[HN Gopher] The Method of Loci: Build Your Memory Palace
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The Method of Loci: Build Your Memory Palace
Author : feross
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-06-28 13:16 UTC (2 days ago)
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| paulpauper wrote:
| Some research has been done about this. THe gains, if any, are
| minimal. Expecting to quickly recall lists of seemingly unrelated
| words using this method, is wishful thinking. Maybe it can help,
| but the problem is you still have to remember the associations.
| cies wrote:
| Arabs used the Abjad system for numbers before the introduction
| of 0-based counting systems. In Abjad each letter of the 28 in
| the writing system has a number. Like:
|
| a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, ..., j = 10, k = 20, l = 30, ..., t = 100, u
| = 200, ...
|
| There is no value in the position (like with Roman numbers where
| a smaller value after a bigger value subtracts it). So "cab" is
| 6, but "abba" is also 6. Now you can make words and rhymes to
| remember numbers. Saves you all the mental images of Sinatra
| kicking superman :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad
| moeris wrote:
| There's also the major system, which is probably better suited
| to English.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system?wprov=sf...
| BeetleB wrote:
| Of all the memory systems I learned from Harry Lorayne's
| books, this is the one consistent one I use. Not for long
| strings of numerals, but things like PIN codes and phone
| numbers. It's well worth it.
| johtso wrote:
| I once tried to write a script that would generate the most
| efficient encoding of an arbitrary length number using the
| Mnemonic Major System. Definitely an interesting problem!
| mikenew wrote:
| Ha, do you have that public anywhere? That seems like it
| would be fun to play with.
| johtso wrote:
| Went digging through my old files, turns out this was
| almost 10 years ago!.. and looks like I left it
| unfinished.
|
| I was using nltk to convert cmudict words into MM
| sequences using phenomes.
|
| Then I was basically brute forcing all the different ways
| you could slice the given sequences into sub sequences.
| Then the idea would be to try and identify the "best"
| sequence.
|
| You'd want to restrict it to using relatively common
| words, preferably nouns. Really you'd want to avoid any
| words that are ambiguous or could be easily confused.
|
| Even better would be able to find grammatically correct
| sentences that fit the sequence.. but I think it's
| unlikely you'd have any hits.
|
| Anyway.. this is the broken/unfinished code I found in
| the depths of my hard-drive:
| https://github.com/johtso/mnemonic_major
| pdm55 wrote:
| Lynne Kelly's book, "Memory Craft", explores memory palace
| techniques used from ancient times by different cultures. She is
| the current Australian Senior Memory Champion. The most
| intriguing thing for me is how she has turned her walks around
| her neighbourhood into her memory palace. I think though she now
| prefers to call them her songlines, mimicking how the aboriginal
| people of Australia created memory songlines based on their
| landscape. This has given her a deep attachment to her surrounds.
| She spoke on Australian radio in 2019:
| https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/lynne-ke....
| meesterdude wrote:
| Neat! this is basically the app I'm building. A 3D world where
| you can place files and web browsers on structures you construct.
| Although it's less about memorization and more for organization
| ("I put that on the wall past the pink elephant"). And because
| I'm a nerd, everything gets saved as JSON so it's easy to hack
| around.
|
| spatial memory is an underappreciated mechanism of our brains,
| and was one of the founding concepts of MacOS (that you could
| spatially remember where files are)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Are you me? I'm building a web viewer for rendering polyhedra
| in 2D or 3D (so that viewers on older hardware can interact
| with the same data-space as someone wearing the latest VR
| headset) - media can be framed and text can be flowed within
| selections of polygons/polyhedra.
|
| For me it's about positioning data in a visually unique space,
| so when I'm browsing my file system trying to remember where I
| saved something, I'll have the visual cues of form and pattern
| to help.
|
| I don't have an updated preview but I describe my reasoning
| more in a blog with screenshots of a year old 2D prototype.
|
| I'd be very curious to know where your project is at,
| eventually I'm going to have to port this to Unity so it works
| outside of web browsers, but I really want to keep the cross-
| device compatibility, so I'm working on a data storage layer
| that can serve both (you guessed it, everything is in JSON)
|
| https://coltenj.com/animated-mosaic-experiments/
| jti107 wrote:
| i tried this method and it useful for remembering passwords/phone
| #'s but of limited use for studying and understanding
| languages/math/coding/etc. might be more useful for things like
| medicine where you have to remember lots of info.
|
| the most effective way i've found to learn and remember is:
|
| 1. flashcards with spaced repetition (like anki, etc.) 2. then
| teaching it to someone (or pretend like you're teaching a
| class)/implementing it in code 3. solve a challenging problem.
