Comment by vunderba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vunderba | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

When I was a kid, I probably spent hundreds of hours playing 3D FPS games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Ken's Labyrinth, etc.

I was curious as how "transferable" spatial memorization in a video game in the form of a "virtual memory palace" would be since the conventional approach is based off physically real familiar locations.

Surprisingly I found using a combination of memory palaces built off video game levels in conjunction with a PAO approach towards compressing three numerical values into a single visual image to be highly effective - though I mostly used it for parlor tricks like memorizing a randomly shuffled deck.

If you're interested in learning more about the memory competitions, memory palaces, etc. I highly recommend the book "Moonwalking with Einstein":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein

Ken's Labyrinth is a name I haven't heard in awhile. I wonder what Ken Silverman is up to these days...

I've wondered similar stuff. Even in something like Wolfenstein 3D, where most of the rooms kind of feel the same, I managed to figure out how to navigate and not get too lost (even as a kid, and even before I realized that there's a map you can use). I've always wondered if there's a way to convert that relatively fast bit of memorization I was doing into something actually useful.

I still need to look into "memory palace" stuff.

Good question - kind of lost track of him after his work on the Build engine. It seems like with virtual environments like Second life, or even moving around in Google maps street view that there might be lots of ways to build virtual memory palaces that would lend themselves well towards memorization.

Moonwalking with Einstein is a fun book. "Your Memory" by Higbee I read maybe 15-20 years ago and it's more on how to do this kind of stuff. I was able to memorize a deck of cards quite quickly at one point but these techniques require quite a bit of practice to keep.

Also, most of this information is freely available online at this point and there are a ton of resources for finding it probably but I remember it being a pretty useful book at the time.

Agreed - while the techniques might be relatively simple - the ability to encode images vividly (and QUICKLY) along the loci requires a lot of practice.

Also for practical application - the Ludism website is an excellent resource.

https://www.ludism.org/mentat

Reply on news.ycombinator.com