4 ms·

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

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!

logicallee 11y ago
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.
schoen 11y ago
A friend of mine was given a list of fake definitions for real words as part of a puzzle contest http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2014/puzzle/eggsam/ http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2014/puzzle/eggsam/ 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.
mdaniel 11y ago
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 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.
- JoshMnem 11y ago
  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. There are more tips on the memory palace page (http://mt.artofmemory.com/wiki/Memory_Palace http://mt.artofmemory.com/wiki/Memory_Palace), and you can ask more questions in the forum.

logicallee 11y ago

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.

schoen 11y ago

A friend of mine was given a list of fake definitions for real words as part of a puzzle contest http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2014/puzzle/eggsam/ http://web.mit.edu/puzzle/www/2014/puzzle/eggsam/ 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.

mdaniel 11y ago

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 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.

JoshMnem 11y ago
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. There are more tips on the memory palace page (http://mt.artofmemory.com/wiki/Memory_Palace http://mt.artofmemory.com/wiki/Memory_Palace), and you can ask more questions in the forum.