smritiweb.com

Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

Wired an interesting article on a guy who, after a detailed study of how human memory works, has developed SuperMemo, a software program that will allow you to remember many more things than you currently can:

SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you’ve learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you’ve forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you’re about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they?

Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially. A graph of our likelihood of getting the correct answer on a quiz sweeps quickly downward over time and then levels off. This pattern has long been known to cognitive psychology, but it has been difficult to put to practical use. It’s too complex for us to employ with our naked brains.

Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting if he could discover the right algorithm. SuperMemo is the result of his research. It predicts the future state of a person’s memory and schedules information reviews at the optimal time. The effect is striking. Users can seal huge quantities of vocabulary into their brains.

While initially I found myself tempted by the idea of trying this software, or at least the techniques used in it, I soon decided that in my current situation in life, I don’t really want to memorize anything so desperately. More generally, if I read something, and then I forget it later because I did not encounter it again in my readings soon enough, I believe that it was not important enough to remember in the first place. I only want to memorize the things that keep showing up in my readings.

Your mileage may vary. And even if it doesn’t, you should still read the full article. It’s rather long, but parts of it are quite interesting.

Catch-22 in real life

The book Philosophical Psychopathology reports on the case of a man who got into a real-life Catch-22 situation. He was brought to psychiatrists because he was suffering from mental delusions. He was afraid that he was going to be “locked up”. And the psychiatrists said that this was a delusion without any basis in reality. In fact, his delusion was so strong, that to avoid being locked up, he tried to kill himself. Based on this, the psychiatrists decided that he should be …… you guessed it …… locked up.

If they lock him up, then his belief was true, and he wasn’t really deluded, was he? So they shouldn’t be able to lock up him. But then his belief would turn out to be false. And they can lock him up after all. Somewhere, Alfred Tarski is getting uncomfortable in his grave.

See full article (via boingboing.

The dullest blog in the world

This blog is the dullest blog in the world. You should check it out:

Tidying some pencils (dull, March 16)
Some pencils were scattered around on my desk. I picked them up one by one. I placed the pencils in the drawer which I use to store pencils.

Opening a cupboard door (dull, October 17)
There was a cupboard in the corner of the room. I reached out my hand and gripped the door handle. I pulled the door towards me, thereby opening the cupboard.

Found: here. See full article.

Will you?

This is the abstract of United States Patent Application: 0070078663:

The purpose of this invention is to provide an improved method of proposing marriage to an individual. The method of proposing to an individual generally comprising the steps of meeting the individual; exchanging names with the individual; dating the individual (not necessary); drafting a government document having a proposal to marry the individual incorporated therein; and showing the government document to the individual. The government document may be a patent application. The patent application may claim the method by which the proposor will make a marriage proposal to the individual. The proposor could then use the method claimed in the patent application to propose to the individual. The patent application could be the actual marriage proposal.

You really should see the patent application. Has interesting stuff like:

[0015] One of the principal objects of the invention is to provide a method by which a proposor’s clever proposal coaxes an individual into marrying the proposor.

[0016] Yet another object of the invention is to provide an entirely unique method for a proposor to propose marriage to an individual.

[0017] Still another object of the invention is to provide a method for proposing marriage to an individual where the proposor can righteously tout the uniqueness of the proposal.

[0018] Yet another object of the invention is to provide a method of proposing marriage to an individual where the method of proposing is at least partially related to the proposor’s future profession.

[0019] Still another object of the invention is to provide a method of proposing to an individual where the method is recorded in a government document for all the world to see.

[0020] These and other objects will be obvious to those skilled in the art.

When will you climb Mt. Everest?

One of my favorite fictional characters, Travis McGee, complains that there is no point in retiring when you are too old to enjoy retirement. Hence, he takes his retirement in installments. As soon has he has enough money to coast for a while, he retires until the money runs out. Rinse. Repeat.

Do you have a list of things you would like to do some day? And is that “some day” likely to get postponed until you are too old to actually do those things?

You should consider doing these things now. I can hear people whining that they can’t drop what they are doing and start taking off on vacations. But when you really think about it, whatever you are doing for your day job, you can really take time off (and save enough money) to do the things in your to-do list. My friend Ketan loves traveling and has traveled to the remotest corners of the world. Probably over 40 different countries. And some of these trips take more than a month. He has a wife (who is also working) and a kid (who’s in school) and yet they all manage to take time off for these trips. And he managed to found and run a startup while doing all this. Are you really more busy than him?

This line of thought was triggered by an e-mail from my father-in-law who is preparing to trek to Mt. Everest Base Camp at the age of 64. He has loved travelling and adventure, but unfortunately when he was young, circumstances were such that he could not indulge. So now, he is trying to make up and has already been to Antartica amongst many other places. Mind you, he hasn’t yet retired - he is running a very successful business while he is doing this. He just sent us this e-mail on the eve of his trip to Everest Base Camp that makes for interesting reading:

Since the time I read during my school-times that Edmund Hillary climbed Mt Everest, it has been my wish to get a feel of the great mountain. With my completion of the other trekking and visits to breezing cold places like [Antartica] and trekking to places like Mansarovar-Kailash Parikrama (19,800 ft altitude), Amarnath, Uttaranchal mountains, Hem Kund, etc, I thought of making it to Mt. Everest also. At one stage, I accepted the fact that with advancing age; I should give up this idea. I was disappointed by the things I didn’t do twenty years back than by the ones I did do. However during the cruise to Antarctica, my meetings during the 18 days of journey together with the current world fame mountaineer Mr. Peter Hillary (son of Mr. Edmond Hillary) inspired me that I must try to fulfill my child-hood ambition of embracing Mt. Everest.

God willing, I will be trekking Mt. Everest starting 10 April 2008. With 14 days of steep trekking of 7-10 hours each day, I surely wish to complete it atleast up to the base camp (before the peak Summit). Going further ahead would depend on the various circumstances prevailing then.

Many well wishers have raised the question whether it is right on my part to take this trip at this age. No doubt, I have been told that It is one of the toughest physical and mental challenges one will ever face as it is a difficult and demanding trek in (a) sub-zero temp –10 to -20 deg C (b) heavy chilly wind (c) at a very high altitude with (d) with acute shortage of oxygen. So, it sounds difficult, but I think I am different, so it may not be difficult.

All my above adventures so far, without exception, were with my better half Pushpa. However, this time I will miss her a lot as she has dropped out as her knees may not stand to the strenuous trekking of Mt. Everest. I have been waiting for another company for the last 1-2 years without success and hence I have decided to go all alone, an adventure in my own way. I will hire out a guide/porter to carry baggage from Kathmandu.

Hope I carry your good wishes and surely will have a lot to share with you, on my return.

When are you going to Mt. Everest?