There's an active memory-improvement community at http://artofmemory.com including forums and a wiki of techniques.
Why bother? Because these techniques increase the capacity of "cache" that is closer (low latency) to human "computation". This can lead to faster traversal of the OODA loop, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop, which is relevant to lean startups, business competition, combat and more.
In addition, spaced-repetition techniques can be used to increase your vocabulary, which is like gaining extra pixels for the expression of nuanced goals, helping any compass which guides execution to a goal. Words are proxies for dreams and dangers, especially in a software-constructed world. Greater word capacity becomes greater visibility over a software-based terrain.
I can vouch for spaced-repetition being an excellent training tool. It isn't just for words though. My uses for it range from individual terms to small training exercises. When I find a new solution to a problem I have, I often make a spaced-repetition card for it. You can learn a lot by making a daily habit of it.
(Adding to what you wrote.) Since you mention that it's not just for vocab, here's an extensive article on how to formulate knowledge in general that goes into a spaced repetition system. (There is also a summary at the bottom.) http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm
It's part of a site for a closed-source client, but Anki[1] is a good open-source one.
Very very cool! Interested? Read 'Moonwalking with Einstein'
I recall being surprised (the whole class) by a surprise test for some people who wanted to study us. We had 5 minutes to memorize 50 random words. I just read Moonwalking with Einstein so I learned how to use loci. The average that people could recall (N=25) was around 20 words. I was able to recall 49! 49! That's almost perfect! I was pretty fucking baffled. I still know most of them ...
A JAMAICAN person jumped off a RAMP on the TITANIC and then flew in to SPACE on the ISS where he saw a DOG which was playing the VIOLIN which then bit TESLA, GHANDI was playing CHESS and then the iss crashed down into MILAN which was covered in a huge OMELET, we flew over mount FUJI and ... etc
Bolded words are words that were on the list. It's pretty awesome for hardcore memorization!
and then had to answer a face-to-face oral quiz where she was supplied with a definition and had to give the word, from memory, that corresponded to the definition. (What's worse, these definitions are definitions of other words: for example, "A parliamentary tactic in which a lawmaker speaks for an extended period of time in order to delay a vote" is really FILIBUSTER, but for purposes of the quiz she had to respond with NARWHAL!)
She learned them all in about 15 minutes and then got a nearly perfect score on the first try, which kind of astounded everybody. I think your feat was similarly impressive, though.
The one problem I've had with these "construct a story" mechanisms is that I have just as hard of a time remembering the specifics of the story as I do some of the things I'm trying _to_ remember.
In your example, "the ISS crashed down into $city" requires remembering the city name, and that's just a few words in. By the time the novella gets to the 50th word, there are a ton of details one must remember, aside from the story itself that houses them (which in your case seems custom made for those words; I'd be surprised if that was your general purpose loci).
This problem is compounded by the system described on ArtOfMemory's wiki (http://mt.artofmemory.com/wiki/Method_of_Loci) where they use a fixed story but with interchangeable items in the rooms. I'm sure with enough reciting of that story, I could remember the corn and milk, but the second time I need that memory palace, only this time with different items, I'm screwed because the two stories will bleed together.
I recognize this comment might sound like I'm deriding the method, but I promise that's not the case. I just want to know if someone else has the same "stories don't work for me" and to know if there is a twist or alternate which makes them work for the kind of brain which isn't helped by loci.
This is Josh from artofmemory.com. If you get ghost images, try waiting longer between each use. You can have multiple memory palaces and rotate them to give each palace a rest after use. After some practice, it should come more easily. I haven't written a shopping list down in years.
I hope you told the researchers! (That you had literally just learned this method.) Probably a more important data point than anything else they happened to be studying.
I heard about the "Memory Palace" on BBC's Sherlock. Holmes says that you can theoretically remember everything (I think this was in the episode The Hounds of Baskerville). I then happened upon this book via gatesnotes[0], and picked it up.
The author is quite successful in learning and putting this technique to use. He reaches the finals of the USA Memory Championship. However, he says this at the end - "For all the memory stunts I could now perform, I was still stuck with the same old shoddy memory that misplaced car keys and cars. Even while I had greatly expanded my powers of recall for the kinds of structured information that could be crammed into a memory palace, most of the things I wanted to remember in my everyday life were not facts or figures or poems or playing cards or binary digits."
It seems this method can help in memorizing things you consciously put effort to remember. This becomes easier as you practice. But if you were thinking of using this to remember every point of your life, as in where you placed your car keys this morning, or where you left your phone, things get murky - like what the Author mentioned. Although I do wonder how many people would try doing that.
I can't find a reference now, but I read about a women who had a debilitating mental illness -- she could remember very many of the mundane details of her days, and it crowded out her ability to perform other mental tasks.
Edit: It was interesting to hear that Price rejected the interpretation of her condition that was given in the Wired story about her (which was how I'd heard about her).
Yes, I second (or third) this book. I used the method to chain Japanese kanji onyomi (the Chinese reading) together. Even went so far as to build out the location in minecraft so I could walk around and "study"
Took a while to build and stopped after 20 groups, but still an amazing way to leverage your memory skills.
