Has anybody else thought about the beauty of the "brain hunt"?

WaniKani
1

As I do countless reviews per day, I find my mind wandering and observing itself. Several weeks ago I posted these thoughts. This post is kind of related, but different.

I’ve noticed that when a review item pops up, before I actually hunt for the answer, I ask a higher level question: do I even know the answer? I’m very intrigued by how quickly and deterministically I answer (or fail to answer) this question.

  • Sometimes I decide instantly that the answer is no (and sometimes I am wrong here, i.e. after the answer is revealed, I realize I did actually know it).
  • And sometimes I know instantly that the answer is yes. Note that I can still get the wrong answer in the end, or take a very long time to get the right answer… I just know for sure that this is familiar, and I “should” know it.
  • And sometimes, I don’t have an answer instantly…

The most interesting part is what my brain does when the answer to this first Q is “maybe”. Below is a map of this “brain hunt”:

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My brain enters this should I think longer loop and must decide how long to stay in that loop before giving up, which I think is one of the hardest micro-decisions I have to make in this entire flow. And even more interesting, when I finally do choose to exit that loop with a “no” and move straight to the wrong answer… was that the right choice?

In general, the wrong answer state is not quite as terminal as it looks, because there are other unspoken questions that follow, and they depend both on how wrong I was, and what path I arrived at this state by. With the path just described (deciding to exit the “thinking longer” loop with “no”), it’s always kind of a shock when I realize, after seeing the correct answer, that I did in fact know it, or “should have” (i.e. it feels very familiar, and my brain was just failing me momentarily). On the other hand, if I see the final answer and my brain registers zero familiarity with it, then my “loop exit” decision was validated, which feels good because I did not waste valuable seconds (even if the zero familiarity itself feels not good).

I think the most intriguing part of all of this is that for the most part it happens automatically. Watching my brain work like a machine on autopilot is just a really strange and powerful feeling, even when I fail (which was kind of the point of that other post I linked earlier). And thinking about all of this makes it easier to embrace failure, and not to worry about the results of reviews. As long as you sit down and throw new review items at your brain, you will eventually master them all. Reentering the loop is part of the process, and the reason we do SRS to begin with.

Does anybody think about nonsense like this? :zipper_mouth_face:

2

This was cool to read, especially your flow chart! Thank you for sharing. I think I can relate to what your saying? I find sometimes I see a review card that I first saw months ago and in a split second think “what the heck is this? I don’t know it”, while my hands are already automatically typing an answer which turns out to be correct. I can kinda feel my brain as a machine in those moments, it is really intriguing. SRS is pretty amazing

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I find that phrasing really funny (and very relatable), because it’s kind of how my decision to learn Japanese happened (automatically, decided by my hands). Earlier last year, I had been on only a few dates with my partner (who was born in Japan but has spent half of her life in USA), and I was sitting down in my car very early one morning, about to start a long drive to the coast to go surfing. I decided I needed a podcast for the drive, and I picked up my phone, opened Spotify, and watched my fingers, without the permission of my brain, type “learn Japanese podcast”. And thus was born a monster. :sob:

4

yeah. while reading your post i realised i do basically the same thing, but i hadn’t thought about it consciously before…

it’s become a lot more prominent since i set my SDurtles to use anki mode for meanings. sometimes i don’t wait very long to press reveal when i feel like i just don’t know it; sometimes i spend way longer on one review than the rest of the batch because i’m so frustrated that i can’t recall something i KNOW i should remember. rarely, it’ll even get me to take a break from the review session lol

the other quirk of using anki mode is, the vibe of whether i felt like i actually knew the meaning impacts my choice way more than whether or not i translated it to the same word that wk expects

5

haha so true that learning Japanese is monstrous. i also started off so innocently, after I met my parter who is Japanese but mostly grew up in New Zealand. I was like, “I’ll just learn to say the numbers 1-10 in Japanese, that will be cool”. And since then learning Japanese has been consuming me :persevering_face: it’s like an addiction

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So did you ever figure it out? :grin:

Crazy how similar our stories are…

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As I do countless reviews per day, I find my mind wandering and observing itself.

This is what meditation is (as I understand it), observing yourself.
Doing wk reviews has some interesting psychological aspects.. but I guess this will vary a lot between people.
It is nice when the machine can take over and the correct meaning or reading is just there.
With items I haven’t seen for a long time I may consciously think ‘No idea’ but my guess is corect as often as not.
Native level reading must be automatic recall to achieve any reasonable speed but with a language like Japanese I will always be meeting new kanji combos that I haven’t seen before so trying consciously to work them out is a useful skill to practice.
So I see value in both paths after the ‘Should I think longer’ question.