Superintelligence
What’s Your Best Study Tip? (Coursera)
The minimum information principle, neurophysiology, and its advantages
Whenever I try to learn something new, I try to learn the source in small portions at a time. This is called incremental learning (a technique commonly used by SuperMemo users).
I, however, use Anki for that and I believe it does the job just as well.
I also try to implement these 20 rules of formulating knowledge, also written by SuperMemo creator Dr. Piotr Woźniak:
https://www.supermemo.com/en/archives1990-2015/articles/20rules
Out of all of them, I believe the most important one is the “minimum information principle”:
The minimum information principle has its purpose to minimize the changes in synaptic pattern complexity in each successive repetition (i.e. spaced repetition). This can be done by making your flashcards as simple as possible while ensuring that the whole of the collection still sufficiently resembles all of the components.
What is another reason to make your flashcards as simple as possible? Because this causes the creation of synaptic patterns with less complexity which, again, is much easier to maintain over each successive repetition.