Minecraft eh? I did the same with GTA San Andreas. I played that game so much when I was young, that I have the whole map memorized. Given the fact that the map is huge, I use that as my Palace.
I've even bought the game for my iPad so that I can traverse it time to time to refresh my Palace!
"Physically unable to write [because of ALS], but with a mind as sharp and active as ever, [Judt] plotted the twenty-five short essays that compose this book in his head, while he was alone at night, using a mnemonic device taken from accounts of the early modern “memory palace,” whereby elements of a narrative are associated with points in a visually remembered space; but instead of a palace, he used a small Swiss chalet that he had once stayed in on vacation as a boy, and that he could picture vividly and in detail. He was then able to dictate these feuilletons the next day from the resulting structure."
I took the Jonathan Levi Superlearner course on Udemy about a year ago and the Loci method is a key part of this course.
I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in this topic.
I can say that it's extremely useful for remembering lists of things, but I haven't had a lot of success in using it to retain or organize abstract information.
>I can say that it's extremely useful for remembering lists of things, but I haven't had a lot of success in using it to retain or organize abstract information.
I think the fact that these techniques have died out is some evidence that they are not actually very useful.
Just as a counterpoint, in the book "Moonwalking with Einstein", the author talks quite a bit about the fact that many of these methods survived for a long long time, and people in the past considered memory an incredibly important proof of someone being educated.
The methods seem to have been "lost" mostly when better options for external memory (e.g. writing and printing) became more universal. (iirc - i'm probably messing this up somewhat).
Yeah, it might be harder to convince people that classic memory techniques are important when they carry smartphones. But the classic memory techniques may still work just as well as they ever did!
About halfway during an Introduction to Psychology exam in college (and this was told to the class ahead of time), the professor told us to close our exam booklets and listen to a list of 20 things, having the class using the Method of loci to remember them. Afterwards, students had to write it down the list in order in their test booklet. The question was worth as many points, with any out-of-order mistake forfeiting the rest of the points for the list.
I'm really curious about building a virtual memory palace for VR. Seems there would be many possibilities to make memorizing more effective.
Some common techniques like following a predetermined path through a palace and imagining diffrent unique objects and scenes at fixed locations along that path could be really nicely visualized.
I would think you could benefit a lot from actually beeing able to explore and fully take in a memory palace while feeling like you're actually present with VR.
If you are a really visual person, perhaps. I would want all sorts of other senses in addition though. Being able to lay my hands on the brickwork and hear how sounds are affected by walls would be important parts for me.
On the other hand, a palace in VR has the benefit of not getting demolished, and being accessible even if you move to another country.
I understand that fictional locales were used as palaces for this reason. For instance, Dante's circles of hell.
Edit: corrected an inexplicable typo (had 'and' for 'hands')
No doubt this would be useful, but the great thing about a memory palace is it is only limited by your mind - any object you've ever seen can be added to it effortlessly in nano seconds. Plus you can conjure it up anywhere anytime. A VR Palace on the other hand wouldn't be so portable, and would require you to design a lot of 3d models / textures / animation / sounds by hand.
Are most people able to just "picture a room" as required by this technique? I've never been good at that. Whenever I try to picture a location, I just see objects and landmarks with no real sense of place, kind of just floating in an impressionistic aether.
For me it's not really about picturing a room, but coming up with the vivid transitions between objects.
Ex. For wolf, orange, hail; I might picture: The wolf sitting on top of a house, and when he opens his mouth it violently rains an infinite stream of oranges, then when gravity kicks in the oranges start falling from the sky turning into huge balls of hail.
The imagery like hundreds of oranges pouring out of a wolves' mouth, and oranges falling from the sky like hail are what do it for me. I've used this technique for lists of 20-30 somewhat unrelated items effectively.
If I think of the word 'mansion' it does bring up a picture in my head, but as I move around it everything is kinda hazy and I kinda make stuff up as I go along. Like I look at the floor and set it's colour, but then a different view-angle changes it again. With practise though you can make details more permanent.
Try closing your eyes and walking around your own house/room. As you've seen it so many times it is far easier to do.
You don't have to picture it, you just have to visit the loci in sequence. Can you write down a description of your morning routine (wake up, wash, eat, commute, etc) or execute your morning routine with your eyes closed? (ignoring safety concens, so please don't try driving with your eyes closed!)
As you do so, how many specific objects could you identify, in the order you handle them? Quite many, I bet.
It's not so hard. The easiest way to start is with the place you live. You just pick out the most notable aspects of different parts of the rooms and start matching items to them. Like anything else, it takes practice. Over time, that aether should clear right up.
Why bother? Because these techniques increase the capacity of "cache" that is closer (low latency) to human "computation". This can lead to faster traversal of the OODA loop, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop, which is relevant to lean startups, business competition, combat and more.
See the HN thread on AI as an enabler of IA, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10373180
In addition, spaced-repetition techniques can be used to increase your vocabulary, which is like gaining extra pixels for the expression of nuanced goals, helping any compass which guides execution to a goal. Words are proxies for dreams and dangers, especially in a software-constructed world. Greater word capacity becomes greater visibility over a software-based terrain.