| this could be trying the harder problems in the textbook and
| asking for help from the professor or exploring using it in novel
| ways.
| LordGrey wrote:
| Those of us with Aphantasia[1] are jealous of people that can
| visualize anything at all, let alone a memory palace.
|
| Not all of us are "jealous" of course, but a memory palace seems
| like an incredibly useful technique if you can master it. I wind
| up just taking a lot of notes and relying on a Reminders app.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
| tmabraham wrote:
| I think I might have aphantasia, but a while back I learned
| successfully learned how to use a memory palace...
| aomml wrote:
| Aphantasia alone won't stop you from using memory palaces. If
| you can remember what you did this morning and where you did
| those things, you can use a memory palace. It's more about
| locations and events than visualizing pictures. There are some
| discussions and examples here:
|
| https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Aphantasia_and_Memory
|
| https://forum.artofmemory.com/tag/aphantasia
| LordGrey wrote:
| Thank you for the link.
|
| I have tried to use memory palaces. The result is that now I
| have to remember two things rather than one (the memory
| palace location and the thing I'm trying to remember).
|
| To be fair, I also seem to have Severely Deficient
| Autobiographical Memory (SDAM) and that will impact personal
| memory recovery quite a bit. SDAM is common in conjunction
| with Aphantasia, and perhaps the two combined are conspiring
| against me in this instance.
| 6510 wrote:
| We can still edit their memory palace and have fun like that.
| Put kerosene on the porch and set fire to it. Make the Donald
| the doorman wearing a mankini etc
| yoz-y wrote:
| One thing I haven't understood with Aphantasia is this. Do
| people actually see stuff when they imagine things? Some test
| I've seen ask to imagine some object and close your eyes then
| ask if you see a black wall. Is it actually possible to see
| anything else?
| burkaman wrote:
| For me it's like switching an input to receive data from the
| "mind's eye" rather than my real eyes. My real eyes are just
| seeing a black wall and I'm still aware of that, but I'm more
| focused on the imaginary thing that my mind's eye is seeing.
| It's much more vague and flickery and I can't focus on it
| much, but I imagine some people are better at it than I am.
|
| It does not feel the same as normal "seeing", so if I were
| asked that question I would probably say I still see a black
| wall.
| glaukopis wrote:
| This describes my experience perfectly. I feel like when
| people discuss aphantasia online, the word "seeing" gets
| overloaded to both refer to the act of picking up visual
| stimuli through the optic nerve, as well as a
| conceptualization action. When I "see" things in my mind's
| eye, I'm referring exclusively to the latter, and I think
| most people with normal visualization abilities do the
| same.
|
| Due to the confusion of language as well as the testimonies
| of some rare people with incredibly vivid mental images
| that are on par with actual physical sight, I thought I
| might have aphantasia for a period of time, but after
| reading up on it, I feel like aphantasia is a much stronger
| condition than most people on the internet think it is.
| "Just seeing black" when you try to visualize something
| isn't enough - it seems like that's just a sign of being a
| person with a fairly typical brain who's using the word
| "see" in its literal sense.
|
| For example, in the star test (https://www.reddit.com/r/Aph
| antasia/comments/aioyga/simple_a...), if I was a person who
| understood "see" in the first sense, I'd say that I was a
| 1. If I instead switch to using the second sense of the
| word, I'd easily be a 6.
|
| It feels like any test that asks you to rate the vividness
| of the item you "see" in your mind's eye will fall prey to
| this problem. I saw a comment on HN where the commenter
| suggested asking someone to visualize an elephant in
| profile, and then ask them which way the trunk is facing to
| see if they're aphantasic or not. I'd also suggest that if
| you ever imagined a person running beside your car while
| you were taking a road trip as a child, you also probably
| don't have aphantasia.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Do people actually see stuff when they imagine things?_
|
| Apparently so. That's how my wife describes it. She scores an
| easy 6 on the "star test" - https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantas
| ia/comments/aioyga/simple_a.... Myself, I normally score 2-3
| on it.
| skydhash wrote:
| I do a 6 too. And I can do all kind of imaginary stuff with
| that red star.
| LordGrey wrote:
| Like all things, there is apparently a whole spectrum of
| visualization: Aphantasia (the black wall) and Hyperphantasia
| (AR-like superimposition of images upon reality).
|
| What I find interesting is that every single one of us is
| somewhere on that scale, and we don't quite understand the
| perspective of someone who is on a different place on the
| scale. Your own question highlights that ("Is it actually
| possible to see anything else?").
