Andy Matuschak

In praise of the particular, and other lessons from 2023

Publicly available URL: https://andymatuschak.org/2023 

See also previous annual reflections: on 2022, 2021, 2020.

Demo: an early look at BookBridge

There's a funny trouble in my work: I've been doing all these experiments around augmenting the reading experience with dynamic media. But, as it happens, I hate doing serious reading on screens! Most readers I interview feel the same way, to varying degrees.

Derrek Chow and I have been experimenting with bringing the digital into physical reading experiences, and the physical into digital reading experiences. This talk brie...

Initial results from highlight-driven prototype

I’ve been working on a new augmented reading environment centered around highlighting as the core interaction. The idea is to give readers a magic wand with two unusual “powers”:

1. You can point the wand at anything and say “make sure I know this.”
2. You can wave the wand over a section and ask “did I miss anything important?”

Of course, those are...

(Recording) Discussion: AI-generated ad-hoc UIs and malleable software; Saturday, November 25th @ 9AM PST

Thank you all for a very interesting discussion! See original post for premise.

Please don't share this recording publicly.

And here's the chat transcript with some links which were mentioned:

00:20:19.962,00:20:22.962

Taylor Rogalski: quip had a nice chat-as-changelog-alongside-artifact pattern 2023-11-26 19:33:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Discussion: AI-generated ad-hoc UIs and malleable software; Saturday, November 25th @ 9AM PST

tl;dr: Join me (via Google Meet) this Saturday, November 25, at 9 AM PST [GCal] for a discussion of the intersections between two fascinating research age...

From my notes: first impressions of Humane's Ai Pin

I spent some time this weekend writing notes around the Ai Pin and recent related announcements in AI-centric personal computing. This isn't a proper essay—just some rough notes—but I thought enough of you might be interested that I'd share.

Humane 

From Imran and Bethany and Ken Kocie...

On breadth vs. depth in learning

There’s a funny downside to doing all this research on memory and comprehension—a sort of loss of innocence. I’ve viscerally internalized just how poorly I’ll understand and retain complex ideas when I read in my default “casual” gear. And I’ve learned something about methods which produce deeper and sturdier understandings: memory systems, active reading practices, elaborative notes, and so on.

But now I have two new problems. The first is that part of me feels I “shoul...

Highlight-driven practice and comprehension support

I’ve been wrestling with a new insight this summer: when people struggle to recall and use what they’ve read after a few months, it’s often because they didn’t really understand in the first place. The lapse feels like forgetting, but people often can’t tell the difference. I’ve argued that “books don’t work” because people seem to rapidly forget almost all of what they read. But when those supp...

Studying myself studying linear algebra

After the past few months digging into research on problem-solving practice and reading comprehension, I felt lost in a fog of abstraction. I needed to ground all those ideas in something real and concrete. Are these all just threshold effects? Do these problems basically just go away with moderate reading stra...

(Recording) Seminar: the 2006/2007 constructivist academic flame war; Sunday, August 27 @ 1PM PDT

Thank you all for a very interesting discussion about Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark's attack on discovery/inquiry learning. I feel I understand these papers several notches better now!

(Please don't share this video publicly)

Seminar: the 2006/2007 constructivist academic flame war; Sunday, August 27 @ 1PM PDT

With the LLM genie out of the bottle, I've found myself often drawn into conversations about The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer and similar dreams of futuristic learning environments which emphasize inquiry-based learning, exploratory learning, problem-based learning, curiosity-driven learning, and so on.

These conversations have naturally led me back to a famously controversial paper: "2023-08-25 05:00:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Initial experiments in self-explanation support

In 2019, I argued that “books don’t work” because people seem to forget a surprising fraction of what they read. No wonder it’s so hard to learn complex topics. But in the past few months, I’ve come to believe that what seems like “forgetting” in these cases is often “never having really understood in the first place.” And tha...

(Recording) Design discussion: Squidgies (language learning tool); Wednesday 07/19, 3PM PDT

Here's the recording of our design discussion today with the creators of Squidgies, a language learning system. I want to congratulate the team on a compelling project. It's fascinating to see people so dramatically reinterpreting interaction models using large language models, not just as a chat interface but as behind-the-scenes infrastructure powering many elements of their design.

Live quantum mechanics study session with Dwarkesh Patel

I mentioned in my latest essay that my recent thinking about reading comprehension was inspired in part by recording a live study session with Dwarkesh Patel. That video is now live—enjoy! We also recorded a traditional interview, full of Dwarkesh's trad...

Design discussion: Squidgies (language learning tool); Wednesday 07/19, 3PM PDT

Experimenting with a new type of event!

In April's office hours, Bill Roberts presented an unusual and interesting new language learning system called Squidgies. I offered to circle back for a longer discussion of some of his design ideas and problems.

I'm interested in the challenge of transmitting tacit knowledge like design methods, so I asked Bill ...

