Andy Matuschak - Self-Teaching, Spaced Repetition, Why Books Don’t Work

A few weeks ago, I sat beside Andy Matuschak to record how he reads a textbook.
Even though my own job is to learn things, I was shocked with how much more intense, painstaking, and effective his learning process was.
So I asked if we could record a conversation about how he learns and a bunch of other topics:
- How he identifies and interrogates his confusion (much harder than it seems, and requires an extremely effortful and slow pace)
- Why memorization is essential to understanding and decision-making
- How come some people (like Tyler Cowen) can integrate so much information without an explicit note taking or spaced repetition system.
- How LLMs and video games will change education
- How independent researchers and writers can make money
- The balance of freedom and discipline in education
- Why we produce fewer von Neumann-like prodigies nowadays
- How multi-trillion dollar companies like Apple (where he was previously responsible for bedrock iOS features) manage to coordinate millions of different considerations (from the cost of different components to the needs of users, etc) into new products designed by 10s of 1000s of people.
To see Andy’s process in action, check out the video where we record him studying a quantum physics textbook, talking aloud about his thought process, and using his memory system prototype to internalize the material: • Studying with Dwarkesh...
You can also check out his website (andymatuschak.org) and personal notes (notes.andymatuschak.org), and follow him on Twitter ( / andy_matuschak .
Transcript: www.dwarkeshpatel.com/andy-ma...
Apple Podcasts: apple.co/44jwwCn
Spotify: spoti.fi/3PTkCL2
Follow me on Twitter: / dwarkesh_sp
Visit cometeer.com/lunar for $20 off your first order on the best coffee of your life!
If you want to sponsor an episode, contact me at [e-mail].
(00:00:00) - Introduction
(00:00:52) - Skillful reading
(00:02:30) - Do people care about understanding?
(00:06:52) - Structuring effective self-teaching
(00:16:37) - Memory and forgetting
(00:33:10) - Andy’s memory practice
(00:40:07) - Intellectual stamina
(00:44:27) - New media for learning (video, games, streaming)
(00:58:51) - Schools are designed for the median student
(01:05:12) - Is learning inherently miserable?
(01:11:57) - How Andy would structure his kids’ education
(01:30:00) - The usefulness of hypertext
(01:41:22) - How computer tools enable iteration
(01:50:44) - Monetizing public work
(02:08:36) - Spaced repetition
(02:10:16) - Andy’s personal website and notes
(02:12:44) - Working at Apple
(02:19:25) - Spaced repetition 2

[@DwarkeshPatel]

Talking with Andy was a blast. Hope you all enjoy!

[@aj-hz2yq]

One of my favorite podcasts recently, keep up the great work

[@charlesmiele2135]

Yet another amazing interview!! Been reading Andy’s stuff for a while so this one was a real treat. Loved the talk abt designing education for your kids…keep it up (:

[@Finite8614]

Really useful. Thank you

[@PaulHobbs23]

Hey quick tip - it looks like you're really compressing the audio. There's a spike of volume as you start a sentence and then your voice trails off artificially. I recommend either completely turning off the compressor or dialing it waaaay down. Anyway, love the content about spaced repetition; it's something I've been harping on for a long time. It's just a bit difficult to listen to, for me as a sensory experience.

[@DwarkeshPatel]

Really appreciate the tip, thanks!

[@BauldyBoys]

Your thumb-nail was so different I didn't realize it was your channel :O. Great interview as always.

[@univext]

Amazing interview 🔥

[@urisbdbcn]

Is there a section of the conversation about the specific methods and practices?

[@stefanguiton]

Excellent!

[@raajaggarwal7777]

Thanks for the podcast, Matuschak was the one that introduced me into spaced repetition and the idea that you could get better at learning itself! You should have Nate Hagens and Daniel Schmactenberger on the podcast, they're interesting thinkers on technology and society but come from unique angles.

