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Comment by fn-mote

3 days ago

Downvotes should not be for disagreeing with content!!

I suppose it depends on how you think of free speech:

1. Free speech means I should be able to say anything (or in this case vote in any manner) that's legal, and that's the only consideration.

2. Free speech is a foundation for a higher level goal of a society that also values etiquette, respect, and discretion.

That is quite literally what they are for!

  • Downvotes is for removing thoughtless comments and spam.

    I try to upvote someone making a well thought out argument that brings clarity to the discussion even if I disagree with it.

    And I try to downvote something I agree with if it was stated in an incoherent manner.

I don't begrudge them for downvoting. They are, nonetheless, wrong in their belief that a return to printed books makes long term sense.

  • Do you have any reasons for this beyond ease of reproducing portions of the text to drill yourself to remember it verbatim?

    • Yes. Over 12 years of use I have consistently found spaced repetition to be the most enjoyable way to learn basically anything, and essentially the only way to ensure things I don't regularly use as part of my job continue to be things I can remember. Some subjects I have in rotation at the moment: Finnish, Haskell, SQLite database internally, cash management and financial jargon, old photos and video clips of my childhood cat who I loved dearly.

      But, more to the point: You seem confused as to the true generality of the technique. Flashcards can be used in much more interesting ways than just checking to see if you can recite all the lines of Homer correctly or something.

      The vast majority of cards I have are questions of understanding - e.g. a card like "How many unique strands of DNA can be made from 100 A-T pairs and 100 C-G pairs?" You can't memorize all those digits. You need to remember how to solve the problem, which is quite simple, but not so simple it's worthless for a non-mathematician to solve without pen and paper.

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