Idea Ripper // ArchiveCards: 1555 [Live] | Updated: 2026-10-14
Card #c732IR // #c732Synthesis

He should try a song that is unfamiliar enough to contain somewhat unexpected harmonies or melodies or beats etc., but familiar enough to allow for quickly recognizing the presence of a new learnable regularity or compressibility in the sound stream.

— In our words · Source: Driven by Compression Progress (Jürgen Schmidhuber)

[Use when]

Use when picking what to read, watch, or learn next: aim at the steepest part of your own learning curve.

[Why it matters]

The paper's practical listening algorithm: skip the overplayed and the incomprehensible; hunt the edge where your learning is fastest.

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