your email;-)), since it is only when
you know that the nine muses (according to ancient Greeks) were
responsible for various disciplines of art and science, you may ponder
the crucial role of _memory_ in those disciplines - how it is, in
a sense, a "mother" to them.  Does that mean that _my_ understanding is
full? Not remotely, I think, it only means that most probably it runs
a bit deeper than yours _in this particular aspect_.

Again: many years of studying mathematics taught me not to use the
phrase "full understanding".

Here is an especially striking example I like a lot.  When I first
learned the theorem saying that given a finite set of points in the
plane (under some technical assumption about their abscissae), there
exists exactly one straight line minimizing the sum of squares of their
deviations (along the vertical axis) from that line, I thought
I understood that theorem.  (I was even shown a sketch of the proof.
"Full understanding" - because what else could be the "full
understanding" in maths but seeing the proof - yay!)

A few years later I learned a bit of functional analysis, and it turned
out that this theorem was just a quite basic application of the fact
that in a nonempty, closed and convex subset of a Hilbert space you can
find a unique closest point to any other point of that space.

And just when you think this is your "full understanding", you learn
more about geometry of Banach spaces and it turns out that you don't
really need the inner product - the crucial property is that Hilbert
spaces are uniformly convex Banach spaces.  And I suspect it's not the
end of the story, either...

> To memorize would mean to remember without understanding. You can
> repeat that sentence many times you want, if you don't know the
> meaning of "memory" -- and you can repeat it, but you if you don't
> know the maning of memory, there is no way that you may really acquire
> the understanding versus memorizing.
>
> You have to know also more than meaning of "memory", learner would
> need to know meaning of adjective, sense, what means "relating" and
> all other words such as "aiding" and similar, so that full association
> in proper context may be understood. Even then, person rather should
> practice either in one's own mind or by talking that sentence. As for
> example, one can learn and understand the sentence in German: "Was
> kosten diese Kaiser brötchen?" but if one applies that sentence in
> real life in a bakery to ask for price of Emperor's buns, then that
> accomplishes realistically full association and helps person
> understand it probably forever.
>
> For those things which are harder to memorize such as birthdays,
> faces, phone numbers, various labels and similar, those things which
> are harder to associate to something, one uses mnemotechnics, such as
> on https://artofmemory.com/start/ or
> https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-mnemonics.html yet
> even those mnemotechnics share the basic methods of associations.

Again: I consider mnemotechnics very useful, but still crutches.  They
are a good tool for when the "memory latency" (the time you need to
retrieve some piece of information from your memory) is not critical.
If it is, they are useless.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl



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