|
| We are all trained from birth to deal with our senses and
| mental capabilities as they come, barring an injury. What
| each of us perceives is the de-facto normal. Learning that
| others don't have senses just like ours is something of an
| eye-opener.
| mrkstu wrote:
| Like others have mentioned, dream state lets me get past
| the otherwise 'black wall' state, so I can relate to the
| other, just frustrating that I can't access it at will.
| ane wrote:
| You don't "see" it but your brain is looking at something.
| It's like jumping into a 3D universe in your head.
| skydhash wrote:
| Reading a book for me is basically the same as watching a
| movie. Every scene plays in 3D in my head. Every single
| scene. Which is why I don't read horror stuff. Too scary.
| klipt wrote:
| If you read to yourself, do you hear the words read by an
| "internal voice"? Which you know is different from real,
| "external" sounds, but you're still processing as audio
| internally?
|
| If so, you're imaging the sense of sound. Visualization is
| just doing the same thing with sight. You can still tell that
| "internal sight" is different from real "external" sight.
|
| Also I believe visualization is a skill that can be improved
| with practice. It's just a form of 2D working memory and it's
| known that working memory can be improved with practice.
| yoz-y wrote:
| I can imagine a sound that I'm familiar with. But for
| images i can think about a form of an object, or imagine
| rotating it, but it is nothing like seeing. Oh well.
| klipt wrote:
| > But for images i can think about a form of an object,
| or imagine rotating it, but it is nothing like seeing.
|
| I expect if you practiced that frequently, and gradually
| (over days or weeks) tried to add more details or colors
| etc you would find it improves over time.
|
| But whether that's actually a worthwhile investment of
| time is another question :-)
| BeetleB wrote:
| If you like this stuff, I would strongly recommend Harry
| Lorayne's books (How To Develop a Super Power Memory or The
| Memory Book).
| abledon wrote:
| I revcently took the learning to learn course on courseraand in
| the memory segment they recommended trying this site for memory
| challenge : http://mobile.extremememorychallenge.com/
|
| I got 84% but had made up ---wild-- stories about each photo in
| order to remember it 2 days later
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| If anyone is interested in a book exploring these concepts,
| _Moonwalking with Einstein_ was written by a journalist
| originally interested in doing a piece about the world memory
| championships who wound up becoming the first American to win the
| world memory championships. The book traces the history of method
| of loci and the competitions, the potential practical utility (or
| lack thereof) in history and today, and the interesting personal
| story of how the author went from wondering "huh, could I
| memorize 20 playing cards in order?" to memorizing multiple decks
| at an international competition.
| throwanem wrote:
| A similar method works for what Apple or Google would call
| "location-based reminders" and get right about one time out of
| five in practice.
|
| Want to remember something when you get home? Come up with a few
| words or some such concise thought that will remind you, then
| picture your front door - just as you'll see it when you do get
| home - and think those words or that thought. Repeat it to
| yourself while you imagine unlocking the door or whatever. Do
| that a few times - it only takes a moment - then forget about it
| and go back to what you were doing. When you get home, the
| association thus formed will trigger and remind you.
|
| It only takes a moment, and I find that even with very little
| practice it works quite well. The method generalizes, too. It
| doesn't seem affected by aphantasia; I don't really find myself
| able to form vivid mental images and the "Ganzflicker" thing from
| the other day had no effect on me past a mild headache, but this
| technique works fine. Maybe it helps that the visual component is
| based on experiential memory, but whatever the reason, it works
| well enough even for me that I can comfortably recommend it.
| tmabraham wrote:
| Memory palaces are amazing! A while back I tried memorizing a
| deck of cards. I spent several days trying to memorize via rote
| memorization, but it was quite difficult for me to memorize more
| than ~20 cards. One day I tried memory palaces and immediately
| was able to memorize 40-50 cards and finally was able to master
| memorization of 52 cards after a couple of practice rounds.
| rkp8000 wrote:
| While Memory Palace descriptions naturally focus on space and
| spatial reasoning as being the key ingredients to effectively
| storing memories, I think the binding problem of associating
| arbitrary items to specific locations, e.g. your front porch or
| staircase, is actually much more fundamental.
|
| Bower (1972), for example, showed that short-term associative
| memory could be dramatically improved by imagining a unique scene
| involving the two items to be associated [1]. E.g. to remember
| DOG-BICYCLE (so that when you hear DOG you recall BICYCLE or vice
| versa) you imagine a dog riding a bicycle, or in this article to
| remember STEAK-PORCH you imagine a cow sitting on your porch.
