Glad you like my work. To quote the essay:
"these kinds of results should be taken with a grain of salt. The mnemonic medium is in its early days, has many deficiencies, and needs improvement in many ways... is this medium really working? What effect is it actually having on people? ... are there blockers that make this an irredeemably bad or at best mediocre idea? How important a role does memory play in cognition, anyway?"
The essay continues at great length in this vein, getting gradually into more and more detail. We have detailed discussion of common ways spaced repetition fails, of ways it may inevitably fail or needs to be redesigned (a different issue), of ways it falls short of the goal of understanding, of ways spaced repetition is a poor lens for memory systems, and so on. I haven't counted, but believe there's several thousand words in this vein.
The conclusion is that: (a) we are some ways from having really good memory systems; but if we did it would (b) likely to be extremely helpful, including in lots of ways people don't commonly appreciate; and (c) be far from a panacea. The essay has a lengthy discussion of points (a) and (c), in addition to (b).
I don't think it's reasonably characterized as hype.
"these kinds of results should be taken with a grain of salt. The mnemonic medium is in its early days, has many deficiencies, and needs improvement in many ways... is this medium really working? What effect is it actually having on people? ... are there blockers that make this an irredeemably bad or at best mediocre idea? How important a role does memory play in cognition, anyway?"
The essay continues at great length in this vein, getting gradually into more and more detail. We have detailed discussion of common ways spaced repetition fails, of ways it may inevitably fail or needs to be redesigned (a different issue), of ways it falls short of the goal of understanding, of ways spaced repetition is a poor lens for memory systems, and so on. I haven't counted, but believe there's several thousand words in this vein.
The conclusion is that: (a) we are some ways from having really good memory systems; but if we did it would (b) likely to be extremely helpful, including in lots of ways people don't commonly appreciate; and (c) be far from a panacea. The essay has a lengthy discussion of points (a) and (c), in addition to (b).
I don't think it's reasonably characterized as hype.