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While Memory Palace descriptions naturally focus on space and spatial reasoning as being the key ingredients to effectively storing memories, I think the bindin

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_imagery_and_associative_learning https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232506583_Mental_im...

johtso 5y ago
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 https://www.ludism.org/mentat/PegSystem [2] https://www.ludism.org/mentat/LinkSystem https://www.ludism.org/mentat/LinkSystem [3] https://www.ludism.org/mentat/SemCubed https://www.ludism.org/mentat/SemCubed
nefitty 5y ago
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.
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nestorD 5y ago
You can (and I do) use the fact that it is a 3D space to store further information (such as ordering and relationship between items). In CS terms, a memory palace is usually used as a linked list while a peg system would be a hash-table but you can turn the memory palace into an array with both O(1) random access and fast in-order iteration.
estaseuropano 5y ago
The idea of the whole system is that remembering locations is something our brain is good at. So this is using our evolved abilities in a wya that benefits us today. Its very different from just memoriaing a list and then pegging items to it.

johtso 5y ago

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 https://www.ludism.org/mentat/PegSystem [2] https://www.ludism.org/mentat/LinkSystem https://www.ludism.org/mentat/LinkSystem [3] https://www.ludism.org/mentat/SemCubed https://www.ludism.org/mentat/SemCubed

nefitty 5y ago

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 5y ago
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nestorD 5y ago

You can (and I do) use the fact that it is a 3D space to store further information (such as ordering and relationship between items). In CS terms, a memory palace is usually used as a linked list while a peg system would be a hash-table but you can turn the memory palace into an array with both O(1) random access and fast in-order iteration.

estaseuropano 5y ago

The idea of the whole system is that remembering locations is something our brain is good at. So this is using our evolved abilities in a wya that benefits us today. Its very different from just memoriaing a list and then pegging items to it.