[HN Gopher] "Memory athletes" and the techniques they use [audio]
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"Memory athletes" and the techniques they use [audio]
Author : open-source-ux
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-05-13 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| romanhn wrote:
| "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer is an interesting book
| on the subject of memory athletes. The author is a journalist who
| sets out to write the book and in parallel practices alongside
| his research subjects. In the end, he winds up winning the USA
| Memory Championship and setting a US record. Really drives home
| the point that it's all about the techniques and the time one is
| willing to put into them.
| paulpauper wrote:
| it is a great story and probably even a better book, but the
| sciences is really lacking
| https://greyenlightenment.com/2018/08/14/bullshitting-with-e...
|
| There are no peer-reviewed studies that corroborate the claims
| of the book, and research shows memory champions all have
| Mensa-level IQs. This is not surprising. Short-term memory is
| g-loaded and is a component of IQ test (it is called digit span
| or digit recall), so it is logical to assume that the best at
| memory would also have high IQs.
| dennis_moore wrote:
| And so what if success in memory competitions is correlated
| with IQ? Grades among students are highly correlated to IQ,
| but that doesn't mean that good study habits and hard work
| won't improve your grade. Though I don't have a peer-reviewed
| source to back that up, sorry.
| romanhn wrote:
| That is a rather unconvincing post. It makes the link to IQ
| without any actual evidence, claims Foer has an IQ of at
| least 130 again without anything backing it up, and trots out
| a memory athlete's opinions as if they were unbiased facts.
| Never mind that the said expert specifically pointed out that
| correlation is not equivalent to causation. Or that IQs as
| measure of intelligence is still pretty contested.
|
| It's been a while, but I have a recollection of Foer going
| into the question of why more people don't do this in his
| book. It mostly has to do with the amount of time one needs
| to commit to practice, coupled with limited transferability
| of this skill.
|
| To give another anecdote, I've worked with a very high-
| performing engineer who spent a bunch of his free time
| building memory palaces for new codebases to ensure
| retention. I'm sure he was above average IQ-wise, but his
| productivity likely benefited from his approach as much as
| from his innate abilities.
| JoshCole wrote:
| It is more than unconvincing. It is outright misleading.
| The idea that scientific investigations are refuting the
| idea that these skills are learnable is false. It doesn't
| make much effort to find studies to the contrary.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056179/
|
| It also goes against common sense. Math, reading, and so
| many things are all learned, but frequently used by people
| who have a high IQ. Are we to assume that these things are
| not learned, because the author thinks IQ is the cause of
| reading skill, math, and similar things?
|
| I've bothered going through the labor to learn the skill.
| I've seen my baseline measurement of recall ability
| improved by the training time I invested in learning the
| skill. I haven't bothered to get to a competitive level,
| but I don't need to do so to be certain that humans can
| learn skills by practicing them with the intention to
| improve.
|
| The skeptic is just wrong. People can learn to improve
| their memory.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Consider that people with higher IQs have greater
| proficiency at math and reading (such as SAT scores)
| despite everyone regardless of IQ having some ability.
| JoshCole wrote:
| Yes, but that doesn't reflect the inability to learn.
| You're confusing cumulative advantage leading to a
| competitive edge with an inability of lower IQ humans to
| learn advanced skills. You will also find things like
| richness and beauty positively associated with winning
| competitions too. That you will find this doesn't mean
| memory can't be improved. It reflect cumulative advantage
| more generally. It is one of the reasons for the
| cognitive bias of the halo effect, a statistical side
| effect of the principles underlying the Matthew Effect.
| Edges are edges.
|
| Critically, that doesn't mean that the skills aren't
| learnable. It means that people with the most advantages
| can exploit those advantages to gain a greater deal of
| advantage than someone who has less advantage.
| augustk wrote:
| On the other hand we have the Savant syndrome which is
| typically not associated with high IQ.
| Syzygies wrote:
| That, and I'm glad I didn't read "Mensa-level IQs" while
| drinking coffee, I would have spit all over my keyboard.
|
| Mensa? A low threshold, yet smart enough to be in the game
| if you can find something that really interests you. But
| you choose a club? Huh...
|
| It's actually heartening that various people famous for
| their IQs have accomplished zilch in their lives other than
| being famous for their IQs. This tells you that the test is
| flawed, and that other factors determine revolutionary
| levels of success.
|
| The magician/mathematician Persi Diaconis long ago
| explained to me about "memory palaces" and their
| effectiveness in competition. This can be generalized: The
| mountaineer Conrad Anker relays how European skiers can
| spot an American skier from far off: They waste effort.
| Many people had Michael Jordan's physique, but Michael
| Jordan spent a decade developing his physique into a world
| class athlete.
|
| One is the architect of one's intelligence. The most
| poisonous aspect of IQ tests is that people believe them,
| and conclude that intelligence is innate, not malleable.
| paulpauper wrote:
| If you think Mensa people accomplish little, wait until
| you see the general population
| aomml wrote:
| The article is wrong in many places. For example, it says:
|
| > -One study showed that that training is non-transferable.