[@yrrannapanna]

Why am I not able to find the aella's interview/podcast?It was so good.

[@gattuccina]

really cool guys

[@nitap109]

Very informative

[@user-wp3jq7gh8p]

Great interview. The audio is kind of badly compressed, specially on Dwarkesh's mic, too much dynamic range!

[@funkdrunk]

first 10-20 seconds, and I already predict I will agree ~100.00% ... so much noise and BS on the net that it is fun to hear some refreshing thoughts! :)

[@burakb8506]

Can we also acknowledge the golden walking around casually : )

[@CanSF]

"Shabu"

[@NancyLebovitz]

How do you choose books that repay so much attention? I think a lot of schools demand covering a lot of material-- more than students can read so slowly.

[@andy_matuschak]

There are some nice comments about this in Adler and van Doren's "How to Read a Book", which I mention in the conversation. See chapter 21, "The Pyramid of Books." A taste: "If the book belongs to the highest class-the very small number of inexhaustible books-you discover on returning that the book seems to have grown with you. You see new things in it-whole sets of new things-that you did not see before. Your previous understanding of the book is not invalidated ( assuming that you read it well the first time ); it is just as true as it ever was, and in the same ways that it was true before. But now it is true in still other ways, too." They have some lists of suggestions, too, though of course the collection leans classical and Western.

[@2silkworm]

@@andy_matuschak I think "learning classical and Western" is a good thing considering the success of the Western civilization.

[@heelspurs]

Why are such expensive microphones giving such bad audio?

[@Decocoa]

@2:46 Damn that was exactly the source of disappointment and resentment as child going through school. You could never REALLY dive deep enough to really grasp the full knowledge and learn from the additional context of a problem or material you were told to go away and read.

[@aliasjon8320]

Bookmark 42:10

[@deersakamoto2167]

The brief comment he made about language learning via immersion is a bit disappointing (does he have experience learning foreign languages at a high level?). He only talked about some hypothetical scenario of learning Swahili and how impractical it is to learn it from native Swahili speakers, but when language learners talk about immersion, it's usually about learning e.g. Japanese by watching lots of anime and TV series and reading manga. Dr Stephen Krashen who's studied language acquisition for decades doesn't particularly recommend using Anki, for example. Wish Dwarkesh pushed him back on this point.

[@andy_matuschak]

Totally fair: I’ve really not studied the pedagogy of language learning; my knowledge there is mostly limited to the kind of straight cogpsy word pair recall experiments you mention.

[@SimplyApollo]

Time is the most important factor. The more you study the better you get.

[@lemlok]

The sound quality is awful in this video (my first time on this channel) and that's pretty amazing given these prominent microphones looking "expensive / professionnal / high quality". Sound is awful like a bad videoconference. I've only watched 90 seconds of it and it hurts. I am going to try to watch the rest with subtitles on, because the subject is interesting, and this video might teach something interesting, although I have to fight it. Suffering, ear I come :'(

[@ArjunKocher]

The audio makes it difficult to keep listening.

[@cube2fox]

Yeah the microphone quality is horrible. They look expensive, but something is wrong.

[@wilde3772]

Naively it seems like we got the audio from a Zoom call backup

[@matthewritter1117]

For what it’s worth, I didn’t consider that an issue, at least listening in Spotify

[@peterhind]

Tyler who? I couldn't quite catch that

[@richardeborall5900]

Cowen

[@peterhind]

Thanks @@richardeborall5900

[@jannikrade7892]

the sound quality is bad

[@Sanchuniathon384]

Yeah the mic is clipping a lot for Dwarkesh, not as much for Andy but it's also there. It's a bit odd since these are Shure microphones, which means there might be some sort of setting or a noise elimination algorithm applied in post. Dwarkesh might do better with a different mic if background noise is an issue, e.g. EV RE-20, which is a dynamic condenser with a cardioid polarity, so you can have good sound quality and little need to worry about noise.

[@Grrr111___]

1st 🥇