Reading comprehension and memory systems

One surprising difficulty in “making it easy for people to remember what they read” is that often, for large swaths of the text, people never really knew what was said in the first place.

Long-term memory doesn’t enter the picture here. The problem is that the reader’s eyes skipped like stones across the surface of the page. They never processed those words beyond visual decoding, if that. The ideas were never represented in working memory. We could roll our eyes and chalk this ...

(Recording) Seminar: Mark Weiser's "The computer for the 21st century" and ubiquitous computing (1991)

We were fortunate to have some very thoughtful participants with some very relevant knowledge. Thanks to them for an interesting discussion on Weiser's classic paper.

(Please don't share this video publicly)

Seminar: Mark Weiser's "The computer for the 21st century" and ubiquitous computing (1991); June 27 @4PM PDT

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. …

There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating. Machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using a computer as refreshing as...

2023-06-23 00:39:47 +0000 UTC View Post

Some initial rough notes on the Vision Pro

I don't normally send new working notes out here, but I figure this might be of interest to a number of you. The situation is still very much evolving, of course! This isn't a proper "Letter", so no audio…

Vision Pro 

The hardware seems faintly unbelievable—a computer as powerful as Apple’s current mid-tier laptops (M2), plus a dizzying sensor/camera array with dedicated co-p...

Fluid practice for fluid understanding

Early, rough thinking, but perhaps useful for others interested in the design of learning environments. Assumes detailed familiarity with memory systems.

When everything goes right, my memory practice totally transforms the experience of diving into a new topic. I’ll feel like I can keep turning a crank, and my understanding will just ratchet up and up, durably and inevitably. But quite a lot of the time, everything doesn’t go right. I’ll find that I’ve ended up with br...

AI ethics letter now publicly available

A number of you mentioned to me that you wanted to be able to refer to my AI ethics essay in public conversation. I've revised it and made it publicly available here: https://andymatuschak.org/personal-ai-ethics

In case you haven't read it yet, I've also re-recorded the audio for the revised manuscript.

Ethics of AI-based invention: a personal inquiry

Hofstadter’s Law wryly captures my experience of difficult work: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.” He suggested that law in 1979, alongside some pessimistic observations about chess-playing AI: “…people used to estimate that it would be ten years until a computer (or program) was world champion. But after ten years had passed, it seemed that the day…was still more than ten years away.”

Ironically, my experience ob...

Recording of office hours from 2023-04-23

We discussed: conceptual understanding through connections; conjecture about metrics for feedback on memory system expertise; feedback on a novel language learning interface; feedback on a novel quantified self data collection interface.

It was nice to discuss work in progress!

(Please don't share the link to this video.)

Office hours / Q&A tomorrow, Sunday 04/23, 9AM PDT

Hi, all. It's been a while since I've hosted an office hours / Q&A, so I thought I'd offer one tomorrow [GCal]. Let's discuss your projects or any other questions you might have. 2023-04-22 23:47:57 +0000 UTC View Post

Memory systems and problem-solving practice

One problem with most discussion around memory systems is: the real goal isn’t to remember answers on flashcards; it’s to expand your capacity to think and act in the world. Sure, your app says you can remember this set of cards for months. But what does that mean in terms of what you can do, thoughts you can think? The connection is far from clear. If our goal is to produce real-world capacity, rather than rote recall, how should memory systems be used, designed, redefined? I’ve wanted...

Recording of today's seminar on GPT-4

Some topics of discussion:

• things we noticed in the paper which seem under-discussed
• attempted tea-leaf reading regarding model size, compute, scaling laws
• implications for software design
• what are AI systems, as a medium or a material?
• moral challenges for accelerationism

Chat transcript, for URLs referenced in ...

Seminar: GPT-4; Mar 25 @ 9AM PDT

Join me (via Google Hangout) on Saturday, Mar 25th at 9AM PDT [GCal] for a discussion of GPT-4 and its implications for augmented cognition.

Please read 2023-03-20 18:27:03 +0000 UTC View Post

Becoming a Wizard-of-Oz learning assistant

As I described in December, I’m experimenting with some unusual (for me) new research methods. Data analysis and stacks of user interviews have given me a ten-thousand foot view of learning in action. Now I’m taking the opposite approach. I’m diving in close, trying to understand the emotional and practical consequences of individual learning actions and design decisions, over tim...

Seminar on Dempster (1988): "The Spacing Effect: A Case Study in the Failure to Apply the Results of Psychological Research"; Feb 26 @ 9AM PST

tl;dr: join me (via Google Hangout) on Sunday, Feb 26th at 9AM PST to discuss Dempster's classic paper on why the spacing effect isn't deployed in educational settings. Please read the paper befor...

Three years of crowdfunded research

A public version of this letter is available here: https://andymatuschak.org/2022 

I’m an independent researcher. That’s an unusual position, for sure—but what’s even more unusual is that 2022 was my third year as a crowdfunded independent researcher. My primary income is, and has been, a membership program. Most researchers answer to a few gr...