Remembering, as an Extreme Sport | Hacker News Reader

Remembering, as an Extreme Sport

well.blogs.nytimes.com

63 pointscpeterso17 comments

If you are interested in the topic I recommend the book “Moonwalking With Einstein” mentioned in the article. It's both entertaining and informative. I particularly liked the parts about mastering a skill as efficiently as possible.

I tried some memorizing techniques. It's a great feeling to improve 10x at a (specific) memorizing tasks in very little and effort time by using one weird trick©.

I used to try to remember random words during my commute and recall them when coming back. I took a list of random words from /usr/dict and set myself a timer of a few minutes to remember 30 words using memory palace. I used various places from the commute itself to store words. It was fun to see the words pop-up automatically in specific places on my way back. My performance declined after a while because I wasn't able to erase the previous words.

A how-to book like The Memory Book[1] is good for getting started on the techniques. When I read Moonwalking With Einstein it sounded like more and more techniques are being invented all the time, but it didn't go into as much "how-to" detail. If there's a more up to date how-to book out there, I'd be interested.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Memory-Book-Classic-Improving/dp/0...

I read this book two months ago and can still recall most of his 'to do list' from the example. Was inspired by it to use the techniques to memorize collections of facts for a recent exam and they work wonderfully. I'm not saying it's easy to create vivid/unique/unusual images - it's certainly not. But if you invest the time and energy they really do stick.

Great idea to use the commute as the memory palace!

Interestingly, my daughter is learning to read and write by taking a word that she finds interesting, drawing a scene involving the word, then writing the word below it. I'm not sure if her preschool teachers are aware that they are using memory techniques to some extent.

I agree with Monkeyget - it takes very little effort or time.

Using the memory palace technique I taught myself to be able to recall the order of a deck of cards. Took only 10 min a day for a couple of weeks. Could have done it in less time by devoting more time per day.

I get a smile on my face whenever I see these stories. I read the book "Super Memory - Super Student" by Harry Lorayne when I was at university, and used the techniques to memorize an entire exam study book for a film theory course qualification exam.

The entire exam book was (and to some extent, still is, 12 years later) laid out in my mind as a large room through which I rode on a rail, visiting the various locations. Each location corresponded to a set of information.

Final exam score, 104 out of 100 possible points (four extra-credit points). And this is just using one of many possible techniques!

But alas, you have to decide to use this stuff as it takes some effort and if you're too excited about it, some fear of success can creep in and keep you from your studies.

How well can these people update things they have memorized?

For instance, suppose they memorized a deck of cards. Then suppose someone were to call out exchanges ("swap ace of spades and 3 of clubs...swap 2 of diamonds and 5 of hearts...") to shuffle the deck. Would they be able to quickly adjust their mental representation of the deck to take this into account, and so recall the modified deck?

I can speak from experience with the memory palace or peg systems. It's pretty easy to update, especially if you have a sequence of update mechanisms in mind. For example, the first replacement is an explosion, the second is melting, etc. If you have an ace of spades (say, pink elephant) that explodes into little toy killer whales (3 of clubs) then you know that's the first change. To make these stick in my mind I would engage as many senses as possible. What did it sound like when the killer whales hit the floor (did they squeak), what did it feel like in my hands when I picked up a bunch and squeezed them, etc.

Does the technique still work if you don't have an existing system for it (I'm guessing this is like a mapping of some sort?). Like, replace the Ace of Diamonds with the word "gopher" and replace the Queen of Hearts with this sound?

Without an existing system it would be slow, but possible. I often teach people to memorize the order of black and red in a deck of cards forwards and backwards within 15-20 minutes, even if they have no previous experience or system. (The equivalent of 52 random binary digits.) Memorizing binary data is significantly easier though.

Fun. I spent some time with memory-training last year and used it to successfully impress my 7-year old son and his friends by having them suggest random words and write them down in a big list (one word per line, legibly - they had no idea they were secretly practicing penmanship!) and then I'd recite them from the mental story I'd created from each one after only a few minutes study. Six months later, I could still recite 50+ out of the 75 words without hesitation, and for multiple lists.

My "trick" was simply to create a visual story that incorporated each word and linked it to the next one. As long as I could remember the first word and the initial plot of the story, it was pretty simple to link to each subsequent word. In addition, I had great nonsensical stories to tell my kid when he couldn't go to sleep at night.

Isn't "Extreme Sport" something that has potential to injury/death?

No, it was branding for when they started showing skateboarding, snowboarding, and freestyle motocross on television.

For memory techniques, including memory palaces, I can recommend "Quantum Memory Power" by Dominic O'Brien. He was (is?) a world champion at memorization, and does pretty well at presenting in his audio book. Some of it feels a bit out of date (e.g. popular names he uses to help with memorization), but if you can get past it there's a lot to learn.

"Tricks of the Mind" by Derren Brown also has some basic information on memorization, along with a host of other interesting topics.

+1 for Quantum Memory Power.

While it's more pragmatic and covers broader ground, "Mind Performance Hacks" by Ron Hale-Evans has its first chapter on memory, and I can recommend it all around.

Super interesting stuff.

I see the Memory Palace obviously mentioned and the "test, retest and tweak" (which I'm not familiar with). Are there other techniques?

Other memory techniques? Look up: pao system, major system, Dominic system, number rhymes, number shapes, alphabet pegs, and memory town system.

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