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Our brain learns to ignore certain overused words and phrases that used to make stories awesome. Scientists, in the midst of researching the topic of storytelli
by jliechti1 13y ago
Our brain learns to ignore certain overused words and phrases that used to make stories awesome. Scientists, in the midst of researching the topic of storytelling have also discovered, that certain words and phrases have lost all storytelling power.
This is interesting. It's not just words, but events as well. It seems our minds are quite adept at finding things that are unordinary. If you asked someone living in a city environment "How many people did you see walking today?", no one would be able to answer. However, if you asked "How many people did you see riding unicycles today?", you would likely get a pretty definite response.
I've spent a good amount of time learning memory techniques to retain information that is largely abstract/arbitrary (learning Japanese/Chinese characters for example). The key to these techniques is to take something abstract and figure out how it encode it in concrete images/stories (a mental "bookkeeping" system like Roman Rooms is helpful as well). However, the strength of the encoding relies on how memorable your images are. In essence, you are creating a mapping between the brain's ability to work with images and abstract knowledge. Generally, the more crazy, ridiculous or absurd these image/stories are, the more memorable they will be, and thus the easier it will be to remember whatever you are trying to remember.
A task that normally seems extremely difficult (say, memorizing the Periodic Table, or the order of a deck of cards, or even just remembering people's names!), becomes almost trivial if you map the knowledge into something the brain is easier to understand.
- icebraining 13y agoRelevant talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do.html http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_...
- prostoalex 13y agoOne of the most influential books I've ever read was Foer's 'Moonwalking with Einstein' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonwalking_with_Einstein Memory development is one of the best investments into yourself. A bunch of other things people strive for (foreign language learning, being great public speaking) is corollary of having a good memory.
- bennesvig 13y agoCompletely agree. I was amazed how quickly I could learn to memorize the order of half a deck of cards by turning each card into a concrete visual. http://www.memrise.com/course/44056/the-10k-memory-competition/ http://www.memrise.com/course/44056/the-10k-memory-competiti...
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago"If you asked someone living in a city environment "How many people did you see walking today?", no one would be able to answer. However, if you asked "How many people did you see riding unicycles today?", you would likely get a pretty definite response." Isn't that because the answer to one question is "some big number" and the answer to the other question is "none"?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dllthomas 13y agoI expect that's not all of it, but it's obviously a huge part. If there were no people walking, I bet they would have noticed that, though that's also unusual...
- jliechti1 13y agoPerhaps the point I was going for may be better illustrated if you compare single observations: What can you remember about the person standing in front of you in the ATM line this morning? What can you remember about the unicyclist you saw this morning?