| Since these will be very unique to each pair, you won't
| accidentally end up associating STEAK-BICYCLE or DOG-PORCH during
| recall.
|
| In this light, the utility of the "palace" is simply that it's an
| extremely familiar ordered sequence or layout of items (e.g.
| PORCH, STAIRS, KITCHEN, BEDROOM, etc), not that it is
| fundamentally a 2D/3D spatial structure. In CS lingo, this
| sequence/layout would act as a fixed, ordered set of "keys" for
| recalling key-value pairs that you stored via the imagery
| process. For instance, if one used another familiar sequence, say
| the first scenes of your favorite movie you've seen a hundred
| times, you could creatively put the items in your grocery list
| into those scenes and then recall them by recalling the scenes in
| order and remembering what grocery item you put in each one.
|
| Thus, I think there's a sense in which it's not 2D/3D space
| that's fundamental to better recall, but rather a familiar
| topologically organized layout of items/locations/scenes that you
| can use as the keys to bind new items to in the short-term via
| visualization.
|
| [1]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232506583_Mental_im...
| johtso wrote:
| Right, the locations in a memory palace are just a form of "peg
| system" [1].
|
| The advantage it has compared with a "link system" [2] is that
| forgetting one link doesn't mean you lose the rest of the
| chain. You can also jump to an arbitrary point in your palace.
|
| You're right in saying the use of a physical location is just a
| convenient but not fundamental part of such a system.
|
| A system that really pushes the idea that the pegs you attach
| things to can be arbitrary is SemCubed [3], a system where you
| create a large 2-dimensional grid of "pegs". It also makes use
| of the Mnemonic Major System that I'm a big fan of.
|
| [1] https://www.ludism.org/mentat/PegSystem [2]
| https://www.ludism.org/mentat/LinkSystem [3]
| https://www.ludism.org/mentat/SemCubed
| nefitty wrote:
| There's a few movies that I've watched so many times I can
| basically replay them back scene-for-scene on command. If I get
| struck by something that reminds of some dialog, my brain
| suddenly starts playing the entire scene, like laying out the
| context of the quote.
|
| I also figured that the memory palace concept was sort of like
| an ordered JSON object, so any memorized sequence should
| theoretically work. I'm now imagining some tool that lets me
| load up one of my favorite movies, but then also let's me drop
| iOS or Snapchat-style stickers on any range of frames. So maybe
| I need to remember some recipe... At 01:00 I can place a
| sticker of an image of vegetable oil, then 01:05 is a salt
| shaker, then 01:10 is some eggs, then at 01:15 is a photo of
| the finished product. These stickers would be overlaid on the
| film conspicuously, maybe on top of character's heads haha
|
| This also brings to mind the possibility of making my entire
| world a memory palace if I had the above capability in a set of
| AR glasses. Notes/to-dos/whatevers could be placed and anchored
| to different places in my home, workplace, neighborhood, etc.
| They might eventually become interweaved into my mental
| representation of that location, so that a specific anchored
| item always springs to mind when I look at my coffee table, for
| example, whether I have the AR glasses on or not.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I've had trouble with the sort of example listed. I might imagine
| pork shoulder on my childhood doorstep, or a pig drinking to beer
| in a tortilla dress, but I still tend to forget to think about
| the memory palace in the first place on my way back from work.
| How do you get better at remembering to remember the right things
| at the right time?
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I learned about this technique quite some time ago, and it's
| really interesting but I have a question for any regular users:
| is it useful for memory requirements beyond rote memorisation? I
| rarely need to memorise things by rote, but I could still benefit
| from an improved short-term memory for example.
| mandmandam wrote:
| It's mostly best for rote memorisation imo, though it is really
| excellent for that.
|
| Mindfulness meditation most likely would be your best bet for
| improving short term memory, permanently:
| https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_mindfulnes...
| beaconstudios wrote:
| yeah I already both meditate and try to maintain mindfulness
| on a regular basis; it's helped a lot, but I'd happily
| incorporate any additional tools I can use!
| whymauri wrote:
| For anyone wondering whether it's too late to train your memory,
| I'd say memory is one of those traits you can train remarkably
| late in life (compare versus language acquisition). I met a
| memory national champion who didn't start training until they
| were effectively retired and needed something to do.
| paulpauper wrote:
| The mind does not respond to training as well as muscles
| respond to training. Short term memory , such as digit recall,
| is is correlated with IQ and not something that can be improved
| with training. Maybe you can develop tricks for trying to make
| memorization easier, but like using a level to lift weights, it
| doesn't mean you are stronger or have better recall.
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