The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 34 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Oakley: Research Shows Visual and Auditory Learning Styles Are Scientifically Groundless
“There was a excellent study done by a woman named Beth Rogoski and what she did was she took one of the standard tests to kind of analyze a very widely used test that is used to distinguish an individual as to whether they're a visual learner or an auditory le…”
Oakley: US ranks dead last in student math ability among 22 OECD nations
“I think we're dead last in the group of 22 top nations in the OECD as far as the math Abilities of our students.”
Oakley's $5,000 basement course matched Harvard's entire online course enrollment
“Our one little course that was made for less than 5000 dollars, mostly in my basement had on this order the same number of students as all of Harvard's online courses put together, made for millions of dollars with hundreds of people.”
Oakley: Conceptual understanding is insufficient for mastery without memorization
“He'd heard for so many years that all he needed to do was understand something, and that was it. That's enough. That's like the golden thing, and it's not enough. It's not enough at all. Sometimes I will say to people, like, you'll hear Poets say, memorize the…”
Oakley: Educational psychologists push learning theories that fail in advanced STEM
“A lot of the top professionals who are in, for example, educational psychology, it's again that, that pointy discipline problem. Like they know a whole bunch about this little tiny area of their discipline. And often, the people who are in educational psycholo…”
Oakley: Neuroscience proves math mastery requires practice and repetition
“When it comes to math, it's like, ah, let's not talk about how the neuroscience supports the fact that you also need practice and repetition for math, because it, then you start getting into the math wars.”
Oakley: Good managers must think Machiavellian to anticipate manipulative tricks
“I think that administer, being a good administrator is one of the world's most difficult jobs because part of it's a, it's, it involves vision and It involves being able to inspire people. It involves being able to be a little Machiavellian yourself, because y…”
Oakley: Predatory bad actors will adapt with less detectable workplace misconduct
“But they're really, really intelligent people, and so it will find other ways to manifest itself, and what I'm interested to see is how, how will that manifest? Because it won't manifest in a way that's as easily detectable as what's going on now”
Oakley: Focused mantra meditation may suppress default mode activity and creativity
“The mantra meditation can be excellent in helping to even further build your focusing ability, but there's some evidence that at the same time it's also suppressing that default mode activity.
So it may be that you're focusing great.
You can get even better at…”
Oakley: Memorizing equations enables deeper conceptual understanding
“If you memorize an equation, you will also understand it more deeply.”
Oakley: Karpicke study shows active recall outperforms rereading and concept mapping
“There's a great study by Jeff Karpicki of Purdue about where he showed what is the best way to learn if you're reading, for example, a complex paper on some scientific study or subject. The best way is you read it, and then you look away, and you can, you see …”
Oakley: Poor working memory correlates with creativity and better simplification
“If you have a really bad working memory, in other words, the things that you hold temporarily in mind, that, that can be a great thing, because number one, there's good research that shows that you're more you're more creative, and another thing is it allows y…”
Oakley: Human working memory holds roughly four slots, not seven
“We used to think there are seven slots in working memory, so it's like seven things you can hold in mind. Like seven numbers. That's why, you know, it was four, five, three, seven, two, three, nine, or whatever phone number had seven digits in it, because they…”
Oakley: Many student claims of test anxiety reflect unverified ignorance
“So many students will come in and say, I suffer from test anxiety. And it's actually not true at all. It's just that when they sat down to do the test was the very first time they realized that they actually didn't know it.”
Oakley: Learning unrelated topics drives work innovation through cognitive transfer
“In fact, I think that's one of the best ways to be fresh, to maintain freshness in whatever you're working on at a day job, so to speak. Is to try to spend a little bit of your time, you know, either offline or online or at work or not at work, learning someth…”
Oakley: Pigeonholing into One Learning Style Degrades Other Sensory Skills
“And it's a bad thing to think of yourself as only being... One type. Yeah, because then what happens is you close yourself off to the other sensory channels and you become less expert at them because you're not practicing with them.”