| This means if one learns a sequence of numbers, the skill
| fails when one tries to recite them backwards or a new set of
| numbers.
|
| but just about every person who has ever memorized numbers
| with those memory techniques can recite the numbers backwards
| too. If you gain the skills to memorize one page of random
| numbers you can memorize a different one too, no problem.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Highly recommend the book, its a great read.
| ftio wrote:
| I read it in 2011 when it came out, and I still have a vague
| memory of the memory palace he teaches you to build. I used my
| childhood home to remember:
|
| - Garlic in the driveway
|
| - Six bottles of wine playing catch with three pairs of socks
|
| - A scuba diver in the kitchen sink
|
| - A smoke machine in the living room
|
| I have no idea what it was that I was supposed to be
| remembering or whether those are even the right things, but
| memory palaces are apparently a powerful tool.
| romanhn wrote:
| It's funny, the memory palace idea always seemed like such an
| odd concept to me, until I realized I have aphantasia and
| lack the "normal" visualization capabilities.
| hinkley wrote:
| Eidetic memory is one of those things only pre-pubescent kids are
| supposed to have, and mine survived into high school. I can still
| recall a couple history tests where I could not remember the
| answer but I knew for sure I wrote it in the margin on a page of
| my notes. When I finished the rest of the test I ran the clock
| down racking my brain trying to tease out the exact text.
|
| Because of this I always thought of myself as a visual thinker.
| Until the last time we were discussing Aphantasia here and I
| realized to my horror that I hardly ever picture anything in my
| head anymore. Which is super confusing considering that while I'm
| awful with names, I will remember your face pretty much forever.
| We've met before, I'm sure of it. I am so assured of this, that
| on the rare occasion someone recognizes me but I don't know them,
| it's so unsettling that it borders on traumatic. Like the guy in
| the movie who discovers he's been spied upon.
|
| What I've worked out is that I'm a spatial thinker, which goes to
| explain why I get very particular about the 'shapes' of code the
| way some craftsman get snippy about someone moving their tools.
| Once I teased that out I then discovered that a lot of my ways of
| processing complex data are functionally indistinguishable from a
| Mind Palace, but the decor doesn't matter, just the shapes. Like
| navigating your house at night without turning all the lights on.
| Careful, there's a chair there, and the dog bowl is over here.
| And at the store, this couch is great but it won't quite fit in
| our living room. Yes, I'm sure honey.
| hervature wrote:
| If you had eidetic memory, you would know exactly what you had
| wrote in said margin.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Eidetic memory comes in grades. It _usually_ seems to make
| use of or abuse spatial memory to remember facts in great
| detail that you then synthesize. See "memory palace."
|
| Eidetic memory used to be considered a negative mutation in
| that the bearer was not "properly using" their semantic
| memory, i.e. just remembering the fact without having to
| synthesize it from a raw sense memory.
| driftlogic wrote:
| I think you just described my brain. Are there resources around
| spatial thinking you find insightful?
| paulpauper wrote:
| john von neumann had it his whole life
| open-source-ux wrote:
| This is an excellent 30 minute radio programme/podcast. Since
| most people I suspect won't have 30 minutes to listen to it all,
| the programme finishes on an interesting note.
|
| There is a cultural stereotype that Chinese schooling places a
| higher value on memorisation of facts, compared to liberal
| Western education systems which prioritise understanding over
| rote learning. So these memorisation techniques and competitions
| are painted as a difference in education values.
|
| But as one of the "memory athletes" says, the techniques of
| memory training are _not_ rote learning, but inherently creative.
| He goes on to explain why.
|
| There's much more in the programme including how to create a
| "memory palace".
| aomml wrote:
| If you want to watch top memory athletes compete in real time,
| check out https://memoryleague.com/
|
| You can also watch the ongoing championships on Twitch:
| https://www.twitch.tv/memorysportstv
| whymauri wrote:
| I once met Jim Karol who uses _recursive_ associative mnemonics
| to form a n-dimensional associative memory matrix. Most people
| have a 1-D or 2-D associative matrix, but Jim Karol can basically
| store associative memory with log(n) associative lookups.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| The most important thing I learned about this sort of memorizing
| is that it is not useful to me, and that let me stop worrying
| about it. Sure, there might be some cases where it could be, but
| for the most part this technique overfits to the competition and
| doesn't transfer to my day-to-day.
|
| For things I want to memorize day to day I don't have to memorize
| a long list of things and recall it directly, I might have to
| build up a list of things I can recall, but I have time to build
| up that list, and I can use spaced repetition (Anki) for that.
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| I took a "memory course" in college and it was like a muscle
| based exercise. If I used it and practiced it, it worked. But
| after I stopped practicing/using it for a while, eventually it
| became atrophied and I could remember things as well as I could
| when I was working hard it.
|
| Is this how it works for everyone that "develops" a good memory?
| sigg3 wrote:
| Can't remember.
| foooobaba wrote:
| For those interested https://artofmemory.com/ is a forum where
| lots of memory athletes share strategies and tactics.
| Additionally it also has some software you can practice to
| improve your skills.
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