Tzadeck Wrote:I'm surprised this thread went as far as it did considering how inane the initial post was,

Gee, thanks.

Tzadeck Wrote:with the fake Einstein quote and the silly conclusions drawn from it.

Since this purported misquote is quite widespread, I don't see how anyone can be blamed for thinking it was genuine.

cracky Wrote:Sure, but your main argument boils down to the fact that it didn't work for you so it doesn't work.

No, absolutely not. My starting point was certainly my frustration with me not getting SRS to yield the results many have claimed it yielded for them. And as a result of that, I remembered the Einstein quote (that was later reported to be fake) which tied in with my frustrations. If I thought my own experiences were somehow the strongest possible argument, then even Einstein's opinion would have had less weight with me.

cracky Wrote:You see how that's logically flawed right? It not working for you doesn't say anything about if it works for someone else.

And I never said that. I gave many arguments, whatever their value. There is even a recent post from someone else listing all the supposed fallacies in my reasoning. If I hadn't supplied any other arguments, then their would be no such posts.

cracky Wrote:I don't know much about cognitive dissonance so I can't speak on that [...]

So why not look it up? It's not that tough a concept.

cracky Wrote:but I am implying that you have a confirmation bias because of your personal experiences.

The same could be said for anyone who has used SRS in conjunction with learning techniques like reading texts, studying grammar and doing listening exercises and who then insist that of all the tools used, for some reason SRS gets to take so much of the credit. How can they possibly know that ditching SRS in favour of the aforementioned results would not have yielded equal or better results?

Stansfield123 Wrote:1. There's no requirement to "tediously draw each Kanji", in Anki. There's no requirement to write them at all, unless you want to learn how to write by hand. Most people don't.

Drawing (or writing) may as well be done before the mind's eye (my method) as on paper.

Stansfield123 Wrote:2. If you are learning to write, it's not true that writing (not drawing, writing) a Kanji you know takes 10-15 seconds. You're way off. Writing Japanese takes about the same time it takes to write English. A lot at first, but very little once you know it.

So you are transplanting the time it takes an experienced writer of Japanese to write Kanji to the time it would take a beginner?

Stansfield123 Wrote:3. The average number of Kanji Anki would give you a day, during the review phase, assuming the failure rate you assumed, would be far less than 100.

I see I mentioned Anki where I should have said Kanji.Koohii's SRS. Odd that Anki would have such differing numbers of reviews, but I'll have to take your word for it.

Stansfield123 Wrote:4. The frequency with which Anki would give you cards you don't know, would be far more frequent than once in 20 days (it would be once every 10 minutes, and then once a day, by default).

So that would make SRS even more time consuming by comparison... (I didn't claim Anki used a 20-day cycle, BTW).

Stansfield123 Wrote:5. Your alternate method is terrible. Once in 20 days (which is the frequency you would review unknown Kanji with using your alternate method) is not enough to efficiently learn a Kanji you don't know. No one in their right mind would try to learn something by looking at it once every 20 days. It's such an obviously absurd thing to do.

I may not be an Anki expert, but doesn't that program use much longer intervals than 20 days after you get a card right a few times in a row?

Stansfield123 Wrote:6. This is by far the most important one: the notion that Anki forces you to spend a lot of time interacting with Kanji you already know is blatantly false. The vast majority of time is spent on Kanji you don't know.

So how can you check if a Kanji actually is one "you already know", if you do not at least try to reproduce it in some manner (at the very least before your mind's eye)? Or do you do very cursory reviews, clicking away cards that you believe you would have done right had you bothered to fully reproduce them?

Stansfield123 Wrote:If you know 1000 Kanji perfectly well, and 1000 none at all, then the time you need to spend on the 1000 Kanji you know is less than 1% of the total. The amount of time you need to spend on a card you know in Anki is ONE SECOND. That's the time it takes to press Shift-1 and suspend that card.

ONE SECOND to determine if you would have accurately reproduced a Kanji? Even a slightly more complex one?!?

Stansfield123 Wrote:[b]If you know 1000 Kanji fairly well,[...]

There is also a "fairly well" category? So in the space of that ONE SECOND, not only will something have to emerge from your memory to check the image on your screen against, but you als decide between (1) not remembered, (2) fairly well remembered or (3) remembered? Well, if you say so...

Stansfield123 Wrote:Even without suspending a Kanji, the total time you have to spend on it is no more than 10 seconds (that's how long it would take to review the card 4 times in its lifetime; and 4 is the total number of times Anki would show you an easy card, during the first year, if set up correctly).

Then I guess Kanji.Koohii's SRS is not set up right, since it is possible to get a card you get right all the time at least 6 times in that many months. (More than 'possible', even, that is simply the way it is).

Stansfield123 Wrote:Meanwhile, if you used your alternate method for a year, you would have to take a look at that Kanji you know once every 20 days: that's 18 times a year.

The alternate method is similar to running your finger down a list of names in a phone book and stopping at each one that doesn't ring a bell. You can easily go through multiple names (or Kanji) per second using that method.

Eminem2 Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:I'm surprised this thread went as far as it did considering how inane the initial post was,

Gee, thanks.

Tzadeck Wrote:with the fake Einstein quote and the silly conclusions drawn from it.

Since this purported misquote is quite widespread, I don't see how anyone can be blamed for thinking it was genuine.

I don't think you're dumb or anything--you can write fairly well and I don't know you. I do think it was a bad post though.

I think that it's well known that quotations on the internet are fairly likely to be attributed to the wrong person, so I think a bit of fact checking is always in order. I also think that justifying your position based on that quote was strange either way; if SRS as a method works--and I'm not saying whether not it does--then it still fulfills the conditions mentioned in the quote. There's no reason the quote has to refer to an individual instance of a flashcard rather than a method. If SRS didn't work for you at all and yet you still continued to do it, that would indeed be stupid of you. In fact, regarding individual flashcards, Anki even has a leech system so if you indeed do the same thing over and over again with no results, Anki lets you know that you need to do something different by labeling the card a leech.

You could also probably do yourself a favor by reading something about the lives of famous geniuses such as Einstein, and you'd probably be more hesitant to make claims like the one about Einstein being rarely wrong. He clearly was wrong, often. You could probably also think more about the merits of justifying your own positions by appealing to authority, especially based on out-of-context platitudes.

The only thing I want to say is that with Anki, if you know well let's say 1000 kanji, you simply push them further in time, and you'll see them again in 6 months, then in 1 year etc.. so you're not reviewing things you already know well. On the other hand, if you don't recognize a kanji because you don't know it well, it will show it the next few days, so you can test yourself if after a couple of days you can recognize it. It's simple reviewing, I don't understand your "yes but...", there is not much to say or understand about all the matter... Your objections are objections aganist reviewing in general, so if you think reviewing is futile, then you're objecting what all students do when they review notes in school. If, on the other hand, you think reviewing notes is useful in refreshing your memory and maintain it, then it's obvious SRS is nothing but optimized reviewing, exactly beacuse if you recognize you know a thing pretty well, you can decide to review it not before 6 months or 1 year or far... Really I don't understand in what way those critiques are related to SRS.

Eminem2 Wrote:

cracky Wrote:I don't know much about cognitive dissonance so I can't speak on that [...]

So why not look it up? It's not that tough a concept.

Alright, I will look it up. Will you look up informal logic and basic fallacies? Maybe some argumentation for good measure.