Oakley: Parallel skill acquisition beats sequential learning for long-term retention
“Well, if I studied three languages for five years and kind of on a parallel track, I think I would be better at each of them
Than if I studied you know, three for, you know, one and a half years, or, you know, one of them for one and a half, and then sequentia…”
Oakley: Second-Tier Universities Resist MOOCs Over Faculty Job Loss Fears
“The top tier universities are getting information out there with massive open online courses. It's the second tier Universities that often kind of go, oh no, we shouldn't have anything online because people will lose jobs. So we're not going to allow anything …”
Oakley: The Best Teaching Often Occurs at Non-Top-Tier Universities
“Particularly universities that are not in the top tier, that those are the ones where there's the best teaching often going on, and that this needs to get out to the public.”
Oakley: Defense Language Institute learning techniques apply to STEM and music
“And I went to the Defense Language Institute, which is one of the greatest institutions in the world for learning another language, and the techniques they used are really the same great techniques that you would use to learn dance, to learn a musical instrume…”
Oakley: Doing homework once without deliberate repetition is a major mistake
“And I think that's one mistake we often make in in the U.S. At least, as far as doing homework. We just do it and throw it in, right? Instead of saying, oh, this is a key problem. If I've got this one, I should memorize, I should not memorize like just sort of…”
Oakley: Rapid learning requires deliberate practice on what hurts most
“Yes, we should look at what hurts the most and focus on that. So that's something called, ah, deliberate practice, ah, which I know you know of. But if it flows really easily and then you keep going with, you know, repeating this very easy stuff, you're not go…”
Oakley: Management cannot be optimized because it is an open-ended system
“I don't think there's a way to necessarily optimize being a manager because it is, it's a, it's an open-ended system and an ill-posed problem in a sense You just, you can't get there from here, but you can, in most cases, incrementally improve”
Oakley: Pairing intense focus with rewards enables cognitive consolidation
“This whole business of focus intently and reward yourself at the end, that almost trains your brain to be more comfortable in the focus mode, and to and to enjoy it, And then to integrate that, the consolidation that's happening in the diffuse mode at the end …”
Oakley: Passive rereading creates a false illusion of competence
“Well, first off, you don't want to sit and reread because rereading, what that does is, when you read something again, you think, because your eye is, like, comfortable looking at it, and it seems familiar, you think you know it, but you actually don't.”
Oakley: Formal education systems rarely teach students how to learn effectively
“People can go through 12 to 16 years of education and never have a single course in how to learn effectively.”
Oakley: Neural reuse theory proves metaphors activate complex concept mechanisms
“Neural reuse theory shows that you're actually activating those same mechanisms for the metaphor that you would for the underlying difficult concept you want to try to convey.”
Oakley: Anticipating unpleasant tasks activates the brain's pain centers
“What happens when you even just think about something you don't want to do or don't like, It activates a portion of the brain in the insular cortex that experiences pain.”
Oakley: Exercise promotes neural growth by stimulating BDNF production
“What exercise does is it helps produce Brain derived neurotropic factor in your, you know, in your brain. And this is kind of like a fertilizer that helps dendritic spines grow. In other words, it helps make new connections.”
Oakley: Learning requires alternating between focused and diffuse modes of thinking
“And that learning involves going back and forth between these two different modes. And if you don't get something the first time, guess what? That's okay. If you don't get it when you're sitting there focusing the first time, Back off, you know, after you focu…”
Oakley: Contemplating unpleasant tasks activates the brain's pain center
“What happens when you even just think about something you don't want to do or don't like, It activates a portion of the brain in the insular cortex that experiences pain, so it's kind of like that same feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you don't …”
Oakley: Exercise produces BDNF, stimulating dendritic spine growth and learning
“What exercise does is it helps produce
Brain-derived neurotropic factor in your, you know, in your brain, and this is kind of like a fertilizer that helps dendritic spines grow.
In other words, it helps make new connections.”
Oakley: Skill acquisition requires linking small cognitive chunks into larger patterns
“First, to be aware that there's a way of crystallizing what you're doing that creates a pattern that is a chunk. And you can make a bigger pattern, right? Just like a chain, and you can add more links to the chain.”
Oakley: Corporate learning cultures require CEOs to publicly model learning struggles
“For corporations, Talking about the importance of learning have the head person, whoever is the CEO, could be modeling the importance of learning, perhaps through learning something and kind of sharing it with the corporation and those in the corporation and s…”