The ‘frontpage time window’ is the duration a post remains on the frontpage. With the increasing popularity of the forum, this window becomes shorter and shorter, and it makes everyone scramble to participate in the latest discussions before the post disappears into irrelevancy.
I call it the “jabber loop”. As long as we fear being exposed as clueless about something, we’re incentivised to read what we expect other people will have read, and what they’re likely to bring up in conversation.
This seems suboptimal if it biases us towards only appreciating what’s recent and crowds out the possibility of longer, more patient, discussions. One solution to this could be spaced-repetition curated posts.[1]
When a post gets curated, that should indicate that it has some long-term value. So instead of (or in addition to) pinning it on top of the frontpage, the star could indicate that this post will resurface to the frontpage at a regular interval that decays exponentially (following the forgetting curve).[2][3]
Some reasons this could be good
It lets readers know that this discussion will resurface, so their contributions could also have lasting value. Comments are no longer write-and-forget, and you have a real chance at contributing more long-term.
It efficiently[4] increases collective memory of the best contributions.
It can help us scrutinise ideas that got inculcated as a fundamental assumption early on. We might uncover and dislodge some flawed assumptions that reached universal acceptance in the past due to information cascades.
As we gain more information and experience over time, we might stand a better chance at discover flaws in previously accepted premises. But unless there’s something (like spaced-repetition curation) that prompts the question into public debate again, we don’t get to benefit from that increased capacity, and we may just be stuck with the beliefs that got accepted earlier.
Given that there’s a large bias to discuss what’s recent, combined with the fact that people are very reluctant to write up ideas that have already been said before, we might be stuck with a bit of a paradox. If the effects were strong enough, we could theoretically be losing wisdom over time instead of accumulating it. Especially since the movement is growing fast, and newcomers weren’t here when a particular piece of wisdom was a hot topic the first time around.
There are other creative ways the forum could use spaced repetition to enhance learning, guide attention, and maximise the positive impact of reminders at the lowest cost.
It could either be determined individually (e.g. personal flashcards similar to Orbit), collectively (e.g. determined by people upvoting it for ‘long-term relevancy’ or something), or centrally (e.g. by Lizka and other content moderators).
Andy Matuschak, author of Quantum Country and Evergreen Notes, calls this a timefwl text. He also developed Orbit, a tool that should help authors integrate flashcards into their educational writings. If the forum decided to do something like this, he might be eager to help facilitate it. Idk tho.
Curators could still decide to un-curate a post if it’s no longer relevant or they don’t think the community benefits from retaining it in their epistemic memepool.
The ‘frontpage time window’ is the duration a post remains on the frontpage. With the increasing popularity of the forum, this window becomes shorter and shorter, and it makes everyone scramble to participate in the latest discussions before the post disappears into irrelevancy.
This seems suboptimal if it biases us towards only appreciating what’s recent and crowds out the possibility of longer, more patient, discussions. One solution to this could be spaced-repetition curated posts.[1]
When a post gets curated, that should indicate that it has some long-term value. So instead of (or in addition to) pinning it on top of the frontpage, the star could indicate that this post will resurface to the frontpage at a regular interval that decays exponentially (following the forgetting curve).[2][3]
Some reasons this could be good
It lets readers know that this discussion will resurface, so their contributions could also have lasting value. Comments are no longer write-and-forget, and you have a real chance at contributing more long-term.
It efficiently[4] increases collective memory of the best contributions.
It can help us scrutinise ideas that got inculcated as a fundamental assumption early on. We might uncover and dislodge some flawed assumptions that reached universal acceptance in the past due to information cascades.
As we gain more information and experience over time, we might stand a better chance at discover flaws in previously accepted premises. But unless there’s something (like spaced-repetition curation) that prompts the question into public debate again, we don’t get to benefit from that increased capacity, and we may just be stuck with the beliefs that got accepted earlier.
Given that there’s a large bias to discuss what’s recent, combined with the fact that people are very reluctant to write up ideas that have already been said before, we might be stuck with a bit of a paradox. If the effects were strong enough, we could theoretically be losing wisdom over time instead of accumulating it. Especially since the movement is growing fast, and newcomers weren’t here when a particular piece of wisdom was a hot topic the first time around.
There are other creative ways the forum could use spaced repetition to enhance learning, guide attention, and maximise the positive impact of reminders at the lowest cost.
It could either be determined individually (e.g. personal flashcards similar to Orbit), collectively (e.g. determined by people upvoting it for ‘long-term relevancy’ or something), or centrally (e.g. by Lizka and other content moderators).
Andy Matuschak, author of Quantum Country and Evergreen Notes, calls this a timefwl text. He also developed Orbit, a tool that should help authors integrate flashcards into their educational writings. If the forum decided to do something like this, he might be eager to help facilitate it. Idk tho.
Curators could still decide to un-curate a post if it’s no longer relevant or they don’t think the community benefits from retaining it in their epistemic memepool.
I highly recommend Andy’s notes on spaced repetition and learning in general.