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 17 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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…”