My general advice on spaced-repetition learning

Spaced-repetition learning is a core part of how I learn (and, most importantly, remember) almost anything, and has been for about five years now. But spaced repetition can be hard to get into because much of the discussion is domain-specific (either language-learning or medical-school study). Most people want to learn things outside those domains. So, here are some key readings that address other topics:

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The 7 Commitments from “A Manifesto for Reality-Based Safety Science”

For reference, I have listed the 7 commitments from A Manifesto for Reality-Based Safety Science below:

  1. We will investigate work, rather than accidents, as our core object of interest
  2. We will describe current work before we prescribe changes
  3. We will investigate and theorise before we start measuring
  4. We will directly observe the practices that we are investigating
  5. We will position each piece of research in an appropriate disciplinary context, informed by research practices and recent advances in that discipline
  6. When researching safety methods, we will prioritise real-world case studies over worked examples
  7. We will treat practitioners as respected partners

Reality-Based System Safety — how could we apply it to a hazard analysis technique?

Since we published A manifesto for Reality-based Safety Science, I’ve been thinking and talking about how (and how much) it applies to safety-critical engineering work (rather than just operational safety). The following is a description of how we might apply it to a hazard analysis technique. I’d like to thank Drew Rae, Richard Hawkins and Ibrahim Habli for comments and questions on earlier drafts of this.

Doing what I propose below isn’t easy, and certainly isn’t cheap. But if we are to keep advancing as a field I think it’s something that we need to do.

A challenge

A response to the manifesto:

“I can’t think how to get empirical evidence for the effectiveness of using <new hazard analysis technique XYZ> since its value is supposed to be in influencing the design of the system. You would probably need to independently develop the same system twice, once using XYZ and once not using XYZ and then find some way of measuring which is safer (which could take a very long time if you were basing this on e.g. number of accidents). This is where your focus on observing work breaks down I think. You can learn nothing of value from watching people undertake XYZ.”

